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Morning After: Creighton Squanders 16-Point Second Half Lead, Falls at Seton Hall 56-54

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[Box Score]

With 14:58 to play on Sunday in Newark, Creighton led 43-27 and appeared to be on their way to a big win. Instead, Seton Hall ended the game on a 29-11 run, winning 56-54 on a putback with 1.3 seconds to play. And so instead of picking up their first Q1 win of the year, the Jays lost a game they led for all but three minutes.

“When we lead a game for (37) minutes, we expect to finish the job,” Greg McDermott said. “But when we got that big lead, we really got casual on both ends of the floor.”

The mistakes that led to blowing that huge lead were numerous. After taking that 43-27 lead, they missed their next ten shots and turned it over four times; they had 13 consecutive possessions without a made field goal and found themselves on the wrong end of a 16-2 run where their only points came at the free throw line.

Though there were three media timeouts during that run, McDermott never called timeout to regroup or try to slow the home team’s snowballing momentum. Most egregious was the 1:51 of clock where Seton Hall ripped off a 10-0 burst between the 11:50 mark and the 9:59 mark, cutting a 45-31 lead to 45-41. That’s always been his strategy across 16 years on Creighton’s bench, and it’s always been the one thing that drives Jays fans the most crazy.

Asked about it after the game, McDermott unsurprisingly told John Bishop that there isn’t anything he’d do differently in hindsight, though he lamented how a group of reserves immediately gave up momentum upon entering the game.

“No, I mean we we went to the bench there, and that kind of started the comeback,” he said, alluding to an unusual lineup of Josh Dix, Nik Graves, Fedor Zugic, Owen Freeman, and Hudson Greer with 13 minutes left. “They cut the lead to nine during that stretch before I got those guys back out of there. But some of our starters were running on empty. We had to do something there to get them a break.”

The Jays’ eight minute drought ended when Green scored on a second chance opportunity thanks to an offensive rebound by Dix. It was the first of four times where the Pirates closed to within two points (at 45-43, 47-45, 49-47 and 51-49), and CU answered each time. Ahead 47-45, Graves connected on an alley-oop to Green with 5:58 to play to push the lead back to four.

Ahead 49-47, Blake Harper hit a contested layup at the rim. At 51-49, Graves made a pair of free throws. And then they ran out of answers. Perhaps overconfident after his previous shot, Harper attempted two more on ISO plays. The first missed badly. The second was blocked, and then he immediately committed a foul out of frustration 90 feet from the hoop.

Graves could only make 1-of-2 on his next trip to the line, and the Pirates’ Josh Rivera threw down a dunk with 22.6 left to get Seton Hall to within one point at 54-53.

Twice they ran up against the five-second count on the ensuing inbounds pass and had to call timeout. On the third attempt, the Jays finally got it in to Austin Swartz, and as he dribbled up the sideline a pair of Pirates collapsed on him. There was a lot of contact, but the call was a jump ball. Even then, Creighton got a fourth chance because they had the possession arrow.

This time, Seton Hall wisely baited the Jays into throwing it to Isaac Traudt by allowing the big man to get open. Upon catching it, he too was tied up. This time the possession arrow went the other direction.

“It was certainly a lot of contact on that sideline over there, and obviously I haven’t seen the film, but to get two back-to-back jump balls in those situations is I’m not sure something I’ve ever seen before,” McDermott said. “But the problem is they were in the bonus and we weren’t, and when we’re not in the bonus, the teeth of their press can be at a whole other level, because you don’t have to worry about putting us on the free-throw line. So obviously, there was a lot of physicality against that press. We knew it, we worked against it, and for the most part until late in the game, we handled it pretty well.”

Seton Hall called their final timeout to draw up a play. In Creighton’s huddle, they gambled by switching into a 1-3-1 zone.

“I rolled the dice because they had no timeouts left, so I went with the zone late, thinking that it would stymie them, and it did,” McDermott said. “The shot that they got we were fine with. Unfortunately, that ball bounced right to Hines.”

Indeed, Clark’s initial shot was not a clean look — it was heavily contested by both Green and Ty Davis, and clanked off the rim. Unfortunately, because the Jays’ best rebounder (Green) was in the middle of the zone, he was out of position to grab a potential rebound. And when Hines not only got the rebound but made the putback AND drew a foul, the zone gamble had blown up in their face about as spectacularly as possible.

“The plan was for (Budd Clark) to make a play, and for Josh (Rivera) and Najai (Hines) to be in position to, if he missed, to get a putback,” Seton Hall coach Shaheen Holloway said. “I thought Najai did a great job of getting in position and catching it, and keeping it high, not dropping it, and finishing. Our guys didn’t care who took the shot. I keep telling these guys, ‘stop taking ME shots, take a SETON HALL shot.’ And I thought Budd took a Seton Hall shot, and because he took that shot, our guys were in position to rebound, and that’s the difference.”

A number of positive things happened in the game that are obscured by that final sequence and the outcome. The Jays led for 37 minutes. They took a 27-18 lead to halftime, ending the half on a 7-0 run. And when Seton Hall scored the first five of the second half to get the crowd into the game, CU responded with a 14-2 burst to take their biggest lead at 41-25 with Austin Swartz scoring eight of the 14.

“Frankly defensively, we were plenty good enough to win this game,” McDermott said. “We got a little tentative when we got that lead. I thought we lost some of our pace on the offensive end of the floor, and then for some reason, after being pretty clean defensively without fouling the first half, we fouled a ton the second half. And several of them were 60, 70, 80, 90 feet from the basket. Those plays just can’t happen. You have to have the mental fortitude not to allow yourself to be put in that situation.”

There’s no question the Jays are a completely different, much better team than they were when the season started. In typical Greg McDermott fashion, his team has improved as the season has gone along. But when you squander 100% of your resume-building opportunities in the non-conference, you leave yourself zero room for moral victories once conference play arrives. You need actual victories. And so any talk about improvement or silver linings are going to ring hollow after this one.

They’ve played 15 of their 31 regular season games, and 20% of the Big East slate. They’re 0-5 in Q1 games and six of their nine wins are Q4. They’re likely going to regret letting this Q1 opportunity slip away.

Inside the Box:

Creighton started the second half 7-of-9 from the floor in building that 16-point lead. Through the first 25 minutes of the game, they had committed just four turnovers.

Over the final 15 minutes, they shot 3-of-18 and had seven turnovers.

“I have to watch the film but I think during that stretch there were a lot of open shots,” McDermott said of the final 15 minutes. “It wasn’t like turnovers going the other direction. And there were some that they got you into the late shot clock; that’s just who they are, and they’re really good defensively in that regard. But we had some really good looks at the basket that we didn’t make, and all we needed to make was one more play and the game was probably out of reach.”

Their defense held Seton Hall to 0.88 points per possession and just 35.7% shooting, including 17-of-46 inside the arc. They had perhaps their best defensive rebounding game of the season, allowing the Pirates to grab just six offensive boards on those 29 missed shots (16.7%). Furthermore, before the final possession, Seton Hall had just one offensive rebound in the second half and had scored a basket after an offensive board just once the entire game.

But much like their offense, they couldn’t close: the Pirates’ doubled both numbers on the final play.

Seton Hall’s 18 first half points were the fewest Creighton has given up in a Big East game since January 12, 2016 against Providence. That game ended similarly: a 50-48 loss where PC’s Kris Dunn hit a buzzer-beater to win it.

Josh Dix had his first career double-double in his 112th collegiate game, with 12 points, 10 rebounds and six assists. In the first half, he had 10, 5 and two in those categories while once again playing terrific perimeter defense. He’s the Jays’ most important player overall right now, and the energy he’s expending on defense is clearly taking a toll offensively. He was just 1-of-8 from the field after halftime.

Austin Swartz scored 16 points, but was held scoreless over the final 15 minutes and only attempted three shots. Isaac Traudt was 0-of-7 from three-point range. And their primary point guards, Ty Davis and Nik Graves, combined for eight points, three assists and two turnovers.

The bench did nowhere near enough to make up the difference, scoring just 11 points on 13 shots.

It continues a frustrating streak of blowing double-digit leads in Big East play. With this latest loss, they’ve now blown a 12+ point lead at least once in each of the last 10 seasons. The list:

  • Feb. 11, 2025 (led UConn in Omaha 37-23 before losing 70-66)
  • Dec. 20, 2023 (led Villanova at home 41-27 and lost in overtime 68-66)
  • Feb. 21, 2023 (led Marquette by 12 at home before losing 73-71)
  • Jan. 29, 2022 (led Xavier at home 36-19 early in the second half and lost 74-64)
  • Dec. 14, 2020 (to Marquette at home, again, blowing a 41-29 lead and losing 89-84)
  • Jan. 16, 2021 (blew a 58-45 lead with 7:38 to play and lost in overtime 70-66)
  • Jan. 7, 2020 (blew a 14-point lead at home to Villanova and lost 64-59)
  • Jan. 9, 2019 (blew a 13-point lead at home to Marquette and lost 106-104 in overtime)

In 2017-18, they even did it in the same venue — on December 28 they led Seton Hall in Newark 58-45 early in the second half and lost 90-84. That team also blew two double digit leads to Marquette in two weeks in late February, leading by 16 at home before losing 90-86 and leading by 10 in Milwaukee before losing 85-81. And in 2016-17, they led Providence by 13 before losing 68-66. You could go back further if you’re a glutton for punishment, but I think we’re all sufficiently depressed after reading all of that.

Of all those terrible memories, this one has a lot in common with that 2019 loss to Marquette (the one where they threw the inbounds pass away, giving Marquette a chance to tie it on a controversial three at the buzzer). That loss might have been the one that kept an eventual bubble team from getting into the NCAA Tournament.

This one might turn out the same way.

Highlights:

Press Conference:

 

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