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Morning After: Creighton’s Seniors Lead the Way in 87-74 Win over Butler

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[Box Score]

The beauty of great three-point shooters is that you never know when they’re going to catch fire and change the momentum of a game by draining two or three (or more) in a row. As exhilarating as a fastbreak dunk can be, there’s little in basketball as backbreaking (or energizing) as a shooter who gets on a roll.

On Saturday, Steven Ashworth had one of those moments in his final home game as a Bluejay.

After trailing for most of the first half, Creighton finally took the lead 41-40 on a three from Jackson McAndrew with just under four minutes left. And then Ashworth sparked an 11-2 run to end the half, hitting a pair of threes and flipping the game in the process. He had seven 3’s — yes, seven! — in the first half.

“Funny enough, right before going into the locker room, I tried to make a 3 to end it and missed like seven in a row,” Ashworth said. “I told myself, ‘Well, I got em all out now,’ and apparently I did.”

The first five of his 3’s in the first half single-handedly kept them in the game and helped them withstand an early explosion from Butler. The Bulldogs started 11-of-15 for the game, including 7-of-9 from three, all in the first eight minutes. All seven of the Bulldogs who had been on the floor scored, and five of them hit threes. But Ashworth was 5-of-6 from three all by himself, a one-man dam against Butler’s flood of threes.

With zero fouls called, the teams blew right through the first media timeout at the 16 minute mark — and then almost blew through the second one, too, at the 12 minute mark. But after a 29-second sequence that saw Butler’s Finley Bizjack hit a three, Ashworth answer with a three for the Jays, and then Bizjack hit another three to take a 29-22 lead, an exasperated Greg McDermott had seen enough and called timeout.

“(Butler) scored 31 points the first 15 possessions of the game, which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen in my life,” McDermott said. “From that point forward, we defended pretty well.”

Butler came in ranked 38th nationally in 3-point shooting, and matched their season-high with 12 made three-pointers in their previous game against Xavier. They had made 10 or more three-pointers in three of the team’s last four games, so it’s not like this was totally out of character.

But even by those standards, this start was absurd.

29 points in eight minutes brought back memories of Butler’s 99-98 win in Omaha last season. While the Jays never found an adjustment that worked that night, this time they were more successful. The Bulldogs scored just 15 points in the final 12 minutes of the half. It’s tempting to assume Butler simply cooled off and had a regression to the mean, but the answer is not that they started missing threes — it’s that they stopped taking them altogether because Creighton got a lot more aggressive at running them off the line. Their communication improved so that they were able to anticipate ball movement and be there on the catch. The result was Butler only attempted one more 3-pointer over the final 12 minutes of the half, and they missed it.

Faced with having to score inside on Ryan Kalkbrenner, it got a lot tougher to score. And with the fire contained, Creighton began their comeback.

Over the final 12 minutes of the half, Kalkbrenner scored 11 points. Two of them came on this vintage Ashworth-to-Kalkbrenner lob pass for a dunk.

He later tipped in a missed shot for a dunk to tie the game at 38. Then McAndrew’s three gave them the lead 41-40, and though Butler re-took the lead one last time on a short jumper, McAndrew gave the Jays the lead for good with another three.

And then Ashworth took over. An 11-0 run spanning 2-1/2 minutes turned a 42-41 Butler lead into a 52-42 Jays lead. And though the Bulldogs hit a putback at the buzzer to go into the half down by just eight, the game had been flipped.

Three minutes into the second half, CU had essentially doubled their lead, pushing it out to 15 featuring two dunks from Kalkbrenner. It would stay in double digits the rest of the way except for a brief rally late in the game that cut the lead to six. But all that did was give another Bluejay senior, Jamiya Neal, one more chance to make a huge shot.

Clinging to a 76-70 lead with 4:15 to go, Neal brought the ball across half court with a defender in his pocket. Kalkbrenner set a screen to free him, Neal dribbled to the perimeter, and no one came out to defend him — either because they blew an assignment or were daring him to shoot. Either way, the result was the same: swish.

“Nobody stopped the ball,” Neal explained. “So I just said, ‘Why not let it fly one (more) time?’ I was getting my inner Steve-o on right there.”

On the next possession, another Bluejay found themselves wide open. After Neal cleared the board on a missed jumper from Butler’s Boden Kapke, he got the Jays into their offense and Ashworth found Mason Miller for a three. This time, it would hard to argue if Butler had dared him to shoot it; Miller had not made a three in nearly two months. January 14 against Providence, to be exact.

This one gave the Jays an 82-70 lead and produced one of the louder cheers of the game from Bluejay fans well aware of his season-long slump. It also gave McDermott the chance to sub his seniors out one at a time and get them their own well-deserved curtain calls.

“They deserve to be celebrated,” McDermott said. “They’ve done everything we’ve asked them to do, and they’ve done it in an unselfish way. They’re all playing different roles, and they’ve all embraced those. They’ve been a lot of fun to coach.”

At the beginning of the season, KenPom projected Creighton to finish 22-9. Despite all the early season struggles, the 7-5 start, and the loss of Pop Isaacs, Creighton finished the season…22-9. They needed a 15-4 finish to get there, but they did, and it might be McDermott’s best coaching job at CU. Can he coax a March run out of this team? If so, we’ll have to replace “might” in that sentence.

“It’s been an incredible year,”McDermott said, “and now the fun starts.”

Their postseason begins Thursday night in New York, where they’ll play the winner of Georgetown and DePaul at 6:00pm Omaha time.

Inside the Box:

Creighton’s three senior starters went out in style. They got 27 points, 15 rebounds, two blocks and two assists from Ryan Kalkbrenner. Steven Ashworth had 23 points, 11 assists and six rebounds. And Jamiya Neal chipped in 10 points, eight assists and five rebounds.

Kalkbrenner’s two blocks gave him 248 for his career in Big East games, moving him past Patrick Ewing (247) for most ever in league history. His 15 rebounds tied a career high, and it was his tenth double-double of the season

He wraps up his Big East career with the all-time records in league play for games played (98), minutes (2,930), blocks (248) and field goal percentage (.642). He also owns CHI Health Center Omaha career records for games (77), field goal percentage (.727) and blocked shots (177).

Ashworth’s name is all over the record book, too. He set CHI Health Center Omaha single-season records for three-pointers made (62), three-pointers attempted (145), free throw percentage (.923) and assists (116).

He also became the first player in Creighton history with 500 points and 200 assists in a single season. That’s wild to think about, isn’t it?

“Think about some of the guards we’ve had roll through here,” McDermott said. “То be the first one to do that in a Creighton uniform is incredible.”

He’s right. From Randy Eccker to Ryan Sears, from Tyler McKinney to Antoine Young, Austin Chatman, Mo Watson, Marcus Zegarowski, Ryan Nembhard — none of them had 500 points and 200 assists in a season. Ashworth is the first and only.

As for Neal, five of his 10 points came in the crucial two-minute stretch after Butler had cut the lead to single-digits with 6:00 to play. His knack for making big plays — and his confidence to go for it — will be the trait he’s remembered for.

“We’ve been through a lot, and when you go through things with people, it makes you closer,” Neal said of his one year at CU. “A lot of times, I had years where stuff has happened and I shied away from it. This year, my teammates and Coach Mac, they didn’t let me.”

Other key contributors included Fedor Zugic, who hit two huge threes, one in each half. And Jackson McAndrew’s 14 points, six rebounds and an assist were a stellar end to his first regular season. He was 4-of-6 from three point range, and hit at least one three in 19 of their 20 Big East games. He’s the only player, men’s or women’s, to do that.

The previous records were both held by UConn players; the men’s record had been 18 by Khalid El-Amin, and the women’s record remains held by Paige Bueckers (16).

While it’s impressive that he hit a three in 19 different league games, it’s equally impressive for a freshman to be confident enough to get shots up every night. He’s suffered through slumps as all shooters do, but even when he was struggling he still found ways to get at one three to go in. That’s a rare trait for a freshman.

Meanwhile, as a team Creighton set program-records for most conference wins in a one-year span (15), two-year span (29), three-year span (43), four-year span (55), five-year span (69), six-year span (82) and seven-year span (91). Their nine Big East home wins tie a program record for one season, also done in 2013-14 and 2022-23.

And how’s this for a stat: Creighton has finished first or second in the Big East in four of the last six seasons.

Press Conference:

Highlights:

Senior Videos:

Sami Osmani

Jamiya Neal

Steven Ashworth

Ryan Kalkbrenner

Speeches:

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