Recap:
There had been 10 ties and eight lead changes over the first 34 minutes of Wednesday’s game, and with the Bluejays ahead 58-55 it looked to be going down to the wire. Then Baylor Scheierman — and the Bluejay defense — took the game over and put it out of reach long before the final horn.
Scheierman hit three 3-pointers in a three minute span, including two on back-to-back possessions that opened up a 69-60 lead with 3:27 to play. The first came from the corner:
And the second and third came in front of the CU bench, 30 seconds apart, on similar plays. 3-pointer #2 saw Scheierman run the baseline past Kadary Richmond, find himself wide open in front of the bench because of a late rotation from KC Ndefo, and fire up a barely-contested three. 3-pointer #3 also saw Scheierman run the baseline, but this time Richmond decided to leave the post and follow him. Ryan Kalkbrenner set a screen to stop him, and Scheierman fired up a wide-open three from basically the same spot.
“We didn’t play disciplined and it cost us. Like I said, for 34 minutes, I thought we played as well as we’ve played in a long time, then the last six minutes, we lost our mind and stopped doing the little things, stopped being disciplined on offense and defense, and it cost us,” Seton Hall Coach Shaheen Holloway said. “Taking questionable shots that led to runouts for them, then losing — I don’t know how to say his name, I don’t want to mess his name up, 55 (Baylor Scheierman) — him, he hit two big threes. Those are things you can’t do against a good team.”
Then Scheierman effectively slammed the door on the Pirates with a steal, starting a fastbreak that ended with Ryan Nembhard scoring on a reverse layup that made it 73-60 Bluejays. The barrage of threes lead the highlight reel, but it was their sustained defensive effort that won the night. After Seton Hall took the lead 55-53 with 11:59 to play, they went five minutes and 36 seconds before scoring another point. They scored just seven more points the rest of the game — seven points in 11:59. Of Seton Hall’s 15 shot attempts in those 11:59, they made three.
Meanwhile, CU made 8-of-12 during that same 11:59, turning a 55-53 Seton Hall lead into a 75-62 Creighton victory. It doesn’t get much more dominant than that on the road against a good team.
“We know what happened when we were here last year. It’s a hard place to play,” Greg McDermott said, alluding to the Jays falling behind 21-3 a year ago in Newark. On their first 15 possessions that night, CU was 1-for-8 from the floor with seven turnovers while their defense gave up one open look after another.
“They’re active defensively, they got their hands on a lot of stuff, and if you’d have told me we were going to have 19 turnovers I wouldn’t think I’d be talking to you about a win,” he continued. “But we did everything else so good. We owned the backboards, we kept them off the free throw line in the second half, and we made shots.”
In some ways, that game and Wednesday’s game weren’t that dissimilar. Creighton turned it over a ton this time, too. They had 10 first half turnovers and four more in the first four minutes of the second. Six of those were Scheierman’s.
“We had every kind of turnover,” McDermott said. “Some things look open that we’re used to playing against teams, and by the time you go to pass it, it’s not open anymore.”
“They’re a team that guards kinda different. They switch a lot of things, and they’re really physical,” Scheierman added. “The turnovers weren’t so much bad reads as they were errant passes. Just kind of being a little sloppy. You have to ball-fake pass with this team, they try to get a lot of steals so they’ll go for those ball fakes a lot of times. We were just really sloppy, and I was the main culprit especially early on.”
The first half saw CU shoot 58% overall and make 6-of-12 from outside, while SHU shot 50% and 3-of-5 from three-point range. Turnovers and fouls kept Seton Hall in the game; the two teams combined for 18 fouls and 17 free throw attempts in the first half. Foul trouble set in for both squads — Trey Alexander and Ryan Kalkbrenner sat out the end of the first half with two fouls apiece, while Tyrese Samuel played only eight minutes after picking up three fouls for Seton Hall.
What a time for Francisco Farabello to be sick and back home in Omaha. Shereef Mitchell and Ben Shtolzberg both saw extended time in the first half, while inside Fredrick King and Mason Miller played more minutes than expected. All made important contributions.
