Three minutes into Creighton’s season opener, their offense was stuck in neutral. Trailing 6-4 after a pair of turnovers and a pair of missed shots, Trey Alexander shifted the Bluejays into gear. First, he put the ball on the floor and drove to the rim, absorbed contact, and made a contested layup. Then he had an assist on a three-pointer from Steven Ashworth. On the next possession, he once again put his head down and drove straight to the rim, through contact, for a layup. And after this block by Ryan Kalkbrenner turned into a dunk for Baylor Scheierman on the other end…
…Alexander sliced around four Florida A&M defenders to threw down a thunderous dunk of his own. Just like that, it was 15-8 Creighton thanks to an 11-4 run where Alexander either scored or assisted on nine of the 11 points.
In a two-minute span Alexander took over the offense and the game by showing how lethal the dual-point guard backcourt of Alexander and Ashworth can be.
“I think that, honestly, my perspective is, first and foremost, I want to win the game, and that’s why I came to Creighton is because I wanted to compete at the highest level and win a lot of games,” Ashworth said on the postgame radio show. “When it comes to me and Trey and playing the ‘one’ and ‘two’ together, I think that it really comes naturally. If he gets the rebound, there’s no need for me to come back and get it. Like, he’s gonna push it, he’s gonna make the right play. And I think you saw some of that with Baylor as well too.”
From there, the Jays began raining in threes — and never stopped. Over the next six minutes Scheierman and Ashworth hit two apiece, Francisco Farabello hit one, and when Alexander nailed one from the tip of the beak at center court at the 9:06 mark it had gone from 6-4 FAMU to 36-14 CU thanks to a 32-10 run.
And they weren’t done. Freshman Isaac Traudt got in on the fun with his first collegiate three, and Scheierman and Ashworth each hit another. Then Scheierman showed off what a summer of strength training had done for his game, driving the baseline and scoring on a nifty up-and-under move that he, quite simply, wouldn’t have been capable of a year ago. It gave the Jays a 49-19 lead.
Ridiculous.
“I just thought I needed to get stronger, and just add some more muscle to my body,” Scheierman said. “On the court, I was working with (video coordinator) Lucas Vargas a lot on getting my shot off quicker. And I was in the weight room with Jeremy Anderson, our strength coach, as soon as the season was over. We were in three or four times a week, really just trying to improve my body, improve my quickness, and I think I really did that.”
With a gigantic lead, the second half was essentially developmental time for the Jays’ bench. In some years, that would result in sloppy play and a gradual erosion of the lead. This year’s squad instead grew it — what had been a 38-point lead when the Big Three of Alexander, Scheierman and Kalkbrenner exited ended as a 51-point win. The group on the floor for the final minutes? A trio of four-star recruits in Fredrick King, Isaac Traudt and Johnathan Lawson, plus Josiah Dotzler (the Nebraska High School Player of the Year) and Farabello (a fifth-year senior).
“This is invaluable for the guys that haven’t played as much for us to have this film to watch, to learn, to grow,” Greg McDermott said. “It’s one thing to look at it in practice film, it’s another thing to watch when the lights are on, to see how they react and you know go through what they did well and the things they need to improve upon.”
Inside the Box Score:
Creighton’s three lead guards did pretty much exactly what was expected. Trey Alexander had 20 points on 7-of-8 shooting, with five assists, four rebounds and a steal. Baylor Scheierman had 15 with three 3-pointers, adding eight rebounds and two assists. And Steven Ashworth had 17 on 5-of-7 from three-point range, with four assists and no turnovers in just 18 minutes.
Led by those three, the Jays attempted 38 threes, comprising more than half of their 67 overall shot attempts. On the surface, that might seem like a team who lives and dies by the three. A more nuanced look reveals there’s more to it than that. Florida A&M made a concerted effort to double Ryan Kalkbrenner in the post, and to take away the pick-and-roll and lob passes to the rim where he does so much damage at close range. They gambled that they were better off letting Creighton take a bunch of threes than they were giving up easy two’s.
A year ago, that was a viable strategy against the Jays. It might not be this year. Kalkbrenner finished with just nine points on five shots, but because of the attention he drew and the unwillingness of FAMU’s defense to let help defenders slide off of him, he was able to kick the ball out to open shooters all night.
“Kalk’s a very unselfish player,” Ashworth said, “and he was totally fine with it. He told me, ‘Hey, I’ll set as many screens as I need to set to get our shooters open.’ We were able to get downhill or get open threes because they were not helping off of him at all.”
As for Ashworth, in his first official game as a Bluejay he impressed with a textbook-perfect shooting stroke. It was his efficiency that impressed McDermott; he was 6-of-9 from the floor overall and every shot he took came within the offense, looking like it would go in. Every pass came with intent. He made virtually zero mistakes with the ball.
“You know he’s gonna knock down open three-point shots,” his coach said. “And you know he competes defensively. What he lacks in size he makes up for with some toughness and trying to be in the right spot, trying to anticipate. You would never guess he’s only been here, you know, four or five months. It seems like he’s been playing with these guys forever when you watch him play. He just he really fits with what we’re doing.”
At the ‘4’, Creighton got a combined 19 points and 14 rebounds from Mason Miller and Isaac Traudt. Miller got the start and had seven points with eight boards in 20 minutes; Traudt played 21 minutes off the bench and added 12 points and six boards (three offensive). Yes, it was against FAMU, but if Creighton gets anywhere close to that kind of production from the ‘4’ on a regular basis they’ll be thrilled. As to which one will get the lions’ share of the minutes going forward? McDermott said it will depend on the opponent and what they need for that particular matchup.
“They both can shoot the basketball, and they’ve got to keep shooting it. I thought all their looks were really, really good,” McDermott said. “And they were more active on the glass than they were against Wayne State. They’re both doing some good things for us and this was a good progression from the Wayne game. I thought they were both more comfortable out there tonight.”
Defensively, the Jays did what they set out to do — they ran FAMU off the perimeter and forced them into tough two-point shots against the Jays in the paint. The Rattlers only attempted seven of their 64 shots from three point range, making one.
Press Conference:
Highlights: