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Morning After: Austin Swartz Does It Again, Sinks Xavier with Game-Winner in 94-93 Victory

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[Box Score]

In the second half of Creighton’s 94-93 win over Xavier Wednesday night, neither team’s defense could stop the other from scoring. They both scored over 50 points, shot better than 60% from the floor and made more than half of their three-point attempts. The Jays made 10 of their last 13 shots, and the Musketeers made nine of their last 13. One made shot separated them.

This one.

“You know, of course you would like to make the free throw. Make the simple play, go to OT, but you know, that’s not how the cookie crumbled,” Swartz said on the postgame radio show. “(The shot) felt a little long so I was already getting prepared to go, wherever it went I was going after it. It bounced, went to the corner, (Roddie Anderson) had it, wasn’t strong with it, and I took it from him. I was trying to go to the basket, but (Isaiah Walker) impeded my path, so I had no angle. There was only a second left, so I’m just thinking draw the foul. At that point you just got to get up on the rim. The worst thing you could do is not get a shot up. And luckily, I banked it in. I didn’t call bank, though. That wasn’t the plan — the plan was to definitely draw a foul and get back to the free throw line and hopefully win it that way, but you know, I’m not gonna argue with what God had in store today.”

For his part, Greg McDermott didn’t think the shot was going in.

“I had a pretty good angle on it from the baseline,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “You know, Austin did a great job of chasing it down, and I think he probably told you, I think he was driving in, trying to draw some contact, and then realized they weren’t going to call it and just got it up on the rim somewhere. It was a pretty crazy angle for a bank shot, but it’s, you know, you’ve got to take it. You don’t apologize for wins ever, because you’re going to lose a few that you’re not supposed to lose, and you know, tonight we stole one.”

***

On a night where the teams combined for 187 points, neither led by more than seven. That high-water mark came midway through the first half, when Creighton used a 7-0 mini run to open up a 17-10 lead on a dunk from Jasen Green and five straight from Swartz.

After a timeout, Xavier’s Tre Carroll scored five of his game-high 29 points to keep the Jays from pulling away. The teams traded buckets, and then late in the half, Green reinjured his shoulder on a play where he was fouled. He struggled to make two free throws, then checked out and never returned. It was compounded by the absence of Owen Freeman with an illness, leaving Kerem Konan as the sole available center.

“We had some crazy lineups out there that haven’t been on the floor together this year,” McDermott said. “We couldn’t get it loose and feeling strong enough that he could come back. We had to find a way to win without him. Jasen quarterbacks our defense. He’s so important to us.”

Konan played 16 of the remaining 24 minutes. For the other eight minutes, the Jays tried anything and everything. They went with Isaac Traudt and Blake Harper surrounded by three guards, but Harper soon found himself in foul trouble. They used Traudt and Hudson Greer with three guards for a bit. But for most of the second half when Konan needed a break, and for an extended stretch late in the game especially, they played Traudt and four guards. And Xavier took maximum advantage of that small lineup.

“There’s just some really hard matchups without Jasen. We need him to guard their best frontcourt player, and without him, we had to try a lot of different things,” McDermott said. “We tried a 2-3 zone, drop man (coverage), anything we could to keep them out of rhythm.”

28 of Xavier’s 54 second half points came in the paint. Their three primary big men, Tre Carroll (12), Filip Borovićanin (12) and Jovan Milicevic (8), combined for 32 of the 54 points while making 13-of-17 on two-pointers.

Still, Creighton led the entire half until a free throw from Xavier’s Roddie Anderson gave them a 80-79 lead with 5:16 to go. Anderson made a back-breaking three after missing the second free throw, after the Jays failed to rebound the miss and failed to close out on him in the corner. The Musketeers held that four-point lead for most of the next four minutes, repeatedly scoring at or near the rim to answer Bluejay buckets. The last of them, a layup by Carroll with 53 seconds to go that gave Xavier a 93-89 lead, felt like the dagger. Especially since it was symbolic of how they’d built the lead in the first place — a high-low play where they threw the ball to the 6’8” Carroll over the top of the 6’6” Dix.

But like Georgetown a week ago, the Musketeers found Creighton extremely hard to knockout. Harper answered Carroll’s would-be dagger with a layup at the rim. With 45 seconds left, Xavier probably needed just one more score to secure the win, but when they tried to run the same high-low play again, Dix was ready for it. He battled Carroll on the block and forced the Musketeers to try something else. Borovićanin drove into the paint, got past Harper, and put up a shot — only to find Dix there helping on the backside. A textbook vertical challenge forced a missed shot that went out of bounds, and with 11.7 seconds left, Creighton had life.

“That was incredible,” McDermott said. “He made a heck of a play. We just decided to roll with it. Josh made the decision to guard Carroll one-on-one in that situation so we didn’t give up an easy three. He was kind of picking apart our double team. It was a big stop.”

Swartz took the ball the length of the floor and executed a play McDermott had drawn up to get an open look for one of three players — himself, Dix or Graves — depending on how Xavier defended them.

“The initial look was for either Josh or Nik to come around a little screen right there and get them on the run, but they kind of took that away,” Swartz said. “I saw Fedor flash open, so I threw it to him and I just wanted to make sure I got the ball back. I was moving a little slow up the floor as I’ve been told when I got back to the locker room, but I was kind of waiting until Nik got to the corner just so his man wouldn’t help. That’s also kind of when you can catch your defender sleeping, you kind of start slow and then you go fast. So that’s what I did. I was able to get to the rim, he kind of tripped me up, we got a foul and the rest is history.”

After making the first free throw, Xavier coach Richard Pitino called timeout to ice Swartz. And it worked. “I lowkey got iced a little bit,” Swartz joked. But he grabbed the rebound, banked in the game-winner, and the Jays won their second game in eight days after trailing in the final two minutes.

Well, not quite yet. There was still 0.6 seconds to go, and Xavier came extremely close to making a buzzer-beater of their own. Roddie Anderson threw the ball 94 feet in the air, just to the left of the rim — and Isaiah Walker met it there, tipping the ball and almost redirecting it through the net.

“It was an unbelievable pass,” McDermott said. “Initially, we weren’t going to put anybody on the ball, and then we decided in the timeout to do so. We thought they were going to try to throw something to the top of the key, and we wanted to make that a tougher pass. The kid made a made a hell of a pass, and fortunately the basketball didn’t go in.”

Inside the Box:

Wednesday was the ninth time in CHI Health Center history that Creighton has made a go-ahead basket in the last 10 seconds to win a game, and just the third time they were trailing before the shot.

  • Jays 91, Dayton 90, 2OT (Nov. 26, 2005)
    Nate Funk jumper with 5.7 seconds to go
  • Jays 57, Wichita State 55 (Jan. 28, 2006)
    Anthony Tolliver jumper with no time remaining
  • Jays 58, George Mason 56 (Nov. 25, 2006)
    Dane Watts free throws with 7.5 seconds remaining
  • Jays 74, Rhode Island 73 (Mar. 18, 2008)
    Cavel Witter three-pointer with 3.2 seconds left
  • Jays 71, Southern Illinois 69 (Jan. 13, 2010)
    Antoine Young jumper wit 1.3 seconds left
  • Jays 81, Long Beach State 79 (Feb. 18, 2012)
    Antoine Young jumper with 0.3 seconds to play
  • Jays 63, St. John’s 60 (Jan. 28, 2014)
    Doug McDermott three-pointer with 2.8 seconds left
  • Jays 78, Providence 74 (Jan. 18, 2020)
    Marcus Zegarowski three-pointer with 3.2 seconds left
  • Jays 94, Xavier 93 (Jan. 21, 2026)
    Austin Swartz rebounds missed free throw, makes jumper with 0.6 seconds left

Swartz’ heroics obscured an awful lot of bad basketball plays that could have — and arguably should have — cost the Jays a win. They missed seven free throws. They had a lane violation on a missed free throw that gave Xavier a second chance, which they made. They gave up an offensive rebound on a different missed free throw, leading to a three-pointer. Dix missed a layup with 1:22 to go that could have tied the game. Harper got a technical foul early in the second half that put him in foul trouble, forcing them into the smaller lineups that Xavier exploited.

“We talk to our guys all the time about trying to control the controllables, so you don’t get in a situation where something crazy can happen at the end of the game,” McDermott said. “And we were fortunate against Butler that we did that, because they hit three crazy threes in the last twenty five seconds to cut it to a four point game. But we had enough of a cushion to hold on. Tonight we hung around, hung around, hung around enough that we were able to benefit from some crazy stuff happening.”

Their defense was non-existent, giving up 90+ points for the third time in four games (and they gave up 83 in the fourth game of that stretch). Their adjusted defensive efficiency has dropped from 42nd to 87th in less than three weeks.

“Let’s be honest,” McDermott said. “We can’t stop anybody right now, and we’ve got to try to solve that problem. Until we figure out this defense, we’re going to have to keep scoring the basketball. When you get into league play, people know your warts. They’re going to attack them and attack them and attack them. Our guys hung in there and at least we got one stop when we needed it.”

It wasn’t all negative defensively. They did keep Xavier from scoring in transition, and in fact were even better at it than they were in Cincinnati.

“They scored 64 points in transition in the last two games,” McDermott noted. “We held them to 11 at their place, which is by far the lowest in Big East play. Tonight they got five. Now, they scored in every other way imaginable, but not in transition.”

“We have to do a better job defensively, but you know, sometimes you gotta give guys flowers,” Fedor Zugic said on the postgame radio show. “(Tre Carroll) was killing it tonight. He was making some some tough shots. We used a vertical challenge a lot of times on him, just like we practice it. He made some tough ones tonight, and he made a lot of them. But luckily, in the end, Josh was on him, and he managed to stop him the one time we had to.”

It left them needing to outscore their opponent, and though they got 19 points from Dix and 16 from Swartz, it was their bench that was the difference maker. Creighton’s reserves scored 40 of their 94 points, led by Nik Graves’ 16 points on 6-of-12 shooting. He finished one assist shy of a double-double with nine of them, along with three rebounds, a steal and one very big block. That came at the 2:37 mark during the stretch where they had no answer in the paint, and led to points the other way.

“And he had no turnovers,” McDermott pointed out. “I thought he lived in the paint tonight, made some nice plays at the rim. He obviously distributed the basketball really well, and had the big block at a critical time as well, so, you know, he’s getting better, he’s doing a good job. His teammates obviously believe in him.”

Graves’ nine assists created six 3-pointers, two dunks and a layup. 40 of their 94 points were either scored or assisted by Graves.

“I think at the end of the game like that, if I’m the person being targeted, it’s just sort of like a pride thing, I don’t want to get scored on,” Graves said of the blocked shot. “I don’t want to be the person to make a one-possession game into a two-possession game if I get scored on. So just taking pride, making sure that that doesn’t happen, and I was fortunate enough to make a play.”

Fedor Zugic also came up big off the bench, scoring a season-high 11 points. He made all three of his 3-point attempts. And on a night where the defense took a lot of criticism, rightfully so, Zugic was a bright spot. His perimeter defense has improved drastically, and when Dix comes out, it’s increasingly Zugic who takes over on the opponent’s best guard.

“I mean it was not a secret I wasn’t a defensive guy coming in here,” Zugic said. “But once you realize that when you’re a team full of guys like this team, full of talent and everybody can score, you have to do something else. For me, it was playing defense, getting to the paint, trying to help our big guys rebound. Once that clicks, and I’ve been doing it for a couple games, and try to do it in practice every day, that’s how you get coaches to trust you. That’s how you get more minutes.”

Hudson Greer had played just 17 minutes with six points over three games since returning from his injury. He had eight in this one, including back-to-back threes late in the first half and a dunk in the second half.

“I think Hudson’s two at the end of the half were really critical, because they gave us a nice lift going into the locker room,” McDermott said. “Fedor, he’s arguably our second-best perimeter defender, probably, and he’s able to give Josh a break, and we’re able to use him next to some of the other guys tonight. We played four guards a lot because of the lineup they had out, and I thought Fedor did a did a really good job. He hit some big shots and made those two big free throws at a critical time.”

And then there’s Austin Swartz. Since moving into the starting lineup 11 games ago, he’s averaging 19.2 points per game. He’s made 35-of-60 (58.3%) from two-point range in those 11 games, and 45-of-106 (42.4%) from three. And those numbers include his ugly 1-of-13 game at Providence last Friday.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve had a tough shooting game like that in a while. Maybe not ever,” Swartz said. “I don’t remember shooting that poorly, especially on shots that I feel like were really good shots that I’d normally make. But sometimes it happens. I mean, if you could shoot 50% every game, I’d be in the NBA. But, you know, that’s every text I got from my parents, my coaches. They all said, move on to the next one. What happened yesterday is not important. We’re on to practice. We don’t have time to be thinking about my one for 13 and my four turnovers, because Xavier’s not worried about that and neither are my other teammates.”

And finally…

Highlights:

Press Conference:

 

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