Trailing 71-70 with 27 seconds to play, DePaul had two chances to win it on their final possession. After a timeout to draw up a play, the Jays shut down their first attempt to win the game by sticking Josh Dix on leading scorer CJ Gunn; when Gunn set a screen to free up another option, Dix switched onto Brandon Maclin and trapped him on the baseline with 12 seconds to go. That’s right: Dix stopped two players on one play.
Watching it unfold, coach Chris Holtmann called another timeout while there was still time to pivot. They used Gunn as a decoy this time, and he set a screen again for Maclin.
“We went to kind of a zone-type defense where we match up when the ball comes in, and actually, it couldn’t have gone any better, because Gunn didn’t end up with the ball and (Layden) Blocker didn’t end up with the ball,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “We have Maclin, and Josh ends up the guy matched up to him, our best defender, and it looked on film like Josh just slipped a little as he closed out, and he got a half a step on him and was able to get to the rim.”
Maclin scored the go-ahead bucket at the rim, which was only fitting — DePaul scored 46 of their 72 points in the paint, and outscored the Jays 46-12 there.
“We had our best defender on him; we trust him guarding anybody,” Austin Swartz said. “He was able to get two feet in the paint, and that’d kind of been our Achilles heel all night, not being able to guard the paint. That’s how they won the game, we couldn’t keep them out of the paint.”
Still, the Bluejays had a full toolbox to try and win the game: seven seconds on the clock and two timeouts. They squandered the former, and didn’t use the latter. Nik Graves caught the ball in the backcourt and wasn’t especially quick bringing it up the floor; he’d used three of the seven seconds before getting across the timeline. DePaul met him with a double-team that forced him to drive to the right, where a third defender cut off his driving lane. At that point, both Josh Dix and the bench were signaling for a timeout to reset, but because the clock was ticking down all eyes (including the officials’) were on the other side of the floor where the ball was. And so Graves was left to throw up a desperation three that misfired.
on repeat 🔁 pic.twitter.com/UtEaPf5TuT
— DePaul Basketball (@DePaulHoops) February 12, 2026
CU trailed most of the first half, but used threes from Hudson Greer and Austin Swartz to go ahead 28-26 with seven minutes to go. As the Blue Demons called timeout to regroup, they had scored 22 of their 26 points in the paint and owned an absurd 22-2 advantage there. If the Jays hadn’t made seven of their first 11 threes, they’d have been buried.
Austin connects from the corner 😤#GoJays // 📺 Peacock pic.twitter.com/e5isL2b5qr
— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) February 12, 2026
As it was, they led by two, and would soon open up a five-point lead, their largest of the game, after two consecutive threes from Dix. Both were set up by steals; the first with 1:05 left came after a steal by Nik Graves, and the second 35 seconds later followed a steal by Dix himself. The 8-0 run over the final 90 seconds of the half seemed to flip the momentum of the game in Creighton’s favor.
But like so often this season, they shot themselves in the foot. After DePaul missed a shot with one second left in the half, Graves went up hard for the rebound and was called for a foul, giving the Blue Demons a chance to get one more play. They threw it in to CJ Gunn in the corner, and he buried a three at the horn. From the foul that set it up, to the failure to face guard a good shooter and the lack of awareness that they had a foul to give — sitting at just five fouls for the half, they could have simply fouled anyone and likely taken away most of the one second remaining in the half. Instead, while they still led 42-40 at the break, the momentum went with DePaul.
In the second half, they took a 48-44 lead on a three from Greer with 15:58 to go and then went nearly seven minutes before making their next shot. It coincided with Graves picking up his third foul and sitting on the bench.
“It was really a foolish foul by Nik,” McDermott said. “You know, it was 94 feet from the basket and he’s too important to what we do to make that make that mistake at that point in the game. Obviously that ended up being really critical.”
They scored four points from the line during that stretch, and DePaul wasn’t much better, only taking a two-point lead at 54-52. Swartz buried a three to give CU back the lead 55-54, then hit another a couple of minutes later to put them ahead by five.
Nik shifts the defense➡️ Austin knocks it down#GoJays // 📺 Peacock pic.twitter.com/g83p4iYwiP
— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) February 12, 2026
Austin is heating up 🔥#GoJays // 📺 Peacock pic.twitter.com/esEnlY2ios
— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) February 12, 2026
But after Dix hit a bucket to put CU ahead 71-68 with 2:34 left, everything broke against them. With 1:07 left Graves and Maclin fought for a loose ball, it looked like Graves had forced a tie-up — but the officials didn’t see it that way, let them keep playing, and eventually Maclin got enough of the ball to earn a foul call. He could only make 1-of-2 from the line, but CJ Gunn got the offensive rebound and was fouled. He, too, made just 1-of-2 from the line. Swartz missed a fadeaway jumper, DePaul cleared the board, and the rest was history.
“Just really unfortunate, because we shot the ball well,” McDermott said. “We did some good things well, but free-throw block-outs, second-chance points, at the rim, it’s kind of a broken record. It’s been our weakness all season long.”
Creighton’s 23-game winning streak against DePaul came to an end with the loss, but unlike the previous most recent win for the Blue Demons in 2015, this one was no fluke. They deserved to win, outplayed the Bluejays in most areas of the game, and appear to be a program on the upswing.
“Chris (Holtmann) has been good wherever he’s been at,” McDermott said. “I had tremendous respect for him when I coached against him at Butler and obviously, he went to Ohio State and did a good job. He’s building this program the right way. He was able to keep enough pieces with Blocker and Gunn and Benson and then add to it. They’ve played some good basketball. They’ve lost some close games, and unfortunately tonight, we were the recipient of them winning a close game.”
Inside the Box:
Truthfully, if Maclin’s shot had missed, or if the Jays had somehow figured out a way to respond at the buzzer, it would have been a win CU stole from the jaws of defeat. They didn’t do a heckuva lot well, but disguised it behind one of their best three-point shooting nights of the season — and just about got away with it. They made 14-of-27 from outside, and were 1-of-6 on layups. But their defense allowed DePaul to take 22 of their 53 shot attempts at the rim (41.5%), unable to stop them from getting there or from scoring once they did as the Blue Demons made 16 of those 22 shots. DePaul had the edge in points off turnovers (14-10), second chance points (20-9), and a decisive 46-12 advantage in the paint.
“In the first half, they had six offensive rebounds but they scored every single time,” McDermott said. “You know, we’ve had games where we’ve given up offensive rebounds but we’ve done a good job putting our defense back together. That was not the case tonight. We opted to go with a more aggressive ball screen coverage, and we thought that gave us the best chance. But what that does is spread you out a little bit, and it gets you in some rotations and it gets you in some bad box out situations. You know, we didn’t we didn’t execute those well enough.”
The 14 made threes were Creighton’s third-most in a game this season, behind only the 16 they made at Xavier and 17 against Nicholls. They made 51.9% from three, which was their second-best shooting percentage of the season, trailing only the Xavier game in Omaha where they made 54.2% from three.
It’s the first time Creighton has played consecutive one-point games since Feb. 7 and Feb. 10 in 2018. The first of those two games saw the Jays beat DePaul 76-75 in Chicago on a Marcus Foster game-winner.
MARCUS. FOSTER. BANG. #GoJays #LetItFly #BIGEASThoops pic.twitter.com/Hihboabj6B
— Creighton Men’s Basketball (@BluejayMBB) February 8, 2018
And the second? A 72-71 Xavier win where this happened.
— 𝓜𝓪𝓽𝓽 𝓓𝓮𝓜𝓪𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓲𝓼 (@mjdemarinis) February 10, 2018