For a brief moment Friday night, Creighton had Marquette boxed into a corner. After seven ties and lead changes over the first 16 minutes, the Jays were the first to create some separation, stringing together nine consecutive defensive stops and a 10-0 run to go ahead 35-27 with 2:55 left in the first half. The run featured big contributions from the bench — including Fedor Zugic’s first collegiate points courtesy of a three-pointer, and a dunk from Fred King.
But what the Jays bench had built, the starting unit could not sustain upon returning to the floor. And once the 8th-ranked Golden Eagles had ripped back the momentum, they never stopped. Kam Jones hit a three. A turnover by Steven Ashworth turned into a layup for Stevie Mitchell. A turnover on the next possession by Ryan Kalkbrenner led to a three from Royce Parham. In less than 90 seconds the lead was gone; after Ashworth missed a three early in the shot clock on the ensuing trip down the floor, Marquette responded with a bucket from Jones to take the lead. They’d add another at the horn, and after a 12-0 run to end the half, led the Jays 39-35.
As bad as that stretch was — and it was horrendous — the start of the second half was worse. Over the first five minutes Marquette used a 14-3 run to seemingly put the game on ice. It featured three turnovers that all led to points, poor shot selection leading to missed field goals, and defensive breakdowns. Combined with the end of the first half, it was a 26-3 spurt over nearly eight minutes, turning an eight-point CU lead into a 15-point deficit.
“Some mistakes and breakdowns,” Greg McDermott said. “We really lost a ton of momentum, mostly our own doing. And when you make mistakes, a good team is going to make you pay for it. And Marquette has a heck of a team.”
CU outscored them the rest of the way, 33-26, but the hole they’d dug was simply too much. They did put together a 12-0 run that brought them to within a single possession at 56-53 with 12:30 left, but as he did all night long, Jones had the answer, scoring four of the next six to give Marquette breathing room. He’d finish with 22 points, nine rebounds and five assists.
“He’s so versatile. He has got a plethora of finishes when he’s in the paint, and he can beat you with the pass, as well,” McDermott said. “He’s not fun to compete against, because he’s a heck of a player, but it’s been fun to watch his progression as a basketball junkie.”
Though the Jays were never that close again, they had multiple opportunities to cut the lead to a single possession. With 9:27 left, Jamiya Neal hit a jumper to make it 60-56. But Jones answered with a layup at the rim seconds later. Two minutes later, King scored at the rim to cut it to four again, but David Joplin answered with a layup on the next trip. Three more times, CU had the ball down by five and missed shots that would have ratcheted up the pressure on Marquette.
The last of those came with 1:04 remaining. Kalkbrenner hit a tough jumper in the paint to make it 74-69, and then the Jays switched to a zone defense after having held Marquette to just one field goal over the previous two-and-a-half minutes.
It backfired.
“We thought if we could get a stop, we could get a quick one and then we had a time out left,” McDermott said of his thinking. “But, unfortunately they canned that big three (against the zone). There’s obviously a lot of second guessing when it doesn’t work.”
Assistant coach Derek Kellogg provided some further analysis on the postgame call-in show on 1620AM. “We wanted to give them a different look. We were trying to get them to shoot a little bit faster and mix it up some, and we knew they had probably called a man play coming out of the timeout,” Kellogg said of the coaches’ strategy. “Everything looked good and worked until it didn’t. It was almost like…they kind of didn’t execute what they were trying to do. I think Joplin dribbled it out. Kam Jones slid into the corner and we had to make a decision on which guy to go after. And unfortunately, we picked wrong…Joplin banged a three to put them back up by eight.”
The 79-71 loss is a massive missed opportunity for a Bluejay team running out of chances for needle-moving victories. If you’re of the belief that this team will be much better by March than they are today, the hope has to be that they can string together enough wins by then for it to matter. Letting a winnable Quad 1 road win slip away because of a lapse in concentration over a seven-minute stretch could be very regrettable two months from now.
“I’m really proud of our guys, I thought we fought, I thought we showed a lot of grit, I thought we executed a very difficult game plan to execute against an offense that’s very difficult to guard, and gave ourselves a ton of chances,” McDermott said. “Obviously disappointed that we lost, as we thought it was ours for the taking. But I’m proud of the team. I think we grew and I think we got better tonight.”
Inside the Box:
Marquette had 30 extra-possession points (21 off of 12 Bluejay turnovers, and nine off of 11 offensive rebounds). Those points were the difference — despite similar shooting percentages (CU shot 40.0%, MU 41.1%; CU was 22.6% from three-point range and MU was 32.4%), Marquette attempted 10 more shots and made five more than the Jays.
The Jays’ only had 12 turnovers, but they unfortunately were bunched together. Half of them came in the 26-3 Marquette run that changed the game, providing momentum through live-ball turnovers that were converted into easy transition buckets.
Individually, Creighton’s going to find it difficult to win any time Kalkbrenner and Ashworth have off nights at the same time. Kalkbrenner finished this one with 16 points, but shot 4-of-11 from the floor with five of the misses coming inside the restricted area. Marquette’s activity and aggressiveness defensively had him sped up — anticipating contact, he shot before totally setting himself, and the results were unsurprisingly ugly.
Ashworth, likewise, was 1-of-13 from three point range. He had 10 assists (on 24 made Bluejay shots) against just one turnover in 39 minutes, and was 3-of-5 inside the arc. But he, too, seemed sped up and took too many of his three-pointers out of rhythm.