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Morning After: Jamiya Neal’s Best Game as a Bluejay (So Far) Carries Creighton into the Round of 32

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[Box Score]

Eight minutes into the game, Creighton was 1-of-7 from three-point range, they had been out-rebounded 9-4 and Ryan Kalkbrenner had only attempted one shot in front of a heavily-pro-Louisville crowd. But they led 16-15 in spite of all that because Steven Ashworth was at his crafty best. He drew a foul 16 seconds into the game and made two free throws to get them on the board, assisted on a layup by Jackson McAndrew, and then created space for himself to knock down a three:

With the Jays trailing 12-11, he drove the baseline and threw in a one-handed bank shot high off the glass to put them ahead. Louisville answered with a three, and with the Cardinals making it difficult for the Jays to get Ryan Kalkbrenner the ball in the post, he created his own shot. Kalkbrenner took the ball from the perimeter to the rim — two dribbles, two steps, finger roll, foul, free throw — and he was on the board.

Louisville took one last lead 17-16 on a layup by J’Vonne Hadley, and Jamiya Neal answered back with a drive to the rim. It was the start of a 12-4 run to create separation, with a pick-and-roll lob pass to Kalkbrenner getting it started. Neal followed with a step-back three and a lob pass to Kalkbrenner for a dunk, and when Fedor Zugic hit a three with 7:47 to go, the Jays had opened up a 28-21 lead.

The Jays had done an excellent job to that point of taking care of the basketball, but two straight turnovers in less than 30 seconds both led to transition buckets for Louisville. With the lead down to 28-25, Greg McDermott could feel the momentum shifting, and did something he almost never does — call timeout to regroup.

Regroup? More like prepare for an avalanche.

Over the next 4:10, Creighton went on a 19-2 run that stunned the crowd into silence and gave the Bluejays a 20-point lead, 47-27. Kalkbrenner started the run by dribbling the ball along the perimeter and dragging two defenders with him, then passing it to Ashworth who was waiting in the space left behind. He drained a three to make it 31-25.

After a stop, they got the ball to Kalkbrenner at the rim; when his shot was blocked, Jasen Green secured the offensive rebound and tapped it out to McAndrew who was wide open behind the perimeter. His three made it 34-25.

Another defensive stop followed. Ashworth missed a midrange jumper, and Green grabbed another offensive — this time he passed it right back to Ashworth, who did not miss twice. His three made it 37-25. Louisville’s Terrence Edwards Jr. drove the ball to the rim in transition, where Neal altered the shot (though wasn’t credited for a block) and secured the rebound. Pushing it up the floor, he drove towards the basket, collapsed the defense, and kicked it back to the trailer — McAndrew — who sank a three. 40-25. Timeout Louisville.

Four 3s in a span of 97 seconds, extending the lead from three to 15 in the blink of an eye. And they weren’t done. A couple of possessions later, McAndrew would hit another three, Neal followed 17 seconds later with a three of his own, and the Jays had an improbable 47-27 lead.

“Early on we had a lot of good looks that just weren’t dropping, and during that stretch we got four great looks and we knocked them down,” Neal said. “From there, we were just in a groove and we just fed off that.”

“Yeah, we were making shots and all feeding off each other,” McAndrew added. “There was a lot of energy in the ball and I thought that helped us a lot, also, getting stops on the other end and we were able to push it and get a lot of great looks. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.”

Though Louisville closed the half with five straight to give themselves a sliver of hope, Creighton came out in the second half and showed they had no intention of letting up. Kalkbrenner hit an early three, making him the fifth different Bluejay to make one at that point. Green grabbed another offensive rebound a couple of possessions later, and passed it to Neal for a layup. Two minutes into the half, it was 54-36 Bluejays.

From there, every time Louisville tried to claw back into the game, Creighton had an answer. With 15:32 left the Cards cut the lead to 14 and got their fans back into it, only for Ashworth to silence them with a three from the March Madness logo. At the 11:37 mark they cut the lead to 13, only for Kalkbrenner and Neal to score back-to-back buckets at the rim sandwiched around a defensive stop. With 7:28 they sliced it to 12, and Neal answered with a jumper to push it back to 71-57. Then Chucky Hepburn answered right back by driving it right at Kalkbrenner and scoring over him, and it looked like there was a glimmer of hope especially with what was essentially a home crowd behind them.

“It seems like it’s been our third road game in neutral sites this postseason, playing in Madison Square Garden out on the East Coast against UCONN and St. Johns, and here in Lexington, Kentucky against Louisville,” Ashworth said. “So we knew that there was some things in those other games that we could learn from, and personally, I felt like it was my job as the point guard to make sure that when they were going on runs, when the crowd tried to get into it, I tried to settle things down. Some of that was either feeding Jamiya or finding underneath and a couple times it was me getting my own shot. It was one of those moments where you could feel the momentum trying to swing their way and just one of those things that you try to stop it.”

Then Louisville coach Pat Kelsey lost his composure and his team lost the game. Upset over a foul call, he stepped onto the floor to yell at the official, clapping twice to make sure he had his attention before repeatedly yelling “That’s terrible! That’s terrible!” with some spicier language mixed in.

And with their coach lighting the fuse, an angry Louisville fan hurled a full water bottle toward the Creighton bench, where Ashworth picked it up, showed it to the refs, and handed it to the scorers table. It took several minutes to get the mