Recap:
Friday night’s game in Newark was over, for all intents and purposes, after just eight minutes and eight seconds. Seton Hall led 21-3 at the 11:52 mark. On their first 15 possessions, Creighton was 1-for-8 from the field with seven turnovers. Defensively, things were just as bad — in building an 8-0 lead in a little over two minutes, the Pirates scored on a pull-up jumper by Jared Rhoden and transition threes from Tray Jackson and Myles Cale. Kadary Richmond added a three coming out of a Bluejay timeout to make it 11-0.
Five minutes passed before the Jays made a basket. It took them another six minutes to make their second. That short jumper from Arthur Kaluma with 8:26 to go cut the deficit to 23-5. The Bluejays did finally settle in — over the final 8:26 Seton Hall only outscored them 14-11. After making just four of their fist 25 shots to start the game, they made four of six to end the half. In the second half they made 46.7% of their shots, committed just four turnovers, and with 13 minutes left there was a glimmer of hope when they put together a run to cut the lead to 45-32.
That little stretch followed the gameplan they hoped to execute coming into the game — using steals and defensive stops to fuel transition buckets before Seton Hall’s defense could get set. It started with Ryan Nembhard drilling a three, followed by a steal by Nembhard and a transition three by Alex O’Connell. That forced Kevin Willard to burn a timeout, but the Jays continued their push after the game resumed with a steal by Ryan Hawkins. His fastbreak layup was altered-slash-blocked at the rim; unbelievably, O’Connell stole the ball right back and raced back down the floor for a fastbreak dunk. That cut the lead to 13 at 45-32 and had some Bluejay faithful thinking back to a year ago in Newark, when they trailed by 16 with 11 minutes to play and then executed one of the biggest comebacks in school history.
This one wasn’t to be. The same bugs that led to the huge deficit in the first place immediately resurfaced — Nembhard got caught dribbling too much and had the ball stolen away, leading to a transition layup. Trey Alexander committed a foul on Myles Cale that gave the Pirates an old-fashioned three point play. It was 50-32, the raucous Friday night crowd was back buzzing, and the Jays comeback attempt fizzled out.
About the only positive thing you can say was that they continued battling despite spotting a good Pirates team an 18-point advantage — because there wasn’t much in the way of positivity after this clunker.
“We tried a lot of different lineups tonight to try and light a fire somewhere,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “But when you spot a team who’s that good that many points, it’s really hard to come back from. We competed, and the ball did move better in the second half. We did some good things, but it was too little too late by then.”
Key Stats:
Creighton’s 16 first-half points were their lowest in any half in seven years. They scored 14 first-half points at Villanova on January 25, 2015 — and while they did score 36 in the second that night, they still lost by 21. In this one, they made just three of their first 23 shots. Yuck.
“We were stagnant on offense so it was harder to get to our usual shots,” Arthur Kaluma said on the postgame radio show. “A lot of our shots weren’t falling. That dwindles our energy as well.”
Greg McDermott was more blunt in his assessment.
“They had three 3’s on the first four possessions by three different guys — and two of them were by guys who haven’t shot well this year,” he said. “Offensively, we got off to a sluggish start. Their physicality was really, really good and I don’t think we responded to it very well.
Rhoden and Richmond and Cale, they’re all 6’5” or 6’6”. And big Ike is in the middle, and he changed a bunch of shots early that got them out in transition. We didn’t find a lot of open passing lanes. We’ve struggled offensively the last three or four games. Fortunately, we found a way to win one out of two on this road trip where we weren’t very good offensively. And we’re going to have to continue to rely on our defense until we shoot better.”
It continued a trend where the Bluejays go as Ryan Hawkins goes, and the senior transfer was practically invisible in this one. In 30 minutes he attempted just five shots, missing all of them. He made two free throws for his only points of the night, and perhaps most improbably, also had just one rebound.
“Tray Jackson made everything tough for Hawk,” McDermott said. “He did have a couple of open ones, but he missed them. The reality of it is he and Ryan Kalkbrenner have been so good for us on the offensive end all season long, and they went a combined 2-for-14 tonight. We’re just going to have a hard time when that happens. I don’t think there’s any question that big Ike changed a lot of our shots inside. It took away our aggressiveness.”
Speaking of Kalkbrenner, he started and played 28 minutes after rolling his ankle early in the second half of Tuesday’s win at UConn. He looked OK in some aspects of the game, logging six points and seven boards. The ankle clearly bothered him in others.
“Where the ankle hurt him was on his lateral movement,” McDermott said. “He had a hard time pushing off of it. And that’s kind of what I felt like after watching him practice yesterday, too. He needs another day or two where he can stay off of it, and get some rehab leading up to Tuesday. He tried to gut it out. I really appreciate him giving it his best effort when he certainly wasn’t 100%.”
The most disappointing stat is this one: The Jays are now 2-5 in games following a win since December. They’ve been unable to string together a winning streak, and thus the roller coaster continues to go.