Recap:
Four minutes into Sunday night’s game, Creighton took the lead 12-10 on a three-pointer from Francisco Farabello. Both teams had come out of the gates on fire, with CU making 6-of-7 and Baylor hitting on 5-of-7. But that three from Farabello was the start of a run that saw the Jays open up a double-digit lead, as their defense began to settle in and force the Bears into taking the shots they wanted them to take — non-rim two-pointers. From that moment forward, Creighton dictated the terms this game was played by on both ends of the floor, and they seized control.
It was a span that saw the Bears miss eight consecutive shots spanning nearly five minutes. That drought created the opening. And Ryan Nembhard personally made sure the Jays took full advantage. He drained a three-pointer from 25 feet out to give CU a lead they’ve never relinquish at 15-12, and after another three from Farabello, Nembhard added two free throws and a layup where he split a pair of defenders with some shifty dribbling and then finished at the rim over a third defender. It was reminiscent of the type of slithering drives former Bluejay point guard extraordinaire Maurice Watson used to make — and it gave the Jays a 24-14 lead.
But as it has been all season, the Jays’ defense was the difference.
“I mean, they’re physical,” Baylor guard LJ Cryer said afterward. “They grabbed, they made it hard for us to get open, and they fanned out whenever you got to the paint. They tried to run us off the line, too, and make us shoot more twos. It seemed like that was their game plan, and they executed it.”
Greg McDermott called his team’s defensive effort “incredible”, and mentioned that the coaching staff had spent the two days leading up to the game drilling home the idea of both limiting the number of three-point shots Baylor got — and making sure that the ones that they did get weren’t great looks.
“They made some two-point shots. We were willing to live with that,” McDermott said. “We didn’t think they could make enough of those to beat us over 40 minutes. Fortunately we were right.”
The play that best showed the high level of confidence CU was playing with came a few minutes later. Bringing the ball up the floor in transition, Baylor Scheierman drove into the paint, used a jump stop to collapse and freeze the defense, and then kicked it into the corner to a wide-open Arthur Kaluma. The second he passed the ball, Scheierman held up three fingers with his back turned to the play and began running down to the other end of the floor to defend. It was that kind of night — he knew the three-pointer that Kaluma had not yet released was going to go in.
Leading 39-29 at the half, Baylor responded by hitting a series of tough, well-defended shots. They made seven of their first eight from the floor, and with 14:41 to play they’d cut the lead in half at 50-45. But CU had an emphatic answer for every push Baylor made in the second half, and before they could get any closer Alexander buried a tough, contested pull-up jumper with a defender draped all over him. It stopped Baylor’s momentum in its tracks, and over the next five minutes CU ripped off a 15-5 run that blew the game open.
Four different Bluejays scored in the run, with Nembhard hitting a short jumper, Kalkbrenner finishing a lob at the rim and Kaluma hitting a jumper in the paint. Then Nembhard capped it off on a sequence where Baylor face-guarded him for 28 seconds, then inexplicably gave him eight feet of space to bury a three-pointer in front of his own bench. Well, maybe not so inexplicable when you watch how he got so wide-open: his defender cheated toward the paint thinking the ball was going inside to Kalkbrenner. It was not.
“It’s pick your poison when you’ve got a good inside-outside,” Baylor’s Scott Drew said. “Our bigs did a great job (on Kalkbrenner), which led to some opportunities for them from three. We kept changing what we did, and they did a good job adjusting, as well.”
Ahead 65-50, the Jays then slammed the door shut with back-to-back threes from Nembhard and Farabello to give CU their largest lead of the game at 77-59. Here’s how those threes sounded on 1620, as called by John Bishop and Nick Bahe:
Then they sealed the win with eight free throws down the stretch, earning a second Sweet 16 berth in three seasons. This one felt different, though, with thousands of Bluejay fans filling the arena with chants of “C-U! C-U!” as the seconds ticked down, instead of inside the COVID bubble of the 2021 Tourney in Indianapolis. There were detractors of that 2021 Sweet 16 who claimed it was somehow less-than because they beat a 12 (UCSB) and a 13 (Ohio) to get there, and were beaten soundly by Gonzaga in the next round. Those folks will need a different excuse this time around, as the Jays beat two power-conference foes including a Baylor team two years removed from a national title — and beat them straight up, because they were the better team with a better plan who executed better than their opponent.
“They’re a really good team,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said. “It wasn’t like we lost because we lost; they beat us today.”
Whatever struggles this team had in the regular season — namely, going from a top-ten preseason ranking to 12 losses and third place in the Big East — are now a footnote. The 2022-23 Bluejays are in the Sweet 16, and they’re not done yet.
“Nine years ago, we lost to Baylor with a really special group,” McDermott said afterward, “and tonight we beat Baylor with a really special group.”
There’s also that, isn’t there? Beating Baylor, who ended the great Doug McDermott/Grant Gibbs/Ethan Wragge/Jahenns Manigat/Austin Chatman era with an 85-55 drubbing in 2014, felt more satisfying than any Bluejay win in a long time. That team is among the most beloved in CU’s long, proud history, and it ended in tears at the hands of a ruthless Bears team.
Nine years later, CU flipped the script. They led nearly wire-to-wire, controlling the game on both ends of the floor. When the TV cameras captured Wragge texting from his seat inside Ball Arena as the final seconds ticked down, part of me hoped he was talking to the guys from that team in a group text. Sharing memories, gloating about the accomplishments of their alma mater, taking pride in what this current team has built while standing on their shoulders.
Inside the Box:
Ryan Nembhard and Ryan Kalkbrenner both missed Creighton’s second round NCAA Tournament game a year ago after their seasons ended prematurely due to injury. They made up for lost time this weekend in Denver, taking turns leading the Jays to the Sweet 16 as Kalkbrenner scored a career high 31 on Friday, and Nembhard had a career-high 30 on Sunday.
Nembhard, in particular, seemed frustrated by all the attention paid to opposing guards — and to the media’s questions about how the Jays planned to deal first with NC State’s Terquavion Smith and Jarkel Joiner, and then with Baylor’s Adam Flagler, Keyonte George and LJ Cryer, without acknowledging that CU’s guards are pretty damn good themselves.
“At the end of the day, they’ve got to guard, too,” Nembhard bristled. “We’ve got good guards over here.”
Nembhard had a career-high 30 points on 8-of-13 shooting and 10-of-10 from the foul line. He had just one turnover in 38 minutes against a Baylor defense who pressured the ball and made him expend extra energy on every possession. In 37 minutes against an NC State team who did the same, he had zero turnovers. That’s 75 minutes of gameplay with one combined turnover for the Jays’ primary ball-handler and table-setter.
His teammates heaped praise on him after the game.
“I mean, to have a point guard like R2, he gets our offense going,” Trey Alexander said. “I feel like anytime you look down the court and see him just speeding past somebody, or you see him finding the open guy, or talking you through the offense…he’s just a winner. That’s what everybody wants their point guard to be, is a winner. Everybody knew that he was going to have a big night sooner or later.”
“What I really like about him is that he wants the team to be better, not just certain individuals or him by himself,” Francisco Farabello said. “He wants the best for the team. Incredible player, even better person. I’m glad he’s our point guard.”
“R2 does a great job controlling the pace of the game and the reads he makes are pro-level reads,” Arthur Kaluma added. “And it’s always good to have a guy like him on the team who’s not only just a point guard, but he’s a leader. We look up to him, even though he’s shorter than all of us.”
Here’s a highlight reel of Nembhard’s shots from last night:
Creighton is the first team to have a different player score 30 or more points in each of the first two games of an NCAA Tournament since Providence’s Austin Croshere and Derrick Brown did it in 1997. And they’re the second pair of same-named teammates to each have a 30-point game in a single NCAA Tournament, joining a pair of Larrys (Finch and Kenon) who did it for Memphis in 1973.
But you need more than just one guy to advance in March, and the Jays got big performances from a lot of players in this one. Trey Alexander had 17 points, eight rebounds, five assists and a steal, hitting massive shots time after time. Baylor Scheierman had just eight points and six rebounds, but was the primary defender on the explosive Keyonte George — holding him to seven points on 1-of-10 shooting.
And while Kalkbrenner was held to 10 points on 10 shots, the Bears’ gameplan on both ends of the floor was centered around him. That opened up shots for teammates offensively, and changed the way Baylor attacked them when they were on offense.
Then there was Francisco Farabello. A career 37.4% shooter from three-point range, he’d struggled mightily in a Bluejay uniform after three years at TCU. He’d made 23 three-pointers all season, and just three total since February 1. He had three in this game alone, coming up huge on the biggest stage. Making a run in March often necessitates getting a clutch performance from a player who isn’t on the opponent’s scouting report, and Farabello was That Guy on Sunday. Further cementing how surprising this was: he’d only made as many as three in a game once all season, and in three years at TCU he made three 3’s in a game just three times.
He’s well-respected in the locker room, as evidenced by this tweet from Scheierman after the game:
And by the team’s decision to ask Farabello to do the honors of placing their name on the bracket, advancing them into the Sweet 16.
The Jays went 22-of-22 from the foul line, tying the best free throw percentage (min. 15 attempts) in tournament history. It ties the record set by Fordham March 20, 1971 against South Carolina. Combined with shooting 17-of-19 from the stripe against NC State, the Jays made 39-of-41 from the free throw line. Unbelievable.
Defensively, Baylor’s 22 three-point attempts were their fourth-fewest of the season, their five made 3’s were the fewest in any game this season, and their 22.7% shooting percentage from three-point range was the lowest of the season. Just a tremendous effort by the Jays’ guards in running them off the line, and daring the Bears to beat them with non-rim two-pointers.
For the second straight game, they essentially said they were OK with their opponent’s primary scorer going off from inside the arc because they were going to lock down everyone else, and take away as many three-point attempts as they could. LJ Cryer had 30 points on 13-of-22 shooting — but everyone else was 16-of-41. And Cryer was just 4-of-11 from the perimeter. Shot analytics indicated that one guy scoring a bunch of two-pointers wouldn’t be enough to overcome that, and they were right.
Offensively, the Jays’ adjusted efficiency was 121.0 (or 1.21 points per possession), one of their best of the season. Combined with one of their best defensive efforts, this might have been the most complete game they’ve played all year. What a time to do it.
Finally, we leave with this. As a #6 seed in 2014, Baylor hit 11 3s and scored 85 points against Creighton to reach their 2nd Sweet 16 in 3 years.
And as a #6 seed in 2023, Creighton hit 11 3s and scored 85 points against Baylor to reach their 2nd Sweet 16 in 3 years.
Highlights:
Interviews:
