Tuesday in Chicago, Creighton took care of business, dispatching with DePaul 73-49 and putting the game away early enough to get substantial playing time for their bench. But it took awhile to get there.
Steven Ashworth hit a three-pointer on the game’s first possession…and Creighton then missed 10 of its next 12 shots. Meanwhile, DePaul went the first five minutes without a field goal at all. Eight minutes into the game, it was 8-5 Creighton.
“Fortunately, you know, our defense was really sound to start the game until our offense kind of caught up,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “I thought our first-shot defense the first half was maybe as good as we’ve had all year. They had eight second chance points, and they had two baskets on runouts off turnovers. That’s 12 of their 19 (first half) points, so they only scored seven points against our first-shot defense. Our guys were really locked in.”
Then Jamiya Neal caught fire. He scored eight straight on a pair of threes and a layup over a two-minute span, part of a 12-2 Creighton run to give the Jays a 23-9 lead at the under-eight timeout. They led by double-digits the rest of the night. And on defense, they’d held DePaul to 4-of-22 shooting, including just one of their last nine heading into that timeout.
It wasn’t the prettiest half of basketball, with the Jays committing as many turnovers (7) as they had assists (7) while shooting 5-of-15 from three-point range. But they had eight different players score a point, while DePaul made eight total shots as a team. The Blue Demons were 1-of-14 from three and 8-of-36 overall, a half of basketball where both definitions and pronunciations of the word “offensive” applied.
“Every halftime, Coach Mac tells us the first five (minutes) has to be the best five,” Fred King said on the postgame radio show. “We were locked in on that first five minutes to see how far we could get them down and just keep growing (the lead) from there. We wanted to keep chopping and chopping until we got them beat.”
Ahead 31-19 at the half, Creighton came out of the locker room and showed a killer instinct. The Jays scored on 12 of their first 16 possessions to push their lead out to 27, with Neal kick-starting them with a steal and a transition dunk.
They only attempted four 3-pointers in the second half, instead focusing intently on the paint and had great success with it — they were 12-of-13 on two-pointers to begin the half. Jasen Green scored at the rim twice, ducking up-and-under to take advantage of a smaller defender on one and running in transition ahead of the defense on another. And unlike back in November, they had zero issues feeding Kalkbrenner in the post.
Seven different Bluejays scored in the first 10 minutes, and at that point in the game they had 16 assists on 22 made shots, leading 55-31.
“We got out in transition and we made some things happen in transition,” McDermott said. “Guys ran the floor, and your pace is not really going to pay off in the first half. It’s going to pay off as the game wears on.”
To his point, Creighton actually managed to increase their lead as the game went on, and it was the end of the bench who built the game’s largest margin of 28 — the final three minutes saw them employ a lineup of Sami Osmani, Shane Thomas, Josh Townley-Thomas, Ty Davis and Fedor Zugic together.
Osmani’s layup with 2:07 to go is the one that gave CU their biggest lead of the night at 71-43. Townley-Thomas got a bucket, too, courtesy of a nice pass from Zugic. And while Thomas didn’t make a shot, he grabbed two rebounds in that final stretch (and three total), and turned down an open shot for himself to make a pass to Osmani for his bucket. He’d done the same thing himself moments earlier, turning down an open shot from the corner to make a pass to an even-more-open Zugic, who buried a three.
The senior walk-on from nearby Oak Lawn, Illinois has scored 17 total points in four seasons. But none of them had come in his home state until now.
“I love those guys,” King said of Osmani, Thomas and Townley-Thomas. “Sami is a great person, he’s like a big bro to all of us. We were screaming our lungs out when he scored. They all really deserve that success though.”
The 73-49 win moves Creighton to 6-2 in the Big East, with five of those eight games coming on the road. They’re 3-0 at home in league play, and 3-2 on the road, with five of their 10 road games in the rearview mirror including the games at UConn and Marquette. They’ve played the 3rd-hardest league schedule to this point, while the other three teams at the top of the standings with them have played the three easiest.
The upside to that uneven schedule so far? Seven of their 12 remaining games will be in Omaha.
“In this league the road is a bear, like most leagues. We found a way to win (three) and we had chances at Marquette in the last five minutes,” McDermott said. “We did what we had to do, and we’ve got ourselves in a position where we’re at least in the conversation and chasing a Big East Championship, which is what we’re trying to do here.”
As impressive as the win over UConn was, blowing the doors off of DePaul is pretty close — they had a short turnaround time for the second game of a two-game road trip, against an opponent good enough to pull an upset if they’d overlooked them or suffered a hangover from Saturday’s win. Instead, it was their third-largest margin of victory of the season and biggest since Nov. 13 against HCU.
They jumped four spots in the NET to #40, and five spots in KenPom to #32 — their highest since before the loss to Nebraska sent them tumbling.
Inside the Box:
Jamiya Neal led the team in scoring for the second straight game, making 5-of-10 from the field and 2-of-5 from 3. He shot 26.9% from three over his three seasons at Arizona State but has made 43.2% (16-of-37) in his first eight Big East games. And after a 4-of-23 start from three over Creighton’s first seven games, he’s made 21-of-50 over the past 12 games (42%). Combined with his ability to score at the rim and in transition, it’s turned him into a difficult player to guard.
“I told him after the game, I just thought he had a great week, and not just offensively,” McDermott said. “He’s doing some great things defensively. He’s understanding our schemes, our different plans from opponent to opponent, and that’s a lot to learn for a new guy. He’s doing a lot of things. He’s all in on this team and he’s been a lot of fun to coach.”
Ryan Kalkbrenner scored 13 on just five shots, making 7-of-8 from the line to go with eight rebounds and four blocks. The most absurd stat? He was called for his first foul before halftime since Nov. 26th vs. Texas A&M. The most important stat? He played only 25 minutes, including just 10 in the second half. Steven Ashworth, too, played only 27 minutes, scoring nine points with four assists.
With a giant lead, it was a rare opportunity in a conference game to get the entire bench involved in the game — and to rest the top of the rotation. McDermott noted that he went to the bench earlier than usual, with Fedor Žugić, Ty Davis, and Fredrick King all getting substantial first half minutes. Those three plus Sami Osmani, Shane Thomas and Josh Townley-Thomas all saw significant time in the second. All 13 players on the active roster got into the game, and 11 of them scored. The two who didn’t (Mason Miller and Thomas) combined for four assists.
“It’s been a rough stretch with four out of the last five on the road,” McDermott said. “The guys that came in really did a good job and it was awesome to see those guys off the bench come in and contribute in such a positive way. Fedor, Ty Davis, Shane Thomas all got some important minutes and that’s going to help us as we move into the next set of games.”
Zugic played 15 minutes and scored eight points (2-of-6 shooting, 3-of-4 from the line) with two assists and two rebounds. He’d played 25 total minutes over his first five games.
“I thought he made some great reads and great passes,” McDermott said. “It’s nice to see him knock down a couple shots, and he gets to the rim. Defensively, he’s gradually getting there. Compared to where he was two weeks ago, he’s lightyears ahead of where he was. That’s been really encouraging to see, and hopefully he can build on that.”
Defensively, Creighton held DePaul to season-lows in points (49), three-pointers (3) and field goal percentage (30.2%). The Blue Demons came into the game shooting 37.6% from three for the season, and ranked 13th in D1 with an average of 10.7 made three-pointers per game. They’d made 10 or more in 13 of their 18 games, and their 203 made three-pointers are the most in the Big East.
They made 3-of-23 from deep in this one. Jays fans know all too well that when you’re as reliant on the three as DePaul is — 48.4% of their shot attempts this year have been threes — you have to live with the ebbs and flows. And when the ebbs come, nights like this happen. Of course, a lot of that has to do with Creighton, as the players surrounding Kalkbrenner have improved in their roles.
The morning after the loss at Georgetown, Creighton was 58th overall in KenPom. They were 71st in offense and 45th in defense. A month later, they’re 32nd overall and 49th in offense and 27th in defense.
DePaul was shooting 37.6% from 3 on the season coming in. Creighton holds them to 3-23 (13.0%) from beyond the arc and 9-21 (42.9%) at the rim in a blowout win.
DePaul’s 49 points tied the third-fewest allowed by Creighton in a league play since joining the Big East in 2013. Their 19 first-half points scored were the fewest by a conference opponent in a Bluejay road game since Feb. 13, 2011 (Southern Illinois), which was in Greg McDermott’s first year at Creighton.
“I liked pretty much everything,” McDermott said of his team’s defensive effort. “They’re really two different teams when [David] Skogman is in the game versus the backups in terms of our ball screen coverage, and we executed some switching on Skogman and made his looks pretty tough, I thought. We were really active defensively. I was worried about our focus. It’s been a big week for us, but the guys were pretty locked in.”