The 2025-26 Bluejays have a lot of weaknesses that have led to a 13-13 record after 26 games. Lack of rim protection. Defensive breakdowns so frequent that the coaching staff has experimented with multiple schemes (2-3 zone, 1-3-1 zone, matchup zone, drop coverage) in an attempt to find something that works. Bad decision making with the ball, leading to frequent live ball turnovers. Stagnant offensive sets. An offense that is too often one-dimensional, reduced to taking jump shots because of a lack of size in the paint and a lack of athleticism on the wings.
The result of those offensive shortcomings has been long scoreless droughts, and in spite all of their other issues, it’s those droughts that have doomed them more than anything else. The other issues come and go. An offense that goes silent for five or six minutes at a time is a constant.
Wednesday against DePaul, they went seven minutes without a field goal in the second half, a drought that allowed the Blue Demons to claw back into the game. The week before, Georgetown held them scoreless for nearly four minutes in the second half, using a 12-0 run to take control. It happened twice against UConn; after knotting it at 27 with 4:41 to play in the first half, the Jays didn’t make a basket the rest of the way as UConn ripped off a 14-3 run with eight of their points coming on second chances. Then a 14-2 UConn run early in the second half blew it open as the Huskies took a 60-40 lead with 12:48 to go. On Jan. 27, Marquette had separate runs of 9-0 and 18-0 before halftime and led 52-23 at the break.
And on and on.
On Saturday, CU trailed 9-7 early in an ugly start that saw them go 1-for-8 from the field and 0-for-3 from 3-point range. Then they continued to stumble around offensively and Villanova did not. The Jays went scoreless for four minutes, missed 7-of-8 and committed four of their 12 turnovers. The 16-3 Wildcat run featured two separate 8-0 spurts, with only a Hudson Greer three-pointer separating them. When it was over, Villanova led 25-10, and they rode that lead the rest of the afternoon.
Hudson for 3️⃣#GoJays // 📺 FOX pic.twitter.com/WGYQqpV0L9
— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) February 14, 2026
“We had a real opportunity early in the game to get this crowd into it and create some separation, and you know, we had some open shots that we didn’t make. Fortunately at that time we defended pretty well,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “But again, you know, a stretch like that where we get out scored by 10 or 11 ends up flipping a game on its head. We had to fight the whole time to try to get back in it.”
With 3:09 left in the half, Creighton had more turnovers (eight) than made shots (seven). Trailing 32-17, the damage had been done. And by the time Josh Dix and Austin Swartz heated up a bit, it was too late. Dix exploited the middle of the drop coverage for a couple of mid-range jumpers; Swartz scored five points in final 90 seconds, including a three where he got his own offensive rebound from a missed shot and hit the rare putback three.
But once they started hitting shots, they couldn’t string together enough stops defensively to make any sizable dent in the lead. Every time they began to seize momentum, Villanova answered. After Dix hit a three with 17:08 to go to cut the lead to 47-40, the Wildcats missed a three…and then rebounded the miss and scored on a tip-in.
A few minutes later, they got it into single digits again on an alley-oop to Kerem Konan. But a defensive miscommunication allowed Villanova’s Duke Brennan to get open under the rim and score easily.
Fedor throws it up top to Kerem!#GoJays // 📺 FOX pic.twitter.com/PYrlae0sn2
— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) February 14, 2026
“We just had too many breakdowns defensively,” McDermott said. “You know, we can play 20 great seconds of defense and then somebody gets back cut, somebody forgets to block out, there’s a late communication. And, you know, that’s on me. It’s February 14th. As a coaching staff…that thing, those things should not still be happening.”
“If one person breaks down, then it’s kind of hard for us to keep our defensive integrity going,” Jasen Green added. “There were a couple of possessions in a row where that unfortunately happened.”
The 80-69 loss is Creighton’s fifth in six games, and at 7-8 in the Big East on the morning of February 15, it’s the latest in the season that they’ve been below .500 in league play in eight years. The 2018-19 team lost four straight in early February (including two in overtime) to fall to 4-9 on Feb. 17. That team would win its final five to finish 9-9. The 2014-15 team was underwater all year and finished 4-14. Before that, the 1995-96 team was the last one to be under .500 in February.
In other words, in the last 30 years, there’s only been four seasons where they had a losing record in league play in the regular season’s final full month, including the season we’re currently watching. Two things can be true at once: that’s remarkable, and also depressing.
Inside the Box:
Villanova scored 48 of their 80 points in the paint; combined with DePaul getting 46 of their 72 points in the paint on Wednesday, Creighton’s two opponents this week scored 61.8% of their points in the paint.
The Wildcats had 12 offensive rebounds that they turned into 15 second-chance points, continuing a season-long trend for Bluejay opponents. This one was particularly egregious though — VU outscored Creighton 15-6 on points off turnovers and 15-7 on second chance points. It left them without any margin for error anywhere else, and so little advantages here and there (Villanova making two more 3’s than the Jays and outscoring them 14-7 from the line) added up.
Individually, Josh Dix had 14 points, five rebounds and three assists and once again played well defensively. And he did it one day after speaking in front of a teary congregation at his mom’s funeral. On the worst (record wise) Creighton team since the 2014-15 squad, Dix is unquestionably the Ricky Kreklow of this group: a one-year transfer who gave the team maximum effort every time out, continued to do it even as the losses piled up, and deserved to be part of a more successful season. Like Kreklow, he’ll be fondly remembered by Bluejay fans for a long time in spite of how the season has gone, and with good reason.
“It’s just…it’s unbelievable,” McDermott said. “You know, 28 hours ago the kid was speaking his mom’s funeral and he’s just been a pillar of strength. That’s been amazing for me to watch him navigate this and I think his teammates, while they may not probably understand it now, I think there’s some lessons that they’ve learned that are gonna help them at some point in their life when something happens a little bit closer to them. Yesterday was a emotional day and I was worried about our emotional state to start this game. I was hopeful that the big crowd would kind of wake us up and unfortunately we just we didn’t have much in the tank. I tried a lot of different guys out there to try to try to find a spark, because you know, we just didn’t have it.”
He wasn’t the only one with a valiant effort in defeat. Jasen Green had 11 rebounds (four offensive), five points and four assists. Nik Graves had 15 points and five assists, though he did commit three turnovers. Freshman Hudson Greer had eight points, five rebounds and four steals in the best all-around game of his Bluejay career.
And while Kerem Konan’s stat line doesn’t jump off the page — three points and a rebound in seven minutes — he had the highlight reel alley-oop and got the backup center minutes in the second half. That’s notable primarily because Owen Freeman returned to the starting lineup for the first time since early December, then got subbed out three minutes into the game and had a long discussion with McDermott when he came off the floor. He came back for one more stint in the first half, but not only didn’t start the second half — he didn’t play at all.
“Our spacing just wasn’t great, and my plan was to go to Isaac early regardless,” McDermott said of the quick hook. “We wanted to start that way so I could shift Jasen onto (Tony) Perkins; we thought that was a better matchup.”
As for Konan getting his minutes after halftime?
“We thought we needed in the second half someone that put a little more pressure on the rim with the rolls and stuff and Kerem had a couple good ones,” McDermott said. “He had a couple of good defensive plays, too. You know obviously we’re still searching a little bit for a lineup that works.”