Even without starting forward Damien Jefferson, who will miss the next four to six weeks after ankle surgery, Creighton had a decided height advantage against a St. John’s team that starts five guards. For most of the first half, the Bluejays exploited that advantage by attacking the paint. Over the first 14 minutes of the game, they outscored the Red Storm 16-8 in the paint and built a 28-19 lead.
Their first basket of the game came on a dunk from Martin Krampelj, a sign of things to come:
Moments later, Krampelj grabbed a rebound, and stuffed home a putback dunk over a pair of St. John’s defenders — and then protected the rim on the other end with a blocked shot:
Trailing 13-11, Krampelj threw down another dunk to tie it, and sparked a 12-2 run to give Creighton the lead:
As part of that run, the Jays executed something you don’t see very often — a six-point play. With Marcus Zegarowski’s three-point shot in flight, St. John’s was whistled for a foul away from the ball, and CU got the ball back. Seven seconds later, Ty-Shon Alexander made a three:
The run ended the same way it began, with a Krampelj dunk:
But with a nine-point lead, 28-19, and 6:17 to play in the half, the Creighton defense surrendered something you really had to see to believe — 22 points in nine possessions, with St. John’s making nine of their next 10 shots. Shamorie Ponds, the Preseason Big East Player of the Year who was a gametime decision on playing with a back injury, scored eight straight to kickstart the run. By the time Greg McDermott called timeout to try and get a tourniquet on the bleeding, it was too late; St. John’s had scored 14 of the game’s last 17 points to grab a 33-31 lead, and the Jays would never lead again. It eventually became an 18-3 run — turning a 28-19 Creighton lead into a 37-31 St. John’s lead — and was the defining stretch of the game.
“Once Shamorie got it going, it was hard to stop. He’s one of the elite guards in the league,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “The difference between Shamorie this year and in the past is that before, you could force him into doing some things and making mistakes. Tonight, even though we were trying to be aggressive with him, he didn’t turn the ball over. He had a tremendous game. That run was critical to getting the game turned to their favor.”
While the defense disappeared, the Bluejay offense abandoned what had got them the lead in the first place. Over the final six minutes of the half, as St. John’s made the game-deciding push, CU went scoreless in the paint and never even attempted a shot inside the arc — their last seven shot attempts were all 3-point shots.
Trailing 39-34 at the half, Creighton looked like they had taken advantage of the break to settle down and get back to what had worked for them before. They scored seven of the first 10 points in the half, cutting the deficit to a single point at 42-41 when Davion Mintz splashed in a three with 16:14 to go. But after a layup by SJU’s Mustapha Heron to push the St. John’s lead to 44-41, every single player on the floor for the Bluejays missed a shot over the next 70 seconds. It’s remarkable, and it’s true. Four of the misses could have tied the game (missed three’s from Marcus Zegarowski, Davion Mintz, Mitch Ballock, and Ty-Shon Alexander), and the other was a missed dunk by Krampelj. It remained a one-possession game thanks to plays like this block from Alexander:
But with the Bluejays beginning the half 1-of-8 from three point range and 4-of-14 overall, the defense could only hold for so long. St. John’s built a lead of as many as 17 points, and though Creighton made several mini-runs to try and get back into the game, each time they shot themselves in the foot.
“In the second half, they did a better job of staying under our cuts instead of trying to deny our cuts, which was a good adjustment by Coach Mullin. That took away our inside game,” McDermott noted. “As a result, we got more open threes than we did in the first half, but we didn’t knock them down.”
When they did knock down threes (which wasn’t very often), good things happened. Unfortunately, those good things were immediately followed by bad things.
With 10:52 to play, back-to-back threes from Mintz and Zegarowski cut the deficit to five at 56-51. But Connor Cashaw dribbled the ball off his foot out of bounds on the next possession, and within less than a minute the lead was stretched back out to nine.
With 8:01 to go, Mintz cut the lead to seven on a nifty dribble-drive to the rim, but on the next defensive possession, he tried to save the ball from going out of bounds…and instead threw it directly to L.J. Figueroa under the basket, who promptly scored on a wide-open layup. They compounded the mistake by turning it over on the inbounds pass, and giving up another basket to push the lead back into double digits.
And with just under four minutes left, Creighton made one final surge. Back-to-back threes from Ballock and Krampelj cut the deficit to eight, but their next possession ended with Justin Simon intercepting a pass, and feeding Heron for a breakaway dunk to seal the win:
“Our margin for error is really really thin right now, and we’re aware of that,” McDermott said. “We’re trying to do everything we can to plug the holes, but there’s a lot of them.”
After the loss, the conversation on Twitter and the Bluejay Underground ranged from “upset” to “angry.” But that’s the fan perspective. What about former players? They weren’t pulling any punches either.
Nick Bahe, during the postgame show on 1620AM, said “the thing you have to always make sure you can say at the end of every game is that ‘Hey, we won the fight.’ Tonight, not only did Creighton lose the game, they lost the fight. By fight I’m not talking about pushing and shoving. It’s staying mentally engaged. It’s not saving the ball underneath your own basket and giving up a layup. It’s turning it over on an inbounds. It’s a bunch of different situations like that, culminating in losing the fight.”
Brody Deren, in a Twitter conversation about whether the Jays’ defensive struggles have more to do with scheme or roster construction, replied “I think the want-to weighs the most, which is influenced by both the culture and the personnel.” Tyler McKinney weighed in on that thread, adding “Looks more than anything they just want to out score. I was no athlete but hated getting scored on. Weird thing to ask but does the team get along too well? No one wanting to call out their buddy?”
Bahe’s comment about losing the fight is particularly damning, but so is Deren questioning how much they really want to defend, and McKinney talking (essentially) about pride. Those are eye-opening remarks, especially coming from former players as decorated as those three.
For his part, McDermott seemed to acknowledge it, as least a little.
“We have to get better at the little things, moreso than anything X’s and O’s. We missed a box-out with about seven minutes to go, when we were down seven, and gave up back-to-back offensive rebounds. Then we turned over the inbounds pass. Those are things we can control. We didn’t do that in the guts of the game when we had a chance to get back into it.”
Whether they fix those things they can control will go a long way toward determining how Creighton’s season goes.
Key Stats:
Creighton is now allowing opponents to shoot 49.7% from the floor and giving up 86 points/game in conference play. That’s…not going to work, even with an offense as good as theirs.
35 of Creighton’s 60 shot attempts were threes. They made 11. Individually, Mitch Ballock and Ty-Shon Alexander combined to go 3-of-18 from three-point range.
And then there’s this: with one game to go in the conference season’s first 1/3, Creighton is all alone in last place.