Inside the Box Score:
Creighton outrebounded Villanova 38-34, and outscored them 34-18 on points in the paint. And the Jays canceled out what they gave up on second chance points (15) with what they scored themselves in transition (17).
They held Villanova to .897 points per possession, to 6-of-23 shooting to start the game while they were building their initial lead and to 3-of-16 shooting down the stretch when the game was ultimately decided. They grabbed rebounds on 16 of Villanova’s first 17 missed shots. And they ended up with 1.134 points per possession themselves — the only team in Big East play this season so far to be above 1.0 against the Wildcats.
Individually, Denzel Mahoney scored 21 points on 8-of-12 shooting to lead all scorers. Ty-Shon Alexander had a double-double with 16 points and 10 rebounds in 39 minutes, while locking up Saddiq Bey defensively. Bey shot 4-for-13, and 1-for-5 from three-point range, with just nine points in 39 minutes — his worst shooting game in 2020 and the first time he’s made fewer than two 3-pointers in a game since Xavier and Kansas held him to one apiece back-to-back on December 21 and 30.
Mitch Ballock scored 15 on 5-of-7 from three-point range, with seemingly all of them coming in huge spots. Marcus Zegarowski scored 13 with four assists and played all 40 minutes. Damien Jefferson had eight points and eight rebounds, and had clutch buckets down the stretch, too. And Kelvin Jones had a massive impact, grabbing six rebounds (two offensive) in just 11 minutes of action.
Recap:
Creighton led for 34 minutes and 33 seconds on January 7 against Villanova, and by as many as 14 points. In the aftermath of the Wildcats stealing the win late with a game-ending 20-7 run, CU fans melted down on social media and message boards — and with good reason. They’d seen this gruesome show too many times before, and each time was harder and harder to stomach. But head coach Greg McDermott pleaded for patience, ending both his press conference and his postgame radio interview with the same line.
“We’re really, really close.”
On Saturday in Philadelphia, a similar script unfolded. Creighton led for 37 minutes and 22 seconds, and by as many as 17 points. But in the second half, Villanova began creeping their way back into the game, and cut the deficit to 54-50.
Here we go again, right? Not so fast.
They answered with a 9-0 run of their own this time, building the lead back to 13 at 63-50. When Villanova came back a second time and cut the lead to 63-57, they clamped down defensively and only allowed one made field goal over the game’s final 4:37.
“When you lose a game the way we did against them the first time around at our place, you owe ’em one,” Mitch Ballock said in a postgame radio interview. “We’ve been talking all week that we owe these guys. Today we put a full 40 (minutes) together.”
“Over the past few games we’ve been doing better as a whole,” Denzel Mahoney added in the postgame press conference, “just coming together and not letting those runs get to us mentally.”
In a four-game winning streak, Creighton beat Providence with a last-second three pointer, won on the road at DePaul, held off a second-half run by Xavier, and now this, a road win where they made clutch play after clutch play to come out with a win. McDermott knew his team was close to turning a corner, and a month later it’s clear they have. They’ve proven that they now know how to withstand an opponent’s punches — and that they have the moxie to punch back.
After this one, his message at the end of the press conference was a bit different.
“We’re small but we have a lot of fight.”
***
Villanova’s only lead of the day came at the very beginning of the game, as they took a 5-1 lead after two-and-a-half minutes of play. But Creighton scored the next 10 points, and 17 of the next 20, to take a double-digit lead by the 9:07 mark of the half.
They took the lead for good (as absurd as that sounds with 16:27 to go in the first half at Villanova) on this three-pointer by Ty-Shon Alexander.
They extended it with dribble-penetration from Marcus Zegarowski leading to a banked-in jump shot.
Then in a sign of things to come, they ran the floor and found Mitch Ballock wide-open in the corner for a three. He’d hit a second one moments later, and that one gave CU a 18-8 lead. When it splashed down, it marked a 17-3 run. And they weren’t done raining in threes.
Alexander then nailed three consecutive three-pointers on three consecutive possessions, blowing the game wide-open. His third triple made the score 27-12 Bluejays, and his three 3’s in 90 seconds probably gave Villanova fans nightmare flashbacks to Ethan Wragge in 2014. When Jay Wright called for a timeout after the third one, you couldn’t help but recall FOX’s Gus Johnson cackling in that 2014 game, “You better get a timeout, Jay Wright!” I saw multiple Bluejay fans make some variation of that joke on Twitter at that moment Saturday, in fact, much to my amusement.
It was easy to overlook with the barrage of long-distance shots going in, but as Creighton was building that 15-point lead their defense was locked in. When Wright called for timeout after Alexander’s third three, trailing 27-12, the Wildcats had as many turnovers (5) as they had made baskets (5). CU’s defense routinely forced them into their second and third options, with every shot contested and every miss cleared so there were no second-chance opportunities. Villanova missed 17 of their first 23 shots, and Creighton rebounded 16 of the 17 misses.
“We’ve made some really good strides defensively,” McDermott said, “and if you’re going to win on the road in this league, your defense has to travel.”
This being Villanova, though, you knew a run was coming. And over a 14-possession stretch that spanned the end of the first half and the beginning of the second, they scored 24 points by making 9-of-14 from the floor. As he did in Omaha, Collin Gillespie was the catalyst, scoring seven straight and nine overall in the run. And with 12:08 to play in the game, the Wildcats trailed by just three, 46-43.
Creighton punched back this time, though. Ballock drained a huge three-pointer on the next trip down the floor to give them some breathing room:
Villanova counter-punched and cut it to three again, 51-48, with five quick points by Saddiq Bey and Gillespie. Sensing the game was teetering on the brink, McDermott called timeout to regroup and to try to regain momentum — or at least slow down the Wildcats’ growing head of steam.
Denzel Mahoney scored five straight and seven total in the 12-2 run that followed that timeout, starting with this cold-blooded three as the shot clock ticked down. It might have been the most important shot of the day, given how the game was trending and how difficult of a shot it was.
He put his head down and drove to the rim for a layup on the next trip to make it 56-50, and then Kelvin Jones scored his only two points of the game on a post-up in the paint. Ballock followed with this long-range three to make it 61-50, and then came up with a rebound on the next possession, started a fastbreak, and found Mahoney for a layup.
Villanova still wouldn’t go away, and a mini 7-0 run pulled them within 63-57. It was fueled by five straight empty possessions by the Jays, including three bone-headed turnovers. One of them saw Zegarowski throw a pass to Ballock in the backcourt that hit him in the shoulder and went out of bounds because he wasn’t looking. Two others were a result of panicking against the full-court press Villanova threw at them.
Coming out of the final media timeout, McDermott pulled two tricks out of his bag — a 1-3-1 zone that disrupted Villanova’s rhythm, and a set play to get Ballock a clean look at a corner three.
“Mitch is left-handed, so on a shot like that the ball is away from the defense,” McDermott explained. “I felt like, number one, we’d get the ball in with that play and number two, it’s a hard shot to defend without fouling. You have to reach across his body as a defender. But it’s also a very difficult shot.”
The zone did indeed disrupt ‘Nova, and they made only one shot the rest of the game. From there, Damien Jefferson iced the game with six straight points — the first on a tough, strong baseline drive and the second on a fastbreak dunk.
“I’m really proud of my team,” McDermott said. “There’s nobody I respect more than Villanova, with the way they play the game. In Omaha, they Nova’d us. We got the lead, and they just kept grinding and grinding and even though we knew they’d keep throwing punches we didn’t respond to it very well. And today at the start of the second half, they did what they do. They made a run. But they only scored on five of their last 20 possessions so we really locked in. We got to their shooters. We switched to a 1-3-1 zone and I thought it at least knocked them out of rhythm a little bit. And we fought on the glass.
“It’s a heck of a win for our program because of how good I think Villanova is.”
The win is Creighton’s sixth Quadrant 1 win of the season, tied for third-most nationally. Four of those Q1 wins have been on the road. Largely as a result, the Jays moved all the way up to #14 in the official NCAA NET ranking Sunday morning — climbing 11 spots.
It’s just Villanova’s fifth home loss in conference play in the last seven years. The only team to beat them twice, and the only team to beat them by double digits, is Creighton.
And it caps an improbable two days for basketball on the Hilltop, coming on the heels of Jim Flanery’s club rallying from down 22 points at #11 DePaul on Friday night to win. Quite a pair of statements from the two teams.