8.5 point underdogs and on the heels of blowing a 16-point second half lead on the first leg of this road trip, Creighton showed both resolve and resiliency in handing Villanova its first home loss of the season and first loss in Big East play. There was also a sense of desperation — this was not a game they could afford to lose.
“It was a no-brainer in the locker room,” Blake Harper said on the postgame radio show. “This was a must-win. We couldn’t hang our heads at all from Sunday. It was a next page, next man up mentality for us, just kind of a team effort. It was a beautiful one to be out there. My gosh.”
The Jays trailed by 10 in the first half, only to respond with a 13-4 run that cut the lead to one, though they got no closer. Down four at the half, Villanova opened the second half with a three to make it 37-30, but the Jays tied the score three times in the first five minutes (at 41-41 on a Josh Dix three, at 43-43 on a jumper by Nik Graves, and at 45-45 on a jumper by Blake Harper). They couldn’t take the lead, though, and Villanova pulled back ahead by five, 51-46, moments later.
Then, the game flipped. A 13-2 run turned a five-point deficit into a six-point lead. And the key player? Ty Davis. Without taking a shot, his fingerprints were all over the first key sequence in the game. He had an assist on the three-pointer Austin Swartz made to tie the game, driving toward the basket and dragging the defense with him, then zipping a one-handed pass across his body to a wide-open Swartz.
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— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) January 8, 2026
Then he grabbed a defensive rebound on three straight possessions over 1:23 of game time. The first created the opportunity for Harper to give them the lead. Harper caught the ball on the wing off on an inbounds pass, dribbled into the paint, and banked in a short jumper to make it 55-53 Jays.
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— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) January 8, 2026
After a timeout, Davis did it again, grabbing a board and starting a fast break that ended with Fedor Zugic driving to the rim and scoring on a one-handed layup. 57-53 Jays. Seconds later at the other end, Davis’ defense forced a tough shot by Villanova’s point guard, Acaden Lewis, that misfired. Though the Wildcats got the offensive board, their second shot was also heavily contested and also misfired. Davis got the board this time, once again got the offensive moving, and the possession ended with Harper driving to the rim for another banked-in layup.
59-53 Jays. Four straight possessions where Davis quietly made a huge play had given CU the lead, and they never trailed again. From there, clutch shots from Swartz, Harper and Dix held Villanova at arms’ length, including another three from Swartz. There was lots of drama still to come, though.
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— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) January 8, 2026
With 5:20 to go and leading 66-62 after Villanova hit a second-chance three that got the crowd to their feet, the Jays had trouble inbounding the ball against pressure. Davis caught it and got trapped along the baseline, and as he was falling out of bounds he called timeout to save the possession. A turnover in that spot might very well have shifted momentum — instead, they kept the ball, drew up a play to get Dix a shot, and he hit it. 68-62 Jays.
Then Davis was in the middle of the second key sequence of the game. After the Wildcats’ leading scorer, Bryce Lindsay, hit a jumper to cut the lead to 74-70 with 33 seconds left, Dix threw a long pass to Davis along the sideline. He appeared to be fouled as he corralled the ball and fell to the floor, with the momentum of the play carrying him out of bounds. That wasn’t the call, however, as the officials gave the ball to Villanova. Creighton had to have been sensing deja vu from Newark, where a similar play along the sidelines in the final minute was ruled a jump ball instead of a foul, giving their opponent possession. This time, the opponent couldn’t capitalize — Lindsay missed a shot, and in the scrum for the rebound, it was Davis who aggressively grabbed ahold of the ball and made sure he had secured it. The look in his eyes said it all: that loose ball belonged to him, and no one was taking it away. Especially not the trio of Wildcats in the vicinity, one of whom was called for a foul in trying to rip the ball away.
Davis made a pair of free throws, and the Jays secured the win.
“We went on the road and we outrebounded both opponents, we kept our turnovers really in check, and that’s how you win on the road. You don’t beat yourselves,” McDermott said. “We beat ourselves with some mental mistakes late in that Seton Hall game. Everybody makes mistakes, coaches, players, officials… and there was a lot of that in that game. But our guys responded, they stuck together and obviously came into a place that’s a very difficult place to play and left with a win which a Creighton team’s never done in this building.”
Associate head coach Alan Huss, talking on 1620AM’s Overtime following the game, said he felt a lot better after they earned a split on the road trip. “Gosh, obviously not the way we wanted the last one to end, and to bounce back like this says a lot about the character of the guys in our locker room. It was awesome.”
How impactful of a win was it? The Jays moved up 12 spots in the NET overnight, all the way to #41. They sit at #40 in KenPom and their strength of schedule ranks 14th toughest in D1. Torvik estimates their NCAA Tourney odds at 65%, a 31% jump from one win. That’s what happens when you win as a decided underdog on the road against a team that came in ranked 17th in the NCAA’s NET rankings and 21st by KenPom.
With a NET ranking of 41, NCAA Tournament bubble talk is no longer outrageous. There’s a lot of work to do and not much margin for error, but #ThePath is not only alive, it’s becoming more and more realistic.
Inside the Box:
Austin Swartz led the Jays with 20 points on 9-of-15 shooting, a line made all the more impressive because of how he started: he missed four of his first five shots, and was lights-out after that, scoring 14 second half points.
“Especially the way he started, very impressive,” McDermott said. “I thought he picked his spots, but I thought he made some nice plays with the pass as well. And then defensively, sometimes he’s been a player I have to get out of there when the game’s being decided, but tonight he was very locked in on the defensive end as well.”
Swartz’ midrange game was on full display, especially midway through the second half when he hit three consecutive jumpers from near the free throw line. It’s a shot the Jays’ thought they could exploit against Villanova’s defense, and they did all night.
