“It’s painfully obvious the effort level for Marquette is so much higher than Creighton right now.”
With just under a minute to play in the first half, TNT’s Brian Anderson offered that blunt — and accurate — assessment of the game he was calling. At that moment it was 49-20 Marquette, and Creighton had committed embarrassing turnovers on back-to-back possessions, both of which led to points. On the first, Hudson Greer tried to score through a double team in the paint, got his shot blocked, rebounded the ball and made a lackadaisical pass to the perimeter which was intercepted and taken the other way. Nik Graves ran down the floor in pursuit, but made little attempt to make the shot harder — he didn’t stop the dribble, didn’t contest the shot with his body, and didn’t commit a foul.
Seconds later, Josh Dix had his pocket picked, and Marquette got a breakaway dunk as all five Bluejays jogged back on defense. All the while, Greg McDermott stood on the sideline scowling with his arms crossed, trying to decide if he was angry or disappointed.
“There wasn’t a lot of energy, there wasn’t a lot of focus. Our ability to execute on either end of the floor was as poor as it’s been all year long,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “With every missed shot, it seemed like we lost a little bit more fight on the defensive end, and you know, frankly, the opposite needs to happen when you’re not making shots. You’ve got to dig in and give yourself a chance with defensive stops and rebounds. And we just weren’t able to do that.”
The Jays’ lack of energy and focus was evident right away. Eight minutes into the game, Marquette already led by nine. The Golden Eagles were getting to the rim with little resistance, forcing live-ball turnovers that became transition buckets, and seemingly getting every loose ball.
With 14:52 go in the half, Marquette led 10-9. At the 2:55 mark, they led 43-18. The 12 minute, 33-9 run was a nightmare that saw the Jays have two separate scoring droughts: one for just under four minutes, a second for nearly six minutes. Those droughts led to two separate runs of 9-0 and 18-0, respectively. And though McDermott called two timeouts to try and plug a leaking dam from bursting, there were no answers. There were too many issues to fix in-game, and more players performing poorly than there were substitutes on the bench to replace them with. When things go this badly, there’s only so much you can do tactically.
Ty Davis said the team had a couple of poor practices leading up to the game, and said Sunday was particularly bad.
“We didn’t come back from the break ready to play. Our urgency wasn’t there,” Davis told John Bishop in a postgame radio interview. “There’s really no excuse for it at this point in the season. We’ve been together now for eight or nine months, so there’s just no excuse for how we practiced in the couple of days leading up to this game.”
McDermott called out Sunday’s practice in particular.
“I recognized what I saw Sunday happening in the first half,” he said. “Especially coming off a break where you got a couple days to kind of recharge your mind and your battery and get your body feeling a little bit better, we should have had three great practices in a row. I thought Saturday was good, I thought Sunday was awful, and yesterday was just okay.”
Trailing 52-23 at the half, there were no bright spots, just darkness. They’d made 2-of-17 from three (11.8%). They’d turned it over seven times leading to nine points for Marquette. 34 of Marquette’s 52 points were scored in the paint. And all four of Marquette’s top scorers were rolling at once. Chase Ross (4-of-7 shooting) and Royce Parham (5-of-6) had 11 apiece; Nigel James (4-of-7) and Adrien Stevens (4-of-6) had nine each.
15 of their 22 made shots in the first half came from inside the restricted area. The shot chart is ugly.
Zoom in and you see a clear picture of what no rim protection and an inability to stop dribble penetration looks like. There’s so many shot bubbles that they overlap! pic.twitter.com/UGHFwZtTmG
— Tom Nemitz (@WBR_Tom) January 28, 2026
And when the second half started with a shot clock violation, followed by another drive straight to the rim for a mostly unchallenged layup, no doubt many Jays fans had seen enough and turned the game off.
“We just didn’t play well,” McDermott lamented. “We were as bad as we could possibly be.”
“Obviously Jasen (Green) is our main leader, but I’m right there with him and our voices need to be heard very very loudly these next couple days of practice,” Davis said. “It falls on both of us to make sure everybody’s ready and we’re prepared to go Saturday night.”
The 86-62 loss is Creighton’s second Quad 3 loss of the season; they have just one Quad 1 win. They fell to 63rd in KenPom and 69th in the NET. Bart Torvik gives the Jays a 4.3% chance to make the NCAA tournament. But the reality is that short of a miracle run in the Big East Tournament, this team is headed for the Crown in March.
Inside the Box:
Creighton’s 52-23 halftime deficit (29 points) was their biggest since December 1, 1993, when they trailed Iowa State 57-20 in Ames. That was the second game of Rick Johnson’s final, disastrous season. I dug back though available box scores — even the handwritten ones that haven’t been digitized from between 1981-82 to 1993-94 — to see if there was a bigger deficit than that. There was not. But last night is tied for second-worst since 1981-82 with a 29-point deficit at Drake on February 26, 1985. That was the third-to-last game coached by Willis Reed before he was fired.
The worst halftime deficit of Dana Altman’s tenure? 27 points at Saint Louis in the fourth game his tenure. The worst of McDermott’s tenure before last night? 22 at St. John’s in 2015. Here’s the full list of most lopsided halftime scores since 1981-82:
- 37, at Iowa State (20-57), 12/1/1993
- 29, at Marquette (23-52), 1/27/2026
- 29, at Drake (16-45), 2/26/1985
- 27, at Saint Louis (22-49), 12/10/1994
- 26, at UNLV (27-53), 12/23/1987
- 26, at DePaul (16-42), 12/27/1984
- 25, at Nebraska (18-43), 12/7/1994
- 24, at Hawaii (17-41), 12/20/1995
- 23, at Marquette (14-37), 12/23/1994
- 23, at Illinois State (27-50), 2/23/1985
- 22, at St. John’s (30-52), 2/7/2015
- 21, at Seton Hall (16-37), 2/4/2022
- 21, at Northern Iowa (24-45), 1/22/1994
- 21, at Southern Illinois (33-54), 1/18/1992
So, you know, that’s fun.
Coming into the game, Marquette was ranked #122 by KenPom. And with the loss, Creighton is now 152-7 against teams ranked 120 or lower in KenPom under Greg McDermott (hat tip to @JaysClassic for that stat).
The losses:
- 2010-11 at Bradley (193) 69-61
- 2010-11 at Drake (201) 67-64
- 2014-15 at North Texas (245) 62-58
- 2014-15 DePaul (150) 70-60
- 2015-16 at Loyola Chicago (184) 68-65
- 2020-21 at Butler (120) 70-66 OT
- 2021-22 at Butler (121) 72-55
Individually, Austin Swartz led the Jays with 17 points, 15 of them in the second half. Blake Harper scored 15, with 13 of them in the second. It was too little, too late for that — and with the defense as poor as it was, also not nearly enough.
Marquette made 34-of-59 from the floor, and 23 of those baskets came inside the restricted area. 52 of their 86 points came in the paint. Both are a big reason they shot 68.8% in the first half and 57.6% for the game.
Highlights:
Press Conference: