Ten minutes into Tuesday’s frenetic, fast-paced race of a game, Iowa was leading 25-23. The Hawkeyes had led by as many as seven, and had Creighton on their heels a bit — the Bluejays weren’t exactly rattled by the speed of the game, but they weren’t exactly comfortable either. And though the Jays had shot the ball OK, Iowa had made 10 of their first 15 shots.
The Hawkeyes’ Ben Krikke was the main culprit, making 7-of-9 shots with six of them coming from the 12-15 foot midrange area.
“What kind of messed us up defensively was (Krikke),” Trey Alexander said on the postgame radio show. “He was able to get those short rolls and shoot those mid-range jumpers. We knew he could shoot a mid-range jumper, but we didn’t think he was that consistent. So for him to get going that early, it kind of messed us up and it put us in a bad situation, where we had to change coverages a little bit.”
Greg McDermott elaborated, joking that Krikke blowing up their gameplan by making five of his first six shots was “not ideal.”
“We had an awful plan for Krikke,” McDermott said. “But on a few of them, Kalk got caught in a situation where he had to help on a back screen or help on a back cut. So he actually made the right read, but we just didn’t get there in time. But they’re a hard team to guard. Even more difficult in person than I thought watching them on film. Their movement is pretty subtle, it’s very intelligent.”
Enter Creighton’s bench. First Fredrick King made his presence felt with a thunderous dunk. And then Francisco Farabello sank a three, drawing a foul in the process. The four-point play put CU ahead 27-25, and though Iowa would retake the lead more than once in the first half, it was the spark the Jays needed to get back in the game.
After Iowa took a 31-27 lead, the Bluejay bench again came up huge. A 7-0 Creighton run to put the Jays ahead featured Farabello hitting another three. With Iowa ahead 41-38 in the final minute, Isaac Traudt hit a three to tie it.
The starting unit took it from there. In the first five minutes of the second half, they knocked Iowa to the mat with an 18-6 haymaker of a run. Ryan Kalkbrenner got it started with a dunk, and then Baylor Scheierman and Trey Alexander hit threes on consecutive possessions. Scheierman’s three, in particular, was the tone setter: it started with a block on the other end by Kalkbrenner, and then while running in transition, Mason Miller caught the ball under the basket with a semi-contested layup there for the taking. Instead, he kicked it out to Scheierman on the wing for a wide-open three.
Following Alexander’s three, he corralled a rebound off a missed shot and threw a three-quarters-court pass on the run to Kalkbrenner, who laid it in. 53-45 Bluejays, timeout Iowa. But the Jays weren’t done. Mason Miller hit a three, and then seconds later another Alexander-to-Kalkbrenner connection forced another Hawkeye timeout — this time, Kalkbrenner’s dunk in transition, again off a long pass, made it 61-49 Creighton.
“In the first half, we were taking shots that we can make, but I think we got better ones in the second half,” Alexander said. “We were getting into ball screens too early, we needed to move the ball around more to make them work, and I think we didn’t set enough ghosts and doubles. Once we did, Kalk was able to hard hedge and get behind his defender. I’m glad Ryan Kalkbrenner came out of the half and was running. I mean, he had his high horse on. That really makes the game a lot easier.”
Ahead 70-61 a few minutes later, Alexander grabbed his 10th rebound of the game to secure his first career double-double. Pushing the ball in transition, he then provided the highlight of the game by putting another helpless defender on a poster, the victim of a thunderous fastbreak dunk. It’s the third game in a row where he’s had a dunk like this, but this might be most impressive — watch how he outruns his primary defender despite dribbling the ball, then weaves through three defenders once he gets near his basket.
Asked if he could recall what followed that 10th rebound, he joked on the postgame radio show “I think it was 94 feet and a Tomahawk.”
Alexander said that he heard one of the Hawkeye defenders yelling for help, because he knew he’d been beat. “He didn’t think I was gonna keep going full speed,” Alexander said, “but I knew we had a shooter in the corner, and I knew he was going to have to kind of stunt to get back. So I just I just kind of Euroed to get around him.”
Less than a minute later, he juked a defender nearly out of his shoes with a dribble-drive into the paint.
And following a three from Farabello, his third of the night, it was 80-65 Bluejays with just over nine minutes to play. To that point of the second half, they were 15-of-17 from the field and 5-of-6 from three-point range with 10 assists and just three turnovers — an eleven-minute stretch of near flawless basketball. They’d eventually score on 20 of their first 25 possessions in the half, and lead by as many as 17 points.
But then they took the air out of the ball, perhaps because they were gassed from the pace of the game and perhaps because they felt like they could ride their defense to the finish line. After Alexander’s layup with 6:24 to play made it 84-72, the Jays did not make another basket. They got eight points at the free throw line, and gave up 12 on defense as the Hawkeyes made the final minutes tighter than they should have been.
With the win, Creighton moves to 3-0 as they prepare for one more home game against Texas Southern and a holiday tourney in Kansas City, followed by back-to-back true road games at Oklahoma State and at Nebraska.
Inside the Box Score:
Creighton’s drop coverage defense — running shooters off the three-point line, funneling drives to Kalkbrenner at the rim — means they’ll give up open mid-range jump shots. It’s a mathematical gamble that opponents won’t be able to make enough of those mid-range shots to win if Creighton executes offensively, because even if you end up trading baskets, you’re trading twos on defense for threes on offense.
Sure enough, an Iowa team who attempted 29 threes against Alabama State and 24 against North Dakota (making 21-of-53, 40%) was only able to take 14 against the Jays. Iowa was 16-of-29 on mid-range two-point jump shots and 18-of-39 on everything else.
Creighton outscored them 30-18 on three-pointers, 42-24 in the paint, 19-5 off the fast break and 32-18 off the bench.
“We took twice as many three-point shots as they did, and that’s what we’re after. We had almost twice as many points in the paint as they did,” McDermott said. “So what does that tell you? They made a lot of mid-range shots to stay in the game. And that’s what our defense is designed to do. We have to do a little bit better job of adjusting, both as a coaching staff and as a team, to kind of turn a guy’s water off once he gets going. But it’s November and we’re still breaking in some guys that haven’t played in our program as much as they’re playing right now. We’re going to learn, and we’re going to grow, and we’re going to watch this film Thursday and get better because of it.”
Individually, Trey Alexander was one assist shy of the first traditional triple-double in Creighton’s history, finishing with 23 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists. And he had the keys to the offense for nearly 38 minutes of a fast-paced game.
“I know that Mac trusts me to make the right play,” Alexander said. “See if you can get downhill, and if not, get it to the open man or just make a play, just make something happen. So for him to trust me, it just gives me confidence. I think that’s why Mac is such a player’s coach, because he feeds guys’ confidence. He’ll never tell you that you can’t shoot something that you work on.”
Then he joked to the radio crew of John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg, “I know Mac is going to come over here and talk about my turnovers. There were five of them.”
Baylor Scheierman kept the Jays in the game early, and had 17 points, four rebounds and four assists. Ryan Kalkbrenner added 13 points, two blocks and four boards, though his five missed free throws stick out. But it was the bench who made the biggest impression outside of Alexander.
Francisco Farabello had 14 points on 3-of-4 from three-point range, and played 25 minutes because of a hot hand offensively — and because he defended Iowa’s guards better than Steven Ashworth did.
“Bello is way more comfortable on our system than he was a year ago,” McDermott said. “He’s playing with a lot of confidence and you know, defensively he understands what we’re doing a little bit better.”
Alexander noted that Farabello’s play is really a continuation of his solid NCAA Tournament last March.
“I think that gave him a big boost of confidence to come in there and make some shots,” Alexander said. , “He’s been that guy in practice all along, where we know that he can get off a good shot when we’re playing up and down.”
Fredrick King had 12 points and five rebounds, three of them offensive, and his energy off the bench was a spark they desperately needed.
“I like games like this because I’m a fast big. That’s my game,” King said on the postgame radio show. “I like to run up and down and get rebounds. So I think it kind of suits me.”
As for the offensive rebounds, he credits new assistant Derek Kellogg. “I put all that to Coach DK. In practice he always tells me, ‘Fred, hit the glass, try to get a rebound.’ That’s easy points and that’s what I try to do. Bringing energy off the bench is big when you’re backing up Kalk, because he’s like the best player in the league. I got to be able to bring that energy, where it feels like he’s not off the court.”