Creighton led for 34 minutes of Saturday’s game, but until a late push they couldn’t manage to put away a fifth-ranked Marquette team playing without its two best players and playmakers in point guard Tyler Kolek and big man Oso Ighodaro. The Golden Eagles proved to be a scrappy, resilient team without their stars, with the other three starters ably stepping up their performances — Kam Jones, David Joplin and Stevie Mitchell all make big momentum-stopping buckets for most of the afternoon.
There were nine lead changes over the first seven minutes of the game. The last back-and-forth sequence of the game saw Marquette take a 14-12 lead with 13:42 to play after a three by Jones. Mason Miller drilled a three 21 seconds later to put CU back ahead; Jones answered with a mid-range jumper to give Marquette a 16-15 lead; and Miller responded with another three — courtesy of an offensive rebound by Baylor Scheierman — to put CU ahead for good at 18-16.
Then came an electrifying 29-second sequence (both in real time and game time) where Trey Alexander buried a three, corralled an errant pass, and took it the other way for another three for a 28-21 lead.
They led 42-34 with 2:53 to go and you got the sense that if they could get the lead to double-digits, it might be panic time for the shorthanded Golden Eagles. Instead, Marquette responded with a 6-0 end to the half that featured four points from Mitchell. MU tied the game at 44 early in the second on a loud dunk by Joplin — and suddenly if there was panic, it was from the home fans, as the Bluejay defense was getting shredded by secondary role players and backups.
While their defense has ranked inside the top 25 all year, it’s heavily dependent on scouting reports and executing a plan — it’s a not a defense that comes out and overwhelms an opponent at all five positions with length and athleticism. That leaves you susceptible to last-minute lineup changes. In their only two home losses of the year, to Villanova (Justin Moore) and Butler (Posh Alexander), key players were late scratches from the lineup. That might not be a satisfying answer to the question of why a Marquette team minus two stars was able to score so readily. You can quibble with whether that type of defensive scheme is the right tactical move for a power conference team, and you can argue about the roster construction that makes it necessary, but it’s the reality for this group and the results have generally been excellent.
Greg McDermott said they practiced this week with the idea that Kolek would be out. He didn’t even travel with the team to Omaha, so they had time to plan for how Marquette would play without him. On the other hand, they found out about Ighodaro’s illness the same time everyone else did, about 75 minutes before tip off. When that news broke on social media, the entire coaching staff left shoot around to go back into the locker room for a last-minute brainstorm.
“Oso being out obviously throws a huge wrench into our defensive plan,” McDermott said. “We kind of talked as a staff when we found out before the game, we’re going to probably have to adjust on the fly because we really weren’t sure what they would do, who’s going to initiate the offense, what’s going to be different from what they’ve done in the past, and there was a lot that was different.”
Playing a five-out style dragged Kalkbrenner away from the rim, which forced the Jays to defend dribble penetration differently. And if an individual defender was beaten off the dribble, the two-time Big East Defensive Player of the Year was not there behind them to clean it up. Of Marquette’s first 44 points, 28 came in the paint.
So why not change how you defend? Easier said than done.
“Our drop coverage is 98% of what we do,” McDermott said in his press conference. “You can switch it, which has some potential problems. We tried to be aggressive early in the game; they kind of picked that apart. We tried, a couple times, just a quick show and get out of there and they slipped out of it. We thought about zone, we talked about it at halftime, I kind of threatened them with a zone and I don’t think they wanted to do that very much.”
“I was really disappointed at halftime,” McDermott elaborated on his postgame radio show. “We got beat one-on-one off the dribble a lot, like, I mean, we’ve got to fight it at least a little. We didn’t help our teammates, we left them on an island a little bit, and maybe gave a few guys too much credit for their ability to shoot it. I thought they responded pretty well in the second half, because Coach Mac wasn’t exactly thrilled at halftime with our defense.”
After Marquette tied the game at 44, Creighton ripped off a 16-6 run to take their first double-digit lead (60-50). Somehow Marquette had one more run in them, aided by a Bluejay team that missed eight consecutive three-pointers. The Golden Eagles got to within one at 63-62 with 8:58 left on a three-ball by Jones, and then the Bluejays’ seniors took over on Senior Day. A dunk by Ryan Kalkbrenner and two free throws by Baylor Scheierman put CU up 67-62, starting a stretch where 26 straight Bluejay points were scored by its senior class.
With the Jays ahead 69-67, Marquette switched into a zone defense to try and throw CU off. Instead, Creighton shredded them — on the very first possession after the switch, Steven Ashworth threw a skip pass across the court to Scheierman, who drained a three from the left corner.
Moments later, Ashworth came up with a steal on a loose ball and called timeout to preserve the possession; when play resumed, Trey Alexander drove into the paint to collapse the defense and kicked it out to the other corner, where Farabello hit a three to put the Jays up by eight.
Then Scheierman hit back-to-back threes from the same spot in the corner 39 seconds apart. After the first, Scheierman — a showman for the home crowd right up to the end — lingered dramatically with his arm up in the air after releasing the ball as he watched it go through the net, then blew a kiss to the crowd. After the second, he looked away and turned to run up court before the ball even got to the rim. How’s that for confidence?
That 12-0 run, with three 3’s by Scheierman and another from Farabello, made it 81-69 Bluejays. Then each senior got one final moment before checking out to a standing ovation: Scheierman’s final assist came on a long pass over the top of Marquette’s pressure defense. Farabello corralled it, dribbled once, and laid it in at the rim for his final points.
Kalkbrenner’s (likely) final points came, fittingly, on a putback dunk off a missed three by Alexander. Then he rejected one last shot on defense, Scheierman grabbed the board, and Greg McDermott called timeout to give them the curtain call they deserved.
“I think I’ve told you guys this before, but while we’ve had some practices (this season) that are better than others we haven’t had a bad practice. And we haven’t had a bad practice because these four have not allowed it to happen,” McDermott said of Scheierman, Alexander, Kalkbrenner and Farabello. “Along with Steven they figure out a way, on days where it’s clear after 15-20 minutes of practice it’s not there, they figure out a way to still get something out of the day. The understand ‘we’re not perfect today but let’s get something out of it,’ and that that’s true leadership. A lot of times the coaches have to fix that, and it’s way more impactful when the when the team can fix that.”
The 89-75 win guarantees a top-three finish in the Big East and a game in the evening session of Quarterfinal Thursday at the Big East Tournament next week. It’s their second win over a Top Five opponent in a week, the first time they’ve ever beaten two of them in one season. It’s the 14th Top 10 win under Greg McDermott, after CU had just five total before his arrival.
After this one, he took a moment to wax philosophical.
“Happiness is fleeting. Happiness is based on something that happens in your life, usually an event. But joy is about what you do every day and and the people you do it with, and this has been a joyful group to coach,” McDermott said. “It’s been fun. We’re able to have conversations about different ways of doing things because it’s not the coach talking and the player listening — these guys have played a lot of basketball and I value their opinion. It’s been an absolute blast and when it’s over — and hopefully it’s not over for a while — it’s going to be hard. The joy that we’re experiencing the last four or five months is going to be gone, and that’s going to be a tough pill to swallow.”
Inside the Box:
In Baylor Scheierman’s final home game, he gave his home state fans one final legendary performance with 26 points, 16 rebounds, four assists, two steals and a block. He made six 3-pointers, including two back-to-back in the closing run — one last Baylor Heat-Check for the home crowd. His 26 points were one shy of his Creighton career high, set twice over the last month (he had 27 both in the loss at Providence and the win at Butler.) His 16 rebounds were his most in a CU uniform and two shy of his collegiate best. And his six made 3’s were one shy of his career high, set in the first meeting against Marquette when he made seven.
He’s made a three-pointer in 18 straight games and scored nine or more points in every single game this season — including 14 straight games in double figures to begin the year and 15 straight to end it, sandwiched around a nine-point effort in the home win over Providence that ranks as his “worst” game of the year. But he’s so much more than just a scorer. It was his 14th double-double of the season, the most by any Bluejay since Bob Harstad had 13 in 1988-89 (and Scheierman’s 13 a year ago). That gives him 27 double-doubles in 67 games played at Creighton.
“I think rebounding is the one thing I questioned, would it translate from the Summit League to the Big East,” McDermott said. “But he’s probably been a better rebounder here than he was in the Summit. He’s got a great nose for the ball and he’s not afraid of contact. He’s, I’ve said it before, he’s so much more than a scorer. He’s got his fingerprints all over this team.”
Over his last 12 games, he’s averaged 19.8 points, 9.9 rebounds, 4.3 assists and three made 3-pointers while playing 38.6 minutes per game. What a player. What an absolutely unbelievable player. You probably can’t hoist #55 to the rafters after only two seasons in a Bluejay uniform, but it feels like Scheierman ought to be the inaugural member of something else — a Bluejay Wall of Honor? Something.
“It meant a lot to be from Nebraska and be able to put on this jersey and represent the school and the community,” Scheierman said. “It’s been a dream come true. Being able to be closer to home and having all these people be able to come watch me and support me, it’s something I don’t take for granted. Obviously after this year I’m going to try to play professionally, but there’s no professional teams in Nebraska so this is my last basketball game ever playing in Nebraska … it just means a lot. I can’t really put it into words.”
Scheierman’s roommate, Francisco Farabello, had 12 points on 5-for-5 shooting including 2-of-2 from 3 in 18 minutes in his final home game. It’s his second double-digit scoring game of the season, third as a Bluejay and eighth of his five-year career. He, too, hit a big three in the final game-deciding run.
“It’s fitting because he’s done so much that doesn’t show up on a stat sheet,” McDermott said. “So for him to have things show up on a stat sheet in his final game here, that’s poetic justice because he’s been as good a teammate as you can ever, ever ask for. He’s been everything I could have wished for and more. You bring in a transfer from a Power Five school and he doesn’t start a game in his career, and I don’t know that I’ve ever heard the guy complain, because it’s never about him, it’s about somebody else, and that’s why he’s going to be successful long after he’s done playing basketball, whatever he chooses to do. He gets it, he gets people, he gets relationships and I think if you polled our guys, he’s one of their go-tos, freshmen through seniors.”
Ryan Kalkbrenner had 19 points on 9-of-12 from the field and 1-of-2 from the line, with six rebounds and five blocks. Four of his boards were offensive, giving him 157 in his career to pass Doug McDermott’s CHI Health Center Omaha record of 155. Kalkbrenner also broke his own CHI Health Center Omaha single-season record with 41 blocks this year. He has one year of eligibility left, but that’s a decision for another day.
“I’m a little bit of a robot. I was too focused on the game to think about it. It started to hit me a little bit when Mac started subbing us out, but until then I really wasn’t even thinking about it being our last game,” Kalkbrenner said. “It’s sad that it could be the last one, but I’m also just so grateful to be a part of this program for four years and how great it’s been to me. It makes me really happy and proud to just have been part of it.”
And while not a senior, Trey Alexander likely played his final home game as a Bluejay as well — and if it was, what a way to go out. He had his second straight double-double with 18 points, a career-high 11 assists and four rebounds.
Alexander, Scheierman and Kalkbrenner have all scored over 500 points this season. They’re just the second Bluejay trio to ever do that in the same year, joining Ray Yost, Eddie Cole and Elton Tuttle in 1953-54.
“I was talking to my family about it the other day. This is crazy that this might be my last game here as a Creighton Bluejay. Even though I didn’t get a senior night and I might not get to a senior night, it’s just been fun these past three years,” Alexander said. “I’ve been embraced by a place that I didn’t know about until I got here and with the help of my coaches and the staff and people like that I was able to turn my game into an NBA player. I’m forever grateful for this place and these fans. It’s been a blessing to be here for these past three years and I’m forever thankful for this place. Obviously I’ll be back just to visit and things like that if I don’t come back next year. It’s been a hell of a ride. I couldn’t be more grateful for being able to come here and being able to play basketball here.”