“Don’t ever, ever quit on these Bluejays! Because these Bluejays will never, ever quit on you!” -Voice of the Bluejays John Bishop
How?
Down by 14 in the first half, down for 19:31 of the second half, down by nine points with two minutes to play, down one of their senior leaders due to fouls in overtime and down the Big East’s Defensive Player of the Year due to injury, the Creighton Bluejays were somehow UP when the final horn sounded. The 72-69 comeback win over San Diego State in the opening round of the 2022 NCAA Tournament is one Jays fans will remember for a long time.
How?
Trey Alexander and a thesaurus page full of synonyms for toughness, that’s how.
Wow.
***
All of Creighton’s worst habits and flaws reared their ugly heads early in Thursday night’s game. Poor decision making with the ball, sloppy turnovers, blown defensive assignments, too much one-on-one offense and rushed shot selection — the hallmarks of Creighton’s biggest losses all showed up in the first half as they fell behind by 14. Combined with a hallmark of March nightmares past, an opposing player low on the scouting report going off for a career night — in this case Chad Baker-Mazara, who scored 15 of SDSU’s 18 points in a run that built that 14 point lead — CU fans undoubtedly figured this was another of THOSE games.
But these Bluejays aren’t the same as those Bluejays. There’s a sense from the top down that they’re never out of a game, that a comeback is just an adjustment or two away. Even when things look as bleak as they did on Thursday.
They trailed 35-21 after Baker-Mazara’s offensive explosion, and Alexander was on the bench with two fouls. At that point they were 0-of-6 from three-point range, they’d turned it over nine times on their first 25 possessions, and allowed SDSU to shoot 52% from the floor.
But that’s when they decided they weren’t going out without a fight. Their defense stiffened, as Baker-Mazara went scoreless the rest of the half and scored just two more points the rest of the game. They took better care of the basketball, helping them end the half on a 9-2 run that cut the deficit in half and sent them into the locker room with momentum.
“I feel like we decided that well before the game,” Ryan Hawkins said. “We weren’t ready to go home as a team. I’m not ready to be done playing yet. I still love it. I still love these guys.”
Arthur Kaluma agreed, saying “I love my guys. I love this team. I love how we come together in tough times and how we’re able to work through a lot of things, a lot of the adversity. And, like, we don’t splinter off. Like, we’re always connected and you can see it on our faces, you could see in our style, you could see it in our eyes when we hoop.”
Then they spent the second half chipping away, chasing down the Aztecs a little at a time. San Diego State had an answer for every Creighton burst…until they didn’t.
CU cut the lead to five just three minutes into the half, 41-36, after a pair of long jumpers by Alexander. But he picked up his fourth foul on the next defensive possession, and the Aztecs soon led by nine again.
They cut the lead to six, 52-46, with 10 minutes to go after two consecutive buckets by Alex O’Connell. But Kaluma picked up his fourth foul after the Jays failed to secure a defensive rebound on the next possession, and soon it was a three-possession game again. Alexander was still on the bench with four fouls, Kaluma had to stay on the floor and risk fouling out because there was no one to bring in for him with the Jays’ injury depleted roster, and even for the perennially-hopeful Bluejays, it looked bleak. Right?
Nope.
Alexander was leading the charge from the bench. “I just wanted to make sure that I was encouraging people on the bench,” he said. “I made sure that everybody was staying into the game and making sure that everybody knew that we could win a game that was very winnable, and go on a run that I felt was bound to happen.”
With 4:33 to go, Kaluma finally hit his first three-pointer of the game and it cut the lead to five, 58-53. But on the next defensive trip, SDSU’s Matt Bradley secured a tough offensive rebound off of a missed shot and was fouled in the process. He hit the first free throw, missed the second, grabbed his own rebound — and then kicked it out to teammate Trey Pulliam for a three-pointer. The seemingly backbreaking four-point sequence made it 62-53 Aztecs with 3:48 to go. Surely THIS was the point of no return, right?
Nope.
Creighton’s defense gave the Aztecs a taste of their own medicine, ratcheting up the pressure and forcing four turnovers in the final three minutes to fuel CU’s transition game. And their stars hit one giant basket after another.
O’Connell drew a foul and hit a pair of free throws. With 1:55 to go he nailed a three-pointer. 48 seconds later Ryan Kalkbrenner hit a short jumper. Just like that, with 1:07 left, it was a two-point game. And then with the clock ticking on the game, the season, and the career of their seniors, Alexander drove into the teeth of the nation’s #2 defensive squad, attacked the closeout, and sank a floater to tie the game.
The 9-0 run sent the game to overtime after Bradley missed the front-end of a one-and-one for SDSU, and Kaluma missed a desperation shot at the buzzer.
In the extra period, the teams traded shots and with the score tied at 66, Creighton took a pair of potentially fatal blows — with 2:42 to play Kalkbrenner went down with a knee injury, and with 2:06 to go O’Connell fouled out.
Either of those developments could have ended the night for a lesser team. Down to just the five players on the floor — only Modestas Kancleris remained of their healthy scholarship players on the bench, and he’s played 33 total minutes this season all at the end of blowouts — Creighton shook it off and kept fighting.