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— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) January 8, 2026
“It was just kind of picking your poison, for real,” Blake Harper said. “We’re surrounded by shooters: Austin Swartz, Josh Dix, I could go on and on. Being patient, man, I feel like that helped us a lot tonight.”
Harper and Josh Dix both had 17, as the Jays’ trio of guards scored 54 of the team’s 76 points on the night. Even better, they had 33 of the team’s 46 in the second half. Like Swartz, Dix exploited the middle and was 5-of-8 on two-pointers. Four of the five were midrange jumpers.
“Josh is an elite mid-range player,” McDermott said. “Their drop coverage was something that we thought we could exploit, and I thought he made good decisions really the entire game in that regard.”
“The interesting thing about our team is we have guys that are really comfortable in that mid-area, which is very odd for 2025,” Huss said. “We’ve got a group that, Austin and Josh especially, they’re really comfortable getting to 12 to 16 feet and rising up. If you lined up the different pick and roll coverages we see, this is one that our guys probably had their eyes light up. We’ve played a bunch of teams that have been pretty aggressive in their pick and roll coverage, and really made those guys give it up.”
But defense has been Dix’ calling card, and he added another bullet point to his Defensive Player of the Year resume by holding Bryce Lindsay to four points on 2-of-10 shooting (and 0-of-3 from three). He came into the game averaging 16.9 points per game, shooting 44.7% from three, and making an average of 3.3 threes per game.
“The job that he did on Bryce Lindsey, who in my opinion is one of the best three-point shooters in the Big East, was incredible,” McDermott said. “He got very few good looks and he really frustrated him to the point where he was a non-factor.”
“Credit to Mac on that one,” Huss said of Dix’ defense, which has been surprising coming from an Iowa program that was allergic to defense under Fran McCaffery. “Mac really was the one that saw that as a potential role for him. On the defensive side of the basketball and guarding the other team’s best player, every game it’s different actions, every game it’s different tendencies, and you have to be equally parts disciplined and tough. You’ve got to just have a mentality to really stick to things, whether they’re going well or poorly for you on the other end. He’s really got all those things in equal parts. He’s got an unbelievable mindset, but he’s also physically gifted with light feet. Then the instincts, I think, just make him next level. People forget because he’s a jump shooter on the other end, they forget he’s a big guy, 6’6″ and long and very nimble.”
Meanwhile, it was by far Harper’s best game since losing his starting role, and just his second time scoring in double figures since then. He scored 11 in 19 minutes at Xavier, most of them after the game was out of reach. Not so in this one. 10 of his 17 came in the second half, and eight in the final 11:43 when they made their surge. As big as those shots were — and they were clutch — it was his defense that McDermott was most proud of. Because of that defense, they were able to leave him in during the deciding stretch and take full advantage of him being the better offensive option against Villanova.
“He fought defensively,” McDermott said. “He came up with a couple of big offensive rebounds. It was just one of those nights where it was a better matchup for him than it was for Isaac (Traudt). There’s been a lot of games where Isaac’s played a lot and Blake hasn’t played as much, but you know, tonight the roles were reversed and fortunately Blake was ready to answer the bell.”
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— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) January 8, 2026
Huss went much deeper.
“Blake just probably had the best game of his college career tonight,” he said on Overtime. “I liked his energy level, and I loved his communication. I loved the fact that he flew around today on both ends of the floor. He hadn’t been playing as much as he probably wanted to, but Trey Ziegler reminded me of the old Bobby Knight saying tonight that the greatest motivator in the world is the bench. It’s the number one way to teach a lesson. Pretty soon you play a little bit better, you start doing the things your coaches are talking about.”
“Blake is super intelligent, he’s not a guy that needs to be told a ton of times what he needs to do,” Huss continued. “His deal is more physical. He played at a much lower level in the MIAC a year ago and really only played one year of varsity basketball before that because he had a dramatic kind of body transformation. So he’s young in the physical side of his basketball development, and he’s getting in better shape. Like I said, the thing that really was encouraging about Blake tonight was just his energy level on both ends. I thought it was infectious. To be brutally honest with you, there’s times that it’s been infectious the other way, where he hasn’t been an energy giver, he’s been more of an energy taker. Seeing that he can be a positive influence at all times during the game was really encouraging.”
Fedor Zugic scored five points off the bench in 13 minutes, but his real impact lay elsewhere. His hustle and aggressiveness set the tone for everyone else, and his defense on Lindsay was good enough that McDermott was able to get Dix a few minutes of rest — which paid off down the stretch when Dix’ legs still had enough left to hit jump shots.
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— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) January 8, 2026
“He laid out for a couple of loose balls in the first half that saved possessions for us. He was the first to the floor when there were several Villanova guys that could have made an effort,” McDermott said of Zugic’s night. “He was the first one there. That kind of effort, I think, is contagious. He hit a big shot for us and he was defending Lindsey when Josh was out and he equally did a great job defensively.”
CU was not able to hold Duke Brennan in check, as he scored 16 points with 12 rebounds (seven offensive). But thanks to Dix’ work on Lindsay, they were able to win anyway. And despite Brennan’s 12 boards, the Jays out rebounded Villanova 39-30, including 13-12 on the offensive glass. Second chance points were tied 11-11.
They shot 66% in the second half (18-of-27), a figure that was as high as 75% 3/4 of the way through the period.
And finally, it was the 31st time in Greg McDermott’s 16 seasons that they’ve won after trailing by double-digits at some point. This is the first time they’ve ever beaten Villanova four straight times, and they became just the seventh program ever to beat Villanova three straight times in Philadelphia.