Recap:
Late in the first half, Princeton had erased an eight-point Creighton lead, taking a 37-33 advantage. They’d frustrated the Jays’ star, Ryan Kalkbrenner, and moments earlier he’d fallen (some might say he was shoved) out of bounds while corralling the ball under his own rim. Princeton’s Matt Allocco pantomimed lifting weights, mocking the Jays’ big man for being soft.
As the Jays came to the bench for a timeout called by Greg McDermott to regroup his team, his coach could see it in Kalkbrenner’s face. So he pulled him aside and had a heart-to-heart conversation.
“I knew he was frustrated. We missed a couple of opportunities to get him the ball, and he missed a couple of opportunities to finish when we did,” McDermott said of that exchange. “I explained to him that I don’t care what happened on the last play. In *this* huddle our team needs your face to look like a leader’s face. To his credit, and maybe he didn’t like it, but he did it.”
Kalkbrenner remembered it the same way.
“Sometimes I get frustrated and stop playing with joy, and he told me to get that frustrated look off my face,” Kalkbrenner said. “He told me to play with a little joy and have fun.”
A 12-1 Creighton run followed, with five points from Kalkbrenner. And after this three-point play set up by him running in transition to catch a long pass at the rim, he had something to say to Allocco and the rest of the Tigers: “We lift, too!” Watch his primal scream on the replay — they’d awoken a sleeping beast who was in the midst of a frustrating half of basketball, and they would live to regret it.
Ahead 47-43 at the half, Creighton had found it easy to score any way they wanted — but defensively, they were a mess. They had a heap of miscues on the defensive end. Their discipline on cutters was poor, their communication on screens was either late or non-existent, and Princeton was finding it easy to score any way they wanted, too.
On top of it, the Tigers had a 18-7 edge in extra-possession points (points off turnovers and offensive rebounds) in the first half. So CU’s priorities in the second half were simple: Play with discipline defensively, and cut down on those extra-possession points.
It didn’t take long for them to take control of the game once they did that. They opened the second half with a 9-2 run to push their lead to 56-45 less than four minutes in. The first two points came on a short jumper by Kalkbrenner, after which he taunted Princeton’s Keeshawn Kellman with some pantomiming of his own — motioning that Kellman was too short to stop him.
But another three-point play from Kalkbrenner was the highlight of this game-changing spurt. This time, it was a vicious dunk over Princeton’s Zach Martini — a two-handed alley-oop where he simply flattened Martini en route to the rim. The very definition of a posterizing dunk, followed by more screams audible through TBS’s courtside mics. If Princeton’s plan was to try and intimidate the two-time Big East Defensive Player of the Year with tough talk, it had blown up in their face.
A pull-up jumper from Baylor Scheierman pushed the lead into double digits for the first time at 56-45, and eventually it would swell to as many as 16 points after this short jumper from Trey Alexander.
But Princeton switched to a junk defense — a 1-2-2 zone with their power forward Tosan Evbuomwan at the top — and it frustrated the Jays. An extended scoring drought let the Tigers back into it. After going ahead 68-52 on Alexander’s jumper with 12:28 to play, the Jays didn’t score for nearly five minutes. Turnovers and missed shots piled up; Princeton’s three-point specialist Ryan Langborg started heating up. And with 8:03 to go, CU’s lead had been sawed in half at 68-60.
“Obviously that’s why teams go to zone, to try to throw you off,” Kalkbrenner said. “And they maybe got us a few possessions where we didn’t necessarily handle it as well as we could. Once we got acclimated to it, I thought we attacked it well and got a few good looks.”
“I think we got some pretty good looks early on. We just didn’t hit them,” Scheierman added, “and I think they go to that kind of change the pace of the game a little bit. We got some open looks, and we didn’t capitalize on them, and it kind of allowed them to get back in the game.”
But eventually they shot Princeton out of the 1-2-2 zone, and it was Scheierman who did it. First, he banked in an off-balance three, saying “I was just thankful it went in. When it came out of my hand, I knew it was way off. I’m just glad it went in.” Then he ended a five-minute scoring drought with a massive three at the end of the shot clock to push their lead back to 11.
Three minutes later, clinging to a 73-65 lead, Arthur Kaluma and Trey Alexander combined for a play that will be talked about in Creighton basketball lore for years to come. Kaluma dove out of bounds to save the possession, throwing the ball to Kalkbrenner as he was falling. Kalkbrenner, in turn, fired a pass to Alexander who found himself wide open against a scrambling Tiger defense. He calmly sank the three-pointer, and not-so-calmly ran back up the floor on defense.
Then Kalkbrenner put the exclamation point on the victory, with one more posterizing dunk that gave him one more chance to motion to the Princeton defense that he, in fact, was the one doing the heavy lifting.
“I just got in the moment, man, and sometimes I just let a little more emotion out. I don’t know,” Kalkbrenner said of his celebratory weight lifting motion. “Sometimes I don’t think before I do stuff like that. I couldn’t really explain it very well.”
From there, all that was left was for the final seconds to tick away, and the Bluejays were flying into the Elite Eight.
“We’ve taken a step that nobody that’s ever worn a Creighton uniform has ever taken. That’s really special stuff,” McDermott said. “Kyle Korver talked to us before the game about an opportunity to make history, and this is a really fun group to do it with. There’s not much time for celebration, though. As I told Arthur, I want him to go to the Final Four, but I want him to go on our team plane. Not to fly there on his own to watch his brother (San Diego State’s Adam Seiko). So we’ve got some work to do the next 40 hours.”
These Bluejays weren’t shy about their goals in October — and now they’re 40 minutes from getting there. 40 minutes from cutting down the nets and hanging a banner as South Regional Champs.
40 minutes from a Final Four.
“At the end of the day there are only eight teams left. To be one of those eight teams is just crazy,” Kalkbrenner said. “It’s what we worked for all year. It’s what you work for since you get here on campus in the summer. All the hard work is paying off now.”
Key Stats:
After Ryan Nembhard and Ryan Kalkbrenner carried the Jays through the first weekend of the tournament, Baylor Scheierman kept their run going in the Sweet 16. He’d been mired in a slump entering the tourney, but hit two massive shots in the waning moments to seal the win over NC State in the first round. Then came Friday night in Louisville. He had 21 points on 5-of-7 shooting from three-point range, including a pair of massive threes in the final five minutes when Princeton was trying to claw their way back. He added nine rebounds and four assists while playing 38 minutes and defending the Tigers’ constant back-cuts and flares.
“This is fun,” Scheierman said. “Obviously, tonight it was my night. Like I’ve been talking about the whole tourney, you know, a different player steps up on any given night, and that’s what makes us so difficult to guard. We’re just playing with a lot of joy, like Kalk said.”
His coach heaped praise on him, making sure to point out that Scheierman’s shooting is actually just part of the total package, as Jays fans know well.
“He is a basketball player that happens to be a good shooter,” McDermott said. “He hasn’t shot it to the level that he would like to this year on a consistent basis, but he and I have been talking all year that it only takes one game. At some point in the season when we need you, all your hard work is going to pay off.”
In their biggest game (so far), Scheierman was clutch. And that’s the beauty of March, isn’t it? Entering the Big East Tournament, Scheierman made just 12-of-45 (26%) from three-point range in the last seven games of the regular season. In two games of the Big East Tourney and two NCAA Tourney games, he’d made 7-of-26 (26.9%). Prior to this stretch, he had been 62-of-157 (39.5%).
But in a Sweet 16 game, he made 5-of-7 and propelled his team into the Elite Eight. And now no one will remember that February and early March slump.
Kalkbrenner (22) and Scheierman (21) became Creighton’s first duo to each score 20+ points in the same NCAA Tournament game since Chuck Officer (21) and Paul Silas (22) each scored over 20 points against #5 Wichita State in the second round of thee 1964 NCAA Tournament.
Creighton has won its last four NCAA Tournament games that Ryan Kalkbrenner has played in. He’s averaging 19.8 points and 7.3 rebounds on 65.9% shooting from the floor and 95.2% shooting from the free throw line in those four wins.
Speaking of free throws, Creighton has now made 52-of-57 from the line in this tournament (91.2%) after going 13-of-16 on Friday. They were good in the regular season, making 78.1% (12th best in the country), but they’ve taken it to another level in March Madness.
For all the talk about Princeton’s rebounding prowess, Creighton was dominant on the glass — they outrebounded the Tigers 32-21, and each team grabbed five offensive boards. After allowing Princeton an 18-7 advantage in extra-possession points in the first half, the Jays held them to zero in the first eight minutes of the second half when they were creating a 16-point lead, and just five extra-possession points for the entire half.
And how about this? Friday’s win was Greg McDermott’s 300th as head coach of the Bluejays, improving to 300-149 in 13 seasons. He’s 9-7 in eight NCAA Tournament appearances, making him responsible for half of CU’s total NCAA Tournament wins in program history.
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