Ten minutes into a New Years Eve battle with St. John’s, all of the worst-case scenarios for Creighton against the aggressive, physical Red Storm were being realized. They struggled to get into their sets, were sloppy with the ball (with seven turnovers at that point), and when they did manage to get off a shot attempt, rarely got the one they wanted — or it got blocked (three shots had been swatted in that span). Their halfcourt defense was a non-factor because a lot of St. John’s scoring was happening in transition. Add it all up, and the Jays trailed 18-7 with 10:33 to go in the half.
“I told the guys during a timeout that some days you just don’t have your stuff, and this is one of those days,” Greg McDermott said on the postgame radio show. “So we just have to find a way. We’re going to have to gut it out. We’re going to have to do everything else a little bit better — a little better communication, a little better on our box outs, a little sharper with our cuts.”
They went the next three minutes without a turnover, and began to settle in as much as you can against a defense like St. John’s. After scoring on four of six possessions, including a three from Isaac Traudt and two 3’s from Steven Ashworth, they’d trimmed the deficit in half to 22-16 and forced Rick Pitino into a timeout. Another three from Jackson McAndrew, taking advantage of not one but two Red Storm players losing their footing in transition, cut into the lead further:
The Jays got a scare when Ashworth went down with a scary-looking injury and had to be helped off the floor; Zuby Ejiofor landed on him after a shot fake and Ashworth tweaked his knee. But after a couple of minutes in the locker room he returned — and promptly drained a long three to give the Jays the lead and cap a 13-3 run. Though St. John’s re-took the lead 28-26 heading into halftime, CU had the momentum after erasing a double-digit deficit.
Then a 15-4 Bluejay run early in the second half seemingly saw them take control of the game, with the Big East’s three-time Defensive Player of the Year showing he intends to win a fourth. Ryan Kalkbrenner started the spurt with a steal that turned into a three for Traudt. He then blocked shots on three of the next four St. John’s possessions, two of them on mid-range jumpers, and threw down a pair of dunks on the other end. And when another Ashworth three went through the net, it was 45-38 Bluejays with 9:08 to play.
Jamiya Neal has shown his ability to create offense in transition all year, but Bluejay coaches have talked about seeking to find a way to unlock that ability in the halfcourt — either as a shot creator or as secondary ball-handler. He manufactured offense on two of the next three possessions, starting with a set play drawn up by grad assistant Mitch Ballock the day before in practice. McDermott let Ballock white board the set in the under-8 timeout, and Neal executed the pass perfectly — a lob to Kalkbrenner for a dunk is the result, but the movement beforehand is the magic, creating the lane for Kalkbrenner to get to the rim in the first place. Watching this thing in slow motion is beautiful.
Next, Neal got downhill and had three St. John’s defenders collapse on him about six feet from the rim. Any shot he attempted there would have been incredibly difficult — and earlier in the season it’s a shot Neal likely would have taken. This time, he set his feet, saw that one of the unguarded Bluejays was Traudt in the corner, and zipped a pass to him. Traudt buried the three and it was 52-44 Jays. It was a critical play at a critical moment in the game.
“Mac preached to us all week, like they’re going to be helping (on defense) — so show the ball. They’re going to jump on a shot-fake,” Neal said on the postgame radio show. “And while obviously they’re the more athletic team, I knew if I went down there and showed the ball that good things will happen. Obviously on that play, I went down there and I saw three people collapse. They left Isaac open in the corner. I don’t know why, but thank God for it. He made ‘em pay.”
But after taking that eight-point lead on Traudt’s three, the Jays made just one more field goal the rest of the day — a hook shot from Kalkbrenner with 4:31 to go. They made 3-of-4 at the line, and needed every one of them as St. John’s ended the game on a 12-5 run. Many of the same problems that plagued them in the game’s early stretches came back around, with the most costly being turnovers. Ashworth committed two in the final 90 seconds, including a really bad one with 13 seconds to go that gave St. John’s the chance to win the game.
Trailing 57-56, St. John’s ran RJ Luis off a screen and got him the ball heading to the basket. It wasn’t the shot Pitino wanted (more on that in a minute), but it was a decent look. Kalkbrenner was in the way, and forced him to take a contested 18-footer from behind the free-throw line. It missed, and in the wild scrum for the rebound the ball got tipped back out to Luis near half court. Given a second chance, he put the ball on the deck and headed back inside. Kalkbrenner wasn’t really in position to contest this one, but closed out hard enough to force Luis to keep going — where he was met by Jasen Green, using textbook verticality to defend straight up and down without fouling. The shot missed, and the Jays escaped.
After Luis’ first missed shot, some wondered why Neal tipped the rebound out instead of trying to secure it; he said it was intentional because he noticed St. John’s big man Zuby Ejiofor had blown past the other Bluejay defenders and was in position for an easy putback. Neal wasn’t sure he could out-battle them for a rebound, but he knew he could out-jump them to tip it out.
“I didn’t want Ejiofor to get that rebound because he might have just dunked it, right? I wanted to tip it back out,” Neal said. “Then Jasen got the perfect, the great wall up. You know, we work on that every day. We take pride in that, and it can get a little tiring and old doing that every day, but obviously now we see that type of stuff that leads us to win. Who would have thought that a wall up would make us win a game, so shout out to Jasen for that.”
“That was awesome,” Kalkbrenner said. “Jasen does a great job of that every day in practice … Mac talked about it in the locker room that we practice that every day, and it can kind of get monotonous and boring, but in games like this, when you have to do it to win the game, we’re able to do it and it makes it all worth it.”
“When you’re in a panic situation like that, your habits are going to take over,” McDermott said. “You don’t have time to think. The reaction was great. Jasen had a great vertical wall at the rim to at least not let him go straight in.”
For their part, some St. John’s observers wanted a foul called, and in New York City it might have been called as such. But not on the road in conference play. The Hall of Fame coach on their bench placed the blame elsewhere — on his own players’ lack of execution.
“He should’ve taken the wide open 3 is what he should’ve done, not drive into four people,” Pitino said afterward. “Whether it’s a foul or not is irrelevant. That wasn’t the play (we drew up). He knows.”
The Red Storm wanted to get the ball to Ejiofor near the rim for a high-percentage look at a game-winner. Instead, Luis pulled up for a pair of midrange jumpers that both missed. It was the story of their day, more or less.
Inside the Box:
St. John’s came into the game shooting 55.5% inside the arc — a significant number because they take fewer three-pointers than almost any team in D1 (30.6% of their total shots, fewest in the Big East and 346th fewest overall). It was even more extreme in this game, with only nine of their 68 shots coming from behind the arc.
They were 7-of-14 on shots at the rim. The vast majority of their attempts were midrange jumpers — and they were 16-of-45 on those shots (35.5%). They took so many of those midrange shots because of Ryan Kalkbrenner’s presence at the rim. When you heard people after the game talking about how his five blocked shots only tell a small part of the story of his defensive effect on this game, that’s what they’re talking about.
“I think they started second-guessing themselves a little bit,” Jamiya Neal said. “I think instead of just going in there and jumping crazy and trying to go score, they started hop-stepping and pump-faking and settling for 2s and middies. Fortunately for us, they weren’t making a lot of them tonight. I think his impact made a big difference on what they were doing.”
St. John’s coach Rick Pitino (as usual) was more blunt in his assessment.
“One of the things we wanted to do was go around him, not go over him, and we kept trying to show our manhood and go over him,” Pitino said. “And he doesn’t foul. Sometimes you get beat over the head because you just don’t listen.”
Kalkbrenner had one of his best all-around games as a Bluejay, which is saying something. He had 16 points, nine rebounds, five blocks and was on the floor for 38 minutes, dictating what St. John’s could do offensively for nearly the entire game. In the midst of the game, he became the first Big East player to ever record 1,000 points, 500 rebounds and 200 blocks in league games.
“Anytime you’re the only one to do something, that’s really, really incredible. But it pales in comparison to what he’s meant to our program because of who he is and what he stands for and the leader that he’s become,” McDermott said. “We’re in an era of college athletics where it’s hard to maintain your culture because of NIL and it’s just the reality of the world we’re living in. Ryan Kalkbrenner is never going to allow you to lose your culture because of what he stands for. He’s one of the best players to ever wear a Creighton uniform, yet he has no agenda for himself whatsoever, and the lessons that young people are learning from him, I hope, is going to allow us to keep our culture beyond when he’s here in uniform. The numbers are one thing, they’re incredible and everybody should certainly applaud him for that, but what he means to our program goes far beyond the numbers.”
Steven Ashworth had 18 points, five rebounds, four assists, three steals and went 4-of-10 from three-point range. The 10 turnovers are the red-flag number, obviously, but one they could laugh about after a win.
“I joked with him after the game that I thought he had a quadruple-double with points, rebounds, assists and turnovers,” McDermott told the Peacock studio crew afterward, leaving them rolling with laughter. “But we ask him to do so much.”
Jamiya Neal only scored six points, but added a team-high seven assists against just two turnovers in 36 minutes. He had six in the win over Villanova on December 21, and is establishing himself as a viable second ball handler.
“You know, I’ve probably got to put the ball in Jamiya’s hands a little bit more, just to give Steven a break,” McDermott said. “Jamiya over time, I think, has shown that he’s more and more ready for some of that — but he made good decisions today. I mean, two turnovers against that defense versus seven assists, there aren’t many guys that have done that all season.”
As Jays Classic pointed out on Twitter, in 93 games at Arizona State Neal had just one game with five or more assists. In 14 games at Creighton, Neal has already had six games with five or more — and he’s AVERAGING 4.8 assists per game. The talk from Neal about wanting to play in a more structured system like Creighton’s clearly wasn’t just talk. Neal’s bought in. And the Jays are starting to reap the benefits.
Still, 19 are turnovers are a problem and have been a season-long issue, really. Had either of Luis’ shot attempts on the final possession gone in, it would be the defining stat of a blown chance at a win. And with Marquette next — a team who does many of the same things defensively as St. John’s, but just a little bit better — turnovers and ball security will once again be paramount.
“When we’ve struggled, the turnovers have been a big part of it,” McDermott said. “We’ve got to try to clean it up, but it’s going to probably be a little bit of who we are this year, and we’re going to have to be a good team despite maybe making some mistakes. Some of it is we don’t have the length of some other teams at certain positions, and some of it is our ball handling isn’t as good as some of the teams we play. That’s just the reality of the situation we’re in. So let’s find a way to gut it out, and grind it out, and fight, and claw and do everything we can to win.”
Finally, the Jays are now 33-37 at CHI Health Center in games where they trailed by 10 or more points at any time in the game, which is a remarkable stat. But they’re also now 42-30 all-time at the arena when they’re behind at the half.