Hawkins made sure of it. While McDermott consoled the Big East’s Defensive Player of the Year, down on the floor in unspeakable pain, Hawkins gathered the team together. His message?
“The biggest thing was making sure we were all comfortable with what we were going to do,” he said. “I wanted to make sure there were no miscommunications on defense, because our ball screen coverage had to change a little bit (without Kalkbrenner). I was making sure we were all matched up, just the little stuff like that, instead of sitting there staring at him.”
KeyShawn Feazell checked in for Kalkbrenner, and turned in two enormous plays. The first came with the Jays trailing 69-68 and 1:47 to go; he got switched onto Trey Pulliam one-on-one at the top of the key, stayed on him as Pulliam made his drive to the rim, and then rejected his shot.
“He’s embraced his role. He’s helped these young guys grow as a mentor to them. And he’s enjoyed every second of this ride,” McDermott said of Feazell, whose role as a graduate transfer has not been as big as it appeared to be when he was recruited to Omaha. “I’ve always believed that good things happen to good people. And Keyshawn’s acted the right way all season long. And when you do that, I think nights like tonight just have a tendency to happen, where he makes the big defensive play.”
The block set up Alexander to make the play that etched his name into Bluejay lore forever.
Dribbling near midcourt, Hawkins set a screen to open up a driving lane for him. Alexander dribbled into the paint, and as the defense collapsed, an audible gasp went up from the crowd — it appeared that his shot was blocked right at the rim by Omaha native Aguek Arop. But somehow, Alexander changed course in the air. He held onto the ball for a split second instead, and as he drifted back down to the ground he released a jumper with Arop’s arm no longer in position to block it. The shot, and the free throw that followed, gave Creighton their first lead since early in the game at 71-69. What else can you say? It was an absolutely unbelievable play in the biggest moment of their season (so far) on the sport’s biggest stage.
Here’s how the play sounded on Bluejay Radio, courtesy of John Bishop’s Soundcloud account:
“Mac has trust in me,” Alexander said when asked how he kept the pressure from consuming him in that moment. “I feel like my teammates have, throughout the season, trusted in me with the ball in my hands and that I make good decisions. After that it’s just kind of what you do every day after practice, before practice, the extra work that you put in, I feel like it just takes over in the late moments. And then it’s not really you thinking about it, it just happens.”
Trailing by two after Alexander’s clutch play, SDSU put the ball in the hands of their best player, Matt Bradley. But as he made a move into the paint, Alexander fought over the top of a screen, stripped the ball away — and Feazell secured it. He made one of two free throws to ice the game away, and CU wrapped up the win.
And again, here’s how the final seconds sounded on Bluejay Radio, courtesy of John Bishop’s Soundcloud account:
“It’s incredible,” McDermott said. “The mental fortitude of this group is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. There’s a toughness and togetherness about them that allows what happened tonight to happen. It’s been an unbelievable ride that I’ve had the pleasure of being part of watching these guys grow and learn, and do it together.
And we’ve talked about process all year long because we were so young. And as I told them in the locker room, our first three games of the season, we were down nine to Pine Bluff at halftime, we were down two to Kennesaw State, we were down 12 to Southern Illinois Edwardsville. We found a way to win all those games. From where we’ve come on November 10th, to where we sit on St. Patrick’s Day is a transformation that I’m not sure I’ve ever been part of. And it has been one heck of a ride to be a part of, and an awful lot of fun.”
They advance to play top-seeded Kansas on Saturday, and will do so with a six-man rotation as Kalkbrenner is almost certainly out. He was in a wheelchair afterward, advancing Creighton’s name on a giant bracket inside the arena. Losing him certainly makes the win bittersweet, as the run CU made over the season’s final weeks would not have been possible without him. It also makes it that much more impressive that the win happened at all.
Key Stats:
San Diego State had won 35 straight games when scoring 60 or more points, had won 37 straight when they were ahead with five minutes to play, and had 12 straight wins when they led at the half. All three ended Thursday night.
Creighton won despite a season-high 20 turnovers and 11 SDSU offensive rebounds, giving the Aztecs 31 extra opportunities in a 53-possession game. They won despite 2-of-14 shooting from three-point range. How? Their defense put the clamps on SDSU’s leading scorer, Matt Bradley — he had 16 points but needed 19 shots to get there (6-of-19 overall, 0-of-5 on threes). They got SDSU’s key defensive player, Nathan Mensah, into early foul trouble and kept him there, as Mensah played 12 invisible minutes (five points, two blocks, two rebounds). And after Chad Baker-Mazara got hot in the first half, scoring 15 points in eight minutes, they held him to just two more the rest of the game.
The Jays led for 2:02 of the first half, none of the second half, and the final 1:08 of overtime. But it was enough.
Sometimes in March, that’s all you need.
Finally, Greg McDermott improved to 6-6 as Creighton’s coach in NCAA Tournament games, twice as many victories as any other coach in program history. How’s that for a stat?
Highlights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtx7ucaqvH4
Press Conference:
