On November 15, 1994, Dana Altman’s first home exhibition game ended in a forfeit when the Dutch National Team refused to take the court for the second overtime over a disputed call. They’d made a long two-pointer to tie the game at the end of the first OT, but believed it was a three-pointer to win it. Refusing to play on out of protest, Altman’s first game as head coach in front of CU’s fans ended in an 80-80 tie.
Fitting, then, that the first home exhibition game of the Alan Huss Era also went to a second overtime — but this time, good sportsmanship prevailed, and they actually played until a winner was declared. The Jays were that team, 89-86, surviving despite blowing an 18-point second-half lead and not making a single shot for the final seven minutes of regulation.
Wes Enis’ jumper with 7:05 to go gave Creighton a 61-53 lead; they got just six free throws the rest of the way and missed all seven shots they attempted as their offense devolved into ISO-ball, with Enis taking four of the seven shots unassisted and missing all four.
Wes “Midrange” Enis
CU 61
Minn 53
H2 https://t.co/j722VGLGHv— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) October 24, 2026
Meanwhile the Gophers’ Isaac Asuma was just about unstoppable. He scored 32 points, 30 of them after halftime — including 16 in the two overtime periods. And after Enis’ last bucket, he had a personal 8-0 run with a three-point play, a 3-pointer, and a layup to erase the lead and tie the game at 61 with 4:40 to play.
As frustrating as it was to watch unfold, the most frustrated person in the building might have been the Jays’ new coach. Alan Huss did not mince words in his postgame radio interview with blunt soundbites reminiscent of Altman.
“There’s two things you can’t be in the game of basketball,” Huss said. “Number one is selfish, number two is soft — and we were both of those things in that run.”
In both exhibition games, they’ve blown giant second half leads. To their credit they found a way to win both, but living on that edge is not sustainable.
“We’ve got to stay true to our process. In both games as soon as we got up big, we thought it was going to be easy,” Huss said. “It just shows you how small, how fine the margin for error is in college basketball. You can be really good and as soon as you deviate from process it turns really poor quickly.”
With 1:19 to play, Minnesota took the first of two leads they’d earn before OT when Kai Shinholster drove to the rim for a bucket. Trailing 65-64, Jackson McAndrew made one-of-two from the line to tie it, and then Shinholster did it again.
KAI TO TAKE THE LEAD 🔥
The sophomore’s got 13 points at Creighton
📺: https://t.co/39zBoNPt21
📊: https://t.co/bskWhQdZP7#TeamTogether https://t.co/0XNQWPZwdC
— Minnesota Men’s Basketball (@GopherMBB) October 24, 2026
Down 67-65, Enis drew a foul and tied the game at the line. The third time was not the charm for Shinholster, as another drive to the rim missed — as did his putback attempt after an offensive rebound.
“Coach wanted me to get downhill to my left and just make a play either for myself or my teammate,” Enis said. “I saw their big stepped up and he overcommitted. I knew he was out of position. So I knew I’d get a foul call if I drove at him.”
In the first overtime, Minnesota led 76-73 with 21 seconds to go and appeared to be on their way to victory as the Jays had gone just 3-of-9 from the field in the extra period. Then Enis, who’d struggled all night to find the bottom of the net, buried a three-pointer to tie it. After bringing the ball up the floor, Enis dumped the ball off to freshman Katrelle Harmon, who waited for Enis to run off of a flare screen by Oswin Erhunmwunse, then fired a pass to an open Enis. And when Asuma’s would-be game winner missed at the buzzer, the teams headed to a second overtime.
“Well that’s a Coach Mac special right there. It was a little transition flair play,” Huss said. “The thing with Wes, as was evidenced tonight, he’s not afraid of the moment. He’s not afraid to let that thing go. And even though he didn’t have his best offensive game tonight, there’s no question from anyone on our staff, anyone on our team that he wanted the ball in that moment, and so it seemed like a natural play right there. We hit him with a little bit of a flare, you know, and he stepped into it, got a great look and knocked it in.”
In the second overtime, Creighton re-asserted control of the game, with Harmon taking charge. He was playing through flu-like symptoms, but was able to dig deep enough to make winning plays and get his team across the finish line. Tied at 78, he assisted on a three by BJ Davis that put CU ahead 81-78. After Asuma tied it with a three on the other end, he drove into the paint and made a tough shot to put CU ahead. Seconds later, Austin Swartz stole the ball, got it to Davis, and he banked in a shot high off the glass for an 85-81 lead.
Austin hit the gap, BJ lays it in!
CU 85
Minn 81
OT2 https://t.co/VuGeZ3CDXB— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) October 24, 2026
Then they made enough free throws the rest of the way to squeak out an 89-86 win. But no one, from Huss through his staff down to the players, was happy after this one. Huss said that rather than walk into the locker room with the team, he intentionally went into the coaches’ room for a couple of minutes instead as a test to see how the players would react to the outcome when they thought he wasn’t around.
“I wanted to see what kind of energy there was in the locker room, and I was genuinely pleased that there was not a bunch of grab-ass happening the locker room where everybody’s celebrating,” he said. “There was a genuine tone to the locker room that was very clear, and it was that we had not lived up to our standard. Of anything tonight, that’s what I’m most pleased with.”
It was a message the players echoed.
“Our discipline has to be better, I think, when we get those leads,” Davis said. “We have to be disciplined enough to take sound shots and to not rush and to, you know, rely on our process, as coach always says. I think sometimes we get up and we kind of get away from our process and just revert back to more instinctual things, and we need to just completely discard that and stick with our process.”
“We’re still learning to continue to play our brand of basketball every minute,” Enis added. “We’re trying to get to 40 minutes of Creighton basketball. Today we had 15 minutes of Creighton basketball, you know, and 15 minutes was good enough for us to win. But imagine if we play the whole game like Creighton basketball. That’s what we have to learn from this game.”
With that said, those 15 minutes Enis alluded to were awfully good — and exactly the type of thing Huss and his staff need to show the players that the process works when they stick to it.
In the first half, they forced 11 turnovers (seven of them steals) that they converted into 10 points. The defense held Minnesota to 1-of-10 shooting to end the half, their offense generated good looks, and it added up to a 13-point lead. It would swell to 18 before they got too comfortable.
Huss’ defensive scheme is illustrated well by this play early in the game. It’s unrecognizable from the type of defense they employed during McDermott’s tenure. They flew around and utilized traps to get Minnesota off-balance, executed a high-side closeout on the skip to take away the middle, and eventually came up with a steal that became a fast-break layup.
THIS is what Alan Huss wants Creighton’s defense to look like this season.
Multiple traps, guys flying around, high-side closeout on the skip to take away the middle and then a steal at the end which the Jays turn into a fast-break bucket the other way. https://t.co/oehMqqQg79
— Jacob Padilla (@JacobPadilla_) October 25, 2026
The masterpiece was a three-possession span where Erhunmwunse had a steal on all three by pressuring the ball at the high post. He was super disruptive and made good reads to interfere with their passes.
Three consecutive possessions: Oswin Erhunmwunse pressuring the high-post entry, disrupting Minnesota’s sets, making good reads to get the steal and finally finishing the last one off himself. https://t.co/PVbMKSN0aP
— Jacob Padilla (@JacobPadilla_) October 25, 2026
Sustaining that for 40 minutes is the next hurdle for this team before the season starts on November 2.
“Yeah we’ve clearly got a long ways to go,” Huss said. “But I like our group. We’ve just got to get back to it, and we’ve got to have an effective nine days here to both rest and get better.”
“I thought BJ really stayed the course offensively … He hasn’t shot the ball well in two exhibition games, but he’s an elite shooter,” Huss said. “He’s led us in pretty much every category throughout the summer and the fall months, so he’s a guy that can really shoot it. I think he shot 38% last year. He’s really worked on his off-the-dribble 3s, and so that’s a shot that he’s going to be comfortable with him taking. “I just think he got a little bit snakebit there, trying to figure out where the spots were, and then his calf was cramping a little bit, and I think he was maybe just not as aggressive as he could have been through that.”
But back to that 1994 game.
The Dutch’s Okke te Velde hit what appeared to be a three-point basket with nine seconds left in the first OT, giving his team an 81-80 lead. The international officiating crew disagreed: Dutch official Henk Kleersnijder signaled for three, while U.S. official John Higgins overruled him and signaled two. Creighton’s Marcus Lockett missed a long shot at the buzzer, and the teams headed for a second OT tied at 80.
Except the Dutch team refused to get off their bench when the horn sounded to begin the second overtime, and after a long delay for dramatic effect, walked off the court and into the locker room in protest. “We’re not the home team, and we expect a couple of calls not to go our way,” Dutch Coach Toon van Helfteren was quoted in the next morning’s Omaha World-Herald. “No problem with that. But we could take only so much. That was the final thing for us. In my mind, yes, we won that game. It was a three – point shot, and that’s enough for me.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Altman told the media in his first postgame press conference as Creighton coach. “I’m still not sure what happened. They just…walked off the court. It was one of those games where the whole thing was kind of in a blur.”
Bluejay forward Randall Crutcher was equally confused. “At first, I thought they hadn’t heard the buzzer. Then I saw them start to walk off, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. You always want to start what you finish. Hey, this isn’t hockey.”
Inside the Box:
38 of Creighton’s 76 shots were threes, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — except they only made 10 of them (26.3%). The second half in particular was brutal, as they were 1-of-13, too often settling for bad shots early in the shot clock.
“I mean our team is a really good team offensively but the way we’re a good team is with ball movement. It’s with player movement,” Huss said as he took a critical eye to their offensive breakdowns in the second half. “It’s not with dribbling, dribbling, dribbling and pull-up jumpers. Give Minnesota credit, they played a really physical drop defense, a lot like what we used to do here at Creighton with Ryan Kalkbrenner. They really made us play two-on-two in those ball screens, and so the natural triggers that are normally there aren’t there. And we obviously struggled to get it moving.”
On the glass, Minnesota ourebounded them 58-38, including a 15-8 advantage on offensive rebounds. But the Gophers could not convert, as CU actually outscored them 13-9 on second-chance points. And combined with a 20-7 edge in points off turnovers, the Jays dominated the extra possession numbers 33-16.
“At the end of the day, we won the possessions battle tonight because we turned them over. That being said, we’ve got to be better on the defensive glass and unfortunately for us it was the exact same equation as the game at Iowa State,” Huss said. “We did a pretty good job on the glass in the first half, we neutralized them, and then when they got to desperation mode and started driving on us, they got a little bit tougher and we didn’t want anything to do with that fight. That part’s really disappointing.”
The shooting numbers from the first half to the second half are almost identical; Minnesota was 12-of-30 overall and 5-of-17 from three in the first half, and 13-of-29 and 4-of-13 from three in the second. But whereas CU had seven steals and forced 11 turnovers in the first, they had one steal and only forced four turnovers in the second.
“I just don’t know if we’re mature enough to go to the far end of the court away from the bench and really choke out a defensive possession in a really physical tough way right now,” Huss said. “You know, they’re pretty good in the first half when it’s in front of us and we can kind of help them through it. We’ve clearly got to improve our communication on that end of the floor. We’ve got some situations we’ll simulate here in the next week, because right now we’re not ready for that.”
Wes Enis led the way with 20 points, though he needed 21 shots to get there (5-of-21 overall, 2-of-11 from three). He drew eight fouls and was a perfect 8-of-8 from the line. Two of his eight made free throws tied the game at the end of regulation, and one of his five makes was the game-tying shot in the second OT.
BJ Davis had 18 points on 5-of-13 shooting, drew six fouls, and was 6-of-8 at the line. He also had three assists and a steal, and in the second overtime was able to make the plays they needed offensively to get the win.
“I thought BJ really stayed the course offensively,” Huss said. “He hasn’t shot the ball well in two exhibition games, but he’s an elite shooter. He’s led us in pretty much every category throughout the summer and the fall months, so he’s a guy that can really shoot it. I think he shot 38% last year. He’s really worked on his off-the-dribble 3s, and so that’s a shot that he’s going to be comfortable with him taking. I just think he got a little bit snakebit there, trying to figure out where the spots were, and then his calf was cramping a little bit, and I think he was maybe just not as aggressive as he could have been through that.”
The brightest spot was Austin Swartz, who also scored 18. He was 4-of-10 from deep — in other words, everyone else combined to shoot 6-of-28 — and continued to be a reliable scorer. His growth on defense through two exhibitions has been stunning to say the least. He was such a liability defensively last year that they often had to sub him out late in games despite his ability to make clutch shots. Against Minnesota, he had three steals, he was able to stay in front of his man without fouling, and made an unsung play at the end of the first overtime when his help defense forced a missed shot.
Katrelle Harmon had difficulty keeping fluids down and had trash cans rushed to him three times on the bench, yet still managed to play 24 minutes including almost all of the two overtime periods. He had six points, six assists, three steals and only one turnover — with most of those numbers coming in the overtimes.
Missing in action was Jasen Green, who sat out as a precaution. Huss said if it had been a regular season game he’d have likely played, but they felt it was better to not risk it in an exhibition.
“It just shows you how valuable Jasen Green is to our team, to what we do,” Huss said. “I hope at some point he starts feeling a little better because we’re an okay team without him. We’re a pretty good team with him. Everything that we lacked tonight, the toughness, the rebounding, the communication, the leadership, all the things that don’t show up in box scores that are so incredibly important to winning — those are the things Jasen provides.”