“We had some lineups out there in the first half that we haven’t practiced with all year,” McDermott said. “R2, Shereef, Baylor, Art and Mason — we’ve never seen those five together even in practice. But as I told Trey right before the half, it’s not that I don’t believe in you, we just have to have you for this second half. That’s when this thing’s going to be decided. He was rested, and he played great the second half.”
Miller, in particular, had a fantastic game. His night started by burying this three:
But it was this possession in the second half that was emblematic of his night, the maximum effort he exerted, and the spark he provided. Diving head first to the court to secure a loose ball, he ripped it away from two Pirates and passed it to Alexander. Then he jumped up, sprinted to the opposite corner, and buried a three with a release so quick no defender could close out on him.
“I told his Dad after the game, your son had a heckuva game,” McDermott said. “He played with toughness, he went and got some offensive rebounds in traffic, he dove on the floor, and he hit two big threes. We needed him tonight.”
The Pirates opened up a 49-43 lead after four minutes of the second, but Miller’s hustle to save a possession and the three-pointer he buried were part of a 10-2 Bluejay run that put CU ahead 53-51. So was a possession where he battled for an offensive rebound, missed the putback, then fought for a second offensive rebound and wound up with a jump ball. That possession ended without points but his energy seemed to rub off on everyone around him. Not that the Jays ever doubted they could come back.
“Down six with 12 minutes to go, that’s plenty of basketball left,” Scheierman said. “There was no panic in our huddle at all. Just stay together and take it a possession at a time, we’re not going to get it all back at once.”
After going ahead 53-51, Seton Hall scored four straight to take a 55-53 lead at the 11:59 mark. The rest was history.
The Jays’ seventh-straight win is the nation’s seventh-longest active streak — and their longest ever since joining the Big East a decade ago. The last time they won this many conference games in a row was 2011-12, when they ripped off 11 straight wins in the MVC between December 31, 2011 and February 4, 2012. And by virtue of a double-digit road win over a Q1 opponent, they’ve moved them up to a season-best #9 in KenPom and #15 in the NCAA NET rankings.
It sets up a showdown between #23 Creighton and #21 UConn on Saturday afternoon that loomed large when the schedule came out — and is somehow even bigger now that it’s here.
Inside the Box Score:
Creighton’s defense was once again terrific, especially in the paint where Seton Hall made 12-of-36 (33%). On layups, they were even worse — the Pirates made 6-of-21 at the rim (28.5%). Six of those 15 misses were blocked, and countless others were altered, making it difficult for the Pirates to get easy baskets.
Combined with the Jays being whistled for just 15 fouls, leading to 14 free throw attempts, Seton Hall had very few avenues to score. And they didn’t.
The Jays’ 19 turnovers are a season-high. They had 18 against both Marquette and DePaul, and 17 against Arkansas in Maui. Interestingly, while Seton Hall scored 11 points off 10 first half Bluejay turnovers, they scored just seven off of the Jays’ nine second half turnovers.
CU bullied the Pirates on the glass, 35-16, giving up just five offensive rebounds (14.7% of their misses) to a Seton Hall team who had grabbed a board on 31.2% of their missed shots coming in. An 85% rebound percentage is staggering, especially when you consider all of the times over the years that the shoe was on the other foot in games against Seton Hall.
And the Jays ended up with 17 assists on 27 made baskets, with eight of those assists from Trey Alexander who had a quiet night scoring but made one key play after another to set up teammates for baskets.
But it was the Baylor Scheierman show, especially in the second half, as he had 19 points on 5-of-10 shooting from outside and missed a double-double by one — he had nine rebounds. And he barely left the floor, playing 39 minutes.
“I trust the work I put in,” Scheierman said. “Some games it doesn’t go in. Steph Curry is one of the best shooters ever and he has bad games, so I’m not really too worried about it. We have different guys who step up on different nights. Tonight it was just my turn.”
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