Creighton led for nearly 37 minutes of Tuesday’s game, but they never really were able to pull away until early in the second half. Their nine-point halftime lead had dwindled to just four by the 17:22 mark after Providence scored eight of the first 11 points. Friars freshman Ryan Mela was being guarded by Jackson McAndrew, and the Bluejay freshman was struggling to contain him; after Mela scored buckets on back-to-back possessions, McAndrew picked up his third foul shortly thereafter.
And that’s when the game flipped.
Isaac Traudt checked in for McAndrew, and in less than four minutes he made four 3-pointers as the Jays opened up a 13-point lead. The first came courtesy of Ryan Kalkbrenner, who caught the ball in the post and was immediately met with a double-team. Kalkbrenner made a touch pass to Traudt on the left wing, and he buried the three. Jasen Green had the assist on each of the next two, driving into the paint to collapse the defense both times and then kicking it out to a wide-open Traudt. He was fouled on the first of those shots, and made a free throw to convert a four-point play.
Officially on a heater, Traudt then buried a shot while falling backwards to give CU a 61-48 lead. The Friars were never closer than 11 the rest of the way.
“Those first two were inside-out threes, kind of within the rhythm of the offense. The guys just found me an open spot and I knocked them down,” Traudt said on the postgame radio show. “After that I was kind of hunting shots because, you know, once you hit one or two in a row you feel pretty good and the next one’s probably going in. The third one, I would say it was a good shot, but the fourth one (laughing)… I got it in the corner and just kind of heaved it up there. I probably got lucky there. But that’s how it goes sometimes.”
As the Jays continued to pour it on, the slumping Mason Miller hit a pair of threes, with the first coming from the corner — his first made three since December 4 against Kansas, and just his fourth of the entire season. Remember, he was 49-of-108 (45.4%) a year ago, the best three-point shooter in the Big East by percentage and 22nd best in the entire country. That shooter is still there.
“It was really important for Mason because he just needed to see one go in,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “He’s struggled shooting the basketball all year and he’s not struggled in practice. We’ve actually flipped him over to the scout team in practice so he can fly off screens and shoot it and be aggressive, and just to try to get some mojo back. He’s playing good basketball in every other part of the game, so for him to see a couple go in I think is really good for us. I don’t know that we can reach our ceiling as a team unless we get him going.”
From there, the Bluejay defense put the clamps on — Providence scored only seven points in the final 8:36 of the game, and made just three of their last 13 shots. They committed four turnovers, three of them courtesy of steals by Jamiya Neal. And because the Jays kept their foot on the gas, it allowed them to get extended minutes for the bench — most importantly, Fedor Zugic. He responded by knocking down a pair of midrange jumpers and showing off a bit of his playmaking ability.
“We need Fedor to kind of catch up,” McDermott said. “I told him with three minutes left, when he went in, ‘This is a really important stretch for you; go out there and play within our offense and hunt some shots.’ I think anytime that he has some success, it’s just going to help his confidence and get him a little bit more comfortable in what we’re doing on both ends of the floor.”
From the outset, Creighton was determined to push the pace when they could against a Providence team that prefers to slow the tempo. They got out and ran after blocked shots, like this one from Jasen Green that led to a transition three for McAndrew:
But it was Kalkbrenner who was rewarded repeatedly for outrunning Providence’s big men down the floor — the lob and alley-oop game between him and Steven Ashworth was in prime form.
And in the halfcourt, they used those same lobs and alley-oops to score on a talented but extremely inexperienced Friar frontline.
“When you’re 7’1″, it’s not that hard to go up and catch the ball and dunk,” Kalkbrenner said. “Steve-o does a great job of looking for it, and when I actually run the floor well and run out of screen well, then those things sort of open up for us. They either have to commit to taking away my lob or commit to taking away Steve-o’s layup. He does a great job of reading that and flipping it up when they commit to him, or taking the layup when they stay on me.”
Yes, you read that right: Kalkbrenner is now referring to Ashworth in press conferences as “Steve-o”, which is objectively a fantastic nickname for anyone — and especially the Bluejay guard.
The Jays used a 17-4 run to build an early 11-point lead, a stretch that included this circus shot from Zugic that bounced off the top of the backboard into the net, and a dunk from Miller, just the second of his career.
Photographic evidence of the second dunk of Mason Miller’s career. (Photo by SWI Sports Images/WBR)
But Providence kept making plays to hang around, twice cutting the deficit to four thanks to tough baskets in the paint. Freshman center Oswin Erhunmwunse scored eight first half points, all at the rim. Wesley Cardet, too, had success getting to the rim and scoring. Each time, Creighton made a big play to answer, whether it was Miller dunking the ball in transition or Neal hitting a buzzer-beating three to end the half.
And once Traudt got rolling in the second, it was lights out. The win moves Creighton to 4-2 in the Big East ahead of a two-game road trip to UConn and DePaul, and saw them slide up to #42 in KenPom.
Inside the Box:
Providence had scored 84, 84 and 91 points in its previous three games, and been at 1.25 points per possession or better in all three — the first time since 1987 they’d scored 80+ in three straight Big East games. They’d never done it in four straight, and the Jays seemed determined to keep it that way. They held Providence to just 4-of-20 from three-point range and kept them off the free throw line (with just nine attempts).
Creighton forced more turnovers (12) than it committed (10) for the first time this season; they had a 13-7 edge in points off turnovers. They did allow 13 offensive rebounds, but Providence only scored 14 points off them. And so while Providence had some success in the paint, scoring 44 points there, they couldn’t do nearly enough in other areas to make up the difference.
Add in the fact that the Friars’ top two perimeter threats, Jayden Pierre and Bensley Joseph, combined for only nine points on 3-of-19 shooting — while the Jays made 10 more threes than the Friars did — and it’s fairly easy to see where the balance of the game tipped.
“It’s tricky when you play a team like Providence, because they see drop coverage in practice every single day,” McDermott said. “They know the tricks and know where the shots are going to come from, and that’s why keeping the ball out of Pierre and Joseph’s hands was so important. Those are the guys that can kill you. Our defense is designed to make teams shoot it off the dribble instead of assisted baskets, and Providence is one of the better teams to shoot the ball off the dribble that we’ve played. We had to make sure we were aggressive and into the ball and engaged with the ball on their ball screens.”
McDermott noted that it’s easier to be aggressive when you know Kalkbrenner is your backup at the rim. This is the second straight game where he’s had six blocked shots and zero fouls, which is an absurd stat. He had 20 points, 10 rebounds, six blocks and three assists with zero turnovers, making 8-of-12 from the floor. He added two 3-pointers, too. He’s averaging 18.5 points, 8.2 rebounds, and 3.7 blocked shots while shooting 66.1% from 2 and 50.0% from 3 on 1.3 makes per game in Big East play.
“For every block there’s two shots that he changes, and then there’s the countless shots that they don’t take because he’s back there,” McDermott said. “There’s a lot of great defenders in our conference, but does anybody impact their team like he does ours? I think coaches see that.”
His three straight Big East Defensive Player of the Year awards, voted on by the coaches, tell you that they do see it. But just in case it was unclear, Providence coach Kim English laid it out in his press conference after the game.
“Early on I think Jayden got some good looks that he missed. I think that’s just the presence of Ryan down there,” English said. “His size is kind of — you think about in 2009 when UConn had (Hasheem) Thabeet, it’s similar to that. It’s not always the shots he blocks, sometimes it’s the shots he changes. I was watching one of their games – maybe Villanova – and a kid shot the ball almost over the backboard. That’s not a blocked shot. Ryan doesn’t get credit for that in the stat sheet. He actually did have six [blocks] tonight, so he had six but he altered a ton. He’s different. We haven’t played a center of that caliber in a while.”
Ashworth also scored 20, adding six assists and four made 3-pointers. And his flip-ups, lobs and alley-oops to Kalkbrenner stretched Providence’s defense to the breaking point.
“He’s just a high-level player and a high-level thinker,” Kalkbrenner said. “He sees the game in a really, really high-level way. He’s thinking 12 steps ahead all the time. When you’re playing with a guy like that, you just know he’s going to see the play before it happens and he’s going to find you if you’re open. So it’s really special. It makes my life a lot easier when you play with a guy like that.”
“They’ve played their whole career for this,” McDermott said of Kalkbrenner and Ashworth. “They’re both in their fifth year. They both have a lot of game experience, and that knowledge is powerful. You’re trying to teach some of the other guys, and these guys are helping me teach it, and they’re ahead of me at some points with what they say. You heard Ryan talk about Steven; the way he sees the game is special. He’ll come to me with some things that he sees on the floor that we adjust.”
Jamiya Neal added eight points, four steals and three assists, helping shoulder the ball-handling load. How’s this for a stat? According to Rob Anderson, Neal has had three or more assists in all 17 games this year for Creighton; in his previous three years at Arizona State, he never had a streak of more than three games in a row with 3+ assists. Wild, huh? Even wilder: Creighton’s only other players with 3+ assists in the first 17 games of a year since 2005-06 are Grant Gibbs and Mo Watson.
Finally, the Jays’ four starters not named Ryan Kalkbrenner combined to shoot 13-of-37 from the field. But the bench went 11-of-13 and scored 29 points, led by Isaac Traudt (13), Miller (8) and Zugic (6). They’ve won 42 straight games when scoring 17 or more bench points.