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Morning After: Creighton Misses Two Shots to Tie It in Final Seconds, Falls 79-76 to Providence

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[Box Score]

For the seventh time this season (and the fifth time in the last seven home games), Creighton played a game that was decided by three points or less. The latest, a 79-76 defeat to Providence on Senior Night, saw them miss two chances to tie the game on the final possession.

Josh Dix missed the first of those, and though it was undoubtably a tough look, that shot falling to force overtime would have been a storybook moment for a senior still dealing with the aftermath of losing his mom. But it wasn’t to be.

“I really feel bad for these two,” Greg McDermott said. “I wanted this game for them. It’s been well documented what Josh has endured this season, and I know he and Nik and their girlfriends spent a lot of time together. I know what Nik has done as a support system for Josh, and you would hope the basketball gods would reward that, but they didn’t today. I’m disappointed for these two, because I really wanted them to go out on a high note on this floor, but they’ve got absolutely nothing to be ashamed by. They’ve represented the name on the front of their jersey like many of the other seniors that have come before them.”

Creighton fixed most of the problem areas from the first meeting. They stayed out of foul trouble. They avoided long scoring droughts. They had a slight edge in second-chance points (10-8) and both teams had 11 points off turnovers; Providence had a 15-point advantage in those two categories in the first meeting. Oswin Erhunmwunse and Jamier Jones combined for 32 points and 24 rebounds in the January loss; they had 17 and 13 in this one.

But like a leaking dam, after plugging all of those cracks two new ones broke open. Time after excruciating time they bit on jump fakes and were burned, and the biggest beneficiary of that lack of discipline was Jaylin Sellers. He had four points on 0-of-7 shooting in the first meeting, and led all scorers in the rematch with 27 points on 11-of-18 shooting. 20 of those points came in the second half, including the game-clinching basket with 15 seconds left after CU had closed within 77-76.

In a game featuring 13 ties and nine lead changes, it was Sellers who continually made winning plays for the Friars. The second half had six of each. Of those, Sellers was personally responsible for breaking two of the ties and putting the Friars back ahead two times after falling behind. He was a one-man wrecking machine.

And in the game’s biggest moment, both of those things combine to put the game on ice. After a furious rally in the final minute cut the lead from six to a single point, they needed one defensive stop and a rebound to give them a chance to win it. Instead, Sellers dribbled the clock down to 10 seconds, and then initiated a pick-and-roll with Erhunmwunse screening Dix off of Sellers. With the Jays’ best defender out of the play, Sellers went to work — Green was a split-second late hedging the screen, allowing Sellers to speed past him. Fedor Zugic was the help defender, but he bit on a jump-stop and left his feet rather than hold his ground. That gave Sellers a tiny window to maneuver through, and he got to the rim for a layup.

“It’s not because we’re not trying, it’s not because we’re not connected,” McDermott said. “We do make a lot of mistakes. We shoot ourselves in the foot, and good teams can’t do that, because as we’ve talked about, a lot of our games have been decided by a possession or so.”

With the loss, Creighton dropped to 14-16 and 8-11 in the Big East. They’ve won just five times since the calendar flipped to 2026, and they’ve lost eight of their last 10 games. And with this loss, their lone path to the NCAA Tournament — winning the Big East’s auto bid — went from improbable to pretty much impossible. They were eliminated from the ‘4’ seed, and can’t clinch the ‘5’ without help. If they drop to a ‘6’ or lower, they’ll need to win four games instead of three.

To get the ‘5’, they have to win at Butler in the season finale and then have two things happen: Providence lose at least one of their last two games, AND either DePaul or Seton Hall have to lose each of their last two games.

“We’re not done,” McDermott said. “We’re going to go to Butler and give it our best shot. Like I told the team, we would love to not have to play in the play-in game in New York, and we probably need a little help, take care of Butler ourselves, and then a little help somewhere to make that happen. But whenever we play, whoever we play, we’re going to show up, we’re going to be ready, and we’re going to give it everything we have.”

Inside the Box:

Ten of their 30 games have been decided by five points or less, and seven of them have been won or lost by one possession.

In his final game in Omaha, Josh Dix scored 18 points in 36 minutes on 6-of-12 shooting, and made four 3-pointers. His potential game-tying three on the final possession rimmed out, but he had several other clutch baskets — including this transition dunk with 12 minutes to go that briefly gave CU the lead.

“It meant a lot,” Dix said. “The fan support has been unreal all year long. It’s not like that everywhere you go. They’ve been with us all year long, and playing one more game in here with Nik and my teammates meant a lot.”

The Jays’ other senior, Nik Graves, had a rough day shooting the ball (1-of-12 from the floor, 0-of-5 from three). But he did have six assists and zero turnovers in 35 minutes. Since scoring 18 in their win at UConn, Graves has been mired in a bad slump, shooting 3-of-16 inside the arc and 1-of-13 from three. Ouch. His one made shot? This pick-six:

“This has all been a dream come true,” Graves said. “A lot of people, a lot of kids where I’m from don’t get the opportunity to represent a university like Creighton and play for a great coach like Coach Mac. Just to be able to wear it one more time in front of Omaha and all the home fans, it sucks that it’s the last time, but it’s been a heck of a ride.”

“I’d hate to think where we’d be without them,” McDermott said. “I’ve said this before, we’ve had transfers come in, guys for one year, some for two, but most of those guys were surrounded by guys that have been in our program, and so they didn’t have to come in and necessarily lead from the jump. These guys are trying to figure out our offense, our defense, the names of their teammates, you had all that going on and they’ve done it with a smile on their face. They’ve embraced it.”

Creighton’s bench outscored Providence 33-6, led by Austin Swartz who matched Dix’ output with 18 points. Swartz only made 1-of-6 from three-point range, but was 6–of-8 from everywhere else and tied a season-high with seven rebounds. His alley-oop with just under seven minutes gave CU a lead briefly, and was an element to his game he hadn’t shown much of — especially since a foot injury that has limited him the last three weeks.

And this dribble-drive in the final minute, where he scored through contact and converted a three-point play, would have been a huge play had the final possession gone differently. Still, in the big picture, Swartz returning to the form he showed in January and early February is one of the most important things to watch for over the rest of the season.

“I think he’s feeling better from a health standpoint, so that’s good,” McDermott said. “He’s been able to practice more, and he gave us a nice lift there tonight.”

Jasen Green became the first Big East’s player with at least 12 points, eight assists, seven rebounds and two blocks without a turnover in a league game in the last 30 years. The only other player with those numbers in a conference game (in any league) this season is Green’s former CU teammate Johnathan Lawson, now at Arkansas-Little Rock. He too gave CU a brief lead, nailing this three late in the second half:

Blake Harper (six points, six rebounds in 19 minutes), Kerem Konan (four points and three boards in 12 minutes) and Hudson Greer (five points in 10 minutes) each had their moments, too.

Harper scored on back-to-back buckets midway through the second half:

And Konan’s highlight was this first-half sequence where he blocked a shot on defense, then scored on an alley-oop out of a pick-and-roll on the other end:

Left unsaid was whether this was McDermott’s final home game as Creighton’s coach. Many suspect that it was. If so, he finishes his career with 220 wins at CHI Health Center Omaha (and a 220-52 record in home games).

Of course, he declined to talk about any of that afterward. Instead he thanked Creighton’s fan base for sticking with them through thick and thin, this year and every year:

“There aren’t a lot of places like this — 17,100 in here today with the season that we’ve had, I think, speaks to how special our fan base is,” McDermott said. “I heard (Dan Hurley) from UConn say something the other day, and I mentioned it at my luncheon yesterday, about talking about some of the UConn fans after they lost to us, they’re jumping off the bridge and the team’s no good, and then they beat St. John’s and now they’re booking rooms at the Final Four. He talked about some fans are only fans when you’re winning. Those aren’t true basketball fans. Creighton has true basketball fans.”

“Obviously, the first year in the Big East was incredible, but the next year was tough, and they were still here and they supported us. Obviously, we’ve had a great run of late, and we haven’t been quite as good this year, but they haven’t stopped showing up, they haven’t stopped supporting these guys. The support for Josh from our community and our campus community during a difficult time in his life is what makes this place *this place*. This doesn’t happen everywhere. I’ll never forget, we were 0-8 in the Big East playing Butler at 8 o’clock on a Tuesday night, and there’s 18,000 people here in 2015. That just doesn’t happen. So we appreciate our fans so much.”

Highlights:

Senior Day Ceremony:

Press Conference:

 

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