Recap:
Creighton made a concerted effort to score in the paint Tuesday night, knowing that Butler’s already-weak interior defense was even worse without their starting center, Manny Bates. 12 of the Jays’ first 16 points came in the paint. They didn’t even attempt a three-pointer until seven minutes had elapsed. And in a sign of things to come, the points were spread across their entire lineup.
Trey Alexander threw down a dunk. Arthur Kaluma hit a pair of close jumpers. Ryan Kalkbrenner scored on a pair of layups. Baylor Scheierman hit a midrange jumper. Their first three came from Francisco Farabello off the bench.
“It’s so hard to gameplan for us when we have five guys scoring 10-12 points,” Ryan Nembhard said on the postgame radio show. “Who are you going to stop? Who are you going to key in on?”
They built a 26-19 lead after 14 minutes thanks to six straight points from Fredrick King, who had one of his best games in a Bluejay uniform. His first half minutes in particular were huge — he gave Kalkbrenner an extended break, scoring six points with two rebounds (both offensive) and a block while holding his own defensively.
“That stretch in the first half when Kalk was out for an extended period, and Fred was able to come in and do some good things, was a huge part of the game,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame show. “He was great on both ends.”
McDermott noted that their gameplan was to play inside-out, attacking the rim as their first offensive option. The three-point shots they got out of it were good looks, too, like this one by Ryan Nembhard — courtesy of an offensive rebound tip out from Kalkbrenner.
That three made it 29-24 Bluejays, and then Alexander scored their final seven points of the half including a three at the buzzer that banked off the glass.
100 seconds into the second half, the Jays led by double digits, and though they let Butler hang around they eventually put the clamps down — over the final 10:32, Creighton outscored Butler 20-8, turning a 53-44 lead into a 73-52 blowout.
“This is a hard place to win. It’s been a house of horrors for us,” McDermott said. “To finally come in here and get a win like this, is something that I don’t know if it’s ever happened…We’ve left this town disappointed a lot of times, so it’ll be a nice ride home tonight.”
He’s right. Their two previous wins at Hinkle came by a combined 14 points (68-63 in 2014, and 76-67 in 2017). They won by 21 on Tuesday.
With the comfortable win on the road against a Q2 opponent, their NET ranking is now the highest it’s been all year at 21. Yes, even higher than post-Maui. Their KenPom ranking is 13. Their Haslametrics ranking is 9. And they possess the #30 ranked offense and #20 defense in adjusted efficiency.
Since Kalkbrenner’s return, they’ve been the best team in the Big East. And that’s not my opinion — using Bart Torvik’s sortable T-Rank stats, we can see that over those seven games, they have the third-best offense and second-best defense in the Big East, and in his overall formula rank #1 in the league just ahead of Providence. They’re one of just five teams nationally with a Top 20 offense and Top 20 defense.
With a bye week and then three of their next four games at home — with the road game coming at Georgetown — there’s a chance to make a run at the top of the league.
There’s work to do, but after having dug themselves out of a hole, all of their goals remain on the table.
Inside the Box Score:
Ryan Nembhard hauled in a career-high 11 rebounds, surpassing his previous high of six, and with 12 points lodged his second career double-double (though not in the way you’d have expected — his first came last year against Arkansas Pine Bluff with 15 points and 10 assists.) And if you watched him and thought he looked more energetic than he has the last couple of weeks, you’d be right: he’s been sick, losing his appetite and eight pounds. He was so dehydrated after shootaround on Tuesday that he took an IV in the locker room before the game.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had 11 rebounds in a game,” Nembhard confirmed on the postgame radio show, joking that “I might have to go with that pregame IV every game now!”
It certainly goes a long way toward explaining his last two games. He scored 17 at Xavier but needed 17 shots to do it (3-of-10 inside the arc, 3-of-7 outside). And he was held scoreless by Providence in 34 minutes, shooting 0-for-3 on two-pointers and 0-for-4 on threes. It was the first time in 46 career games that he hasn’t scored.
“We still found a way to win against Providence when he really wasn’t feeling good at all,” McDermott said. “Tonight he controlled the pace of the game.”
“I’m not big on making excuses for myself. But I’ve really been fatiged the last week or two,” Nembhard elaborated. “I haven’t really been eating or drinking a lot. Just feeling tired all the time and wanting to sleep, and I haven’t had much energy. The last couple of days I’ve been a lot more awake and had a lot more energy. It’s great to feel closer to normal.”
Butler made 8-of-14 from three-point range, with Simas Lukosius hitting 4-of-5. But inside the arc? The Bulldogs were just 12-of-44 (27%) — nearly half their season average of 51.0%. It’s just the seventh time in the Greg McDermott Era that the Jays have held an opponent to under 30% shooting on two-pointers, and two of those were against DII opponents (Coe College and Bemidji State).
The Bluejays outscored Butler 44-20 on points in the paint and came one rebound shy of doubling them up on the glass — they outrebounded the Bulldogs 47-24, including 13-3 on offensive boards. CU rebounded a ridiculous 38% of their missed shots (13 of 34), a huge jump from their season average of 25.7%.
The biggest contributor to that was Kalkbrenner, who had 11 points, nine rebounds, two assists and two blocks. But it was also Arthur Kaluma. Just one of his seven shot attempts was a three, as he made a concentrated effort to put the ball on the floor. He had nine points, eight rebounds, one assist, one steal and one block.
That was by design.
“We have to find other ways to win when outside shots aren’t going in, because we’ve struggled to do that on the road,” Nembhard said. “We’ve had close games but haven’t been able to get over the top because of our defense, or rebounding, or things like that. Defense is so important because it allows us to run, and it gives us a margin for error on offense.”
Finally, the much-maligned Bluejay bench had perhaps their best game of the season. Creighton outscored Butler 19-13 in the 10 minutes that Ryan Kalkbrenner was on the bench, after being minus-30 in those minutes the last four games. Fredrick King scored eight points in eight minutes, adding three rebounds and a block. Mason Miller didn’t score but had six — six! — rebounds in eight minutes, crashing the glass with confidence. He also did a solid job defensively on Lukosius. And Francisco Farabello played 20 minutes, taking a ton of shots (10) but scoring eight points.
Highlights:
Press Conference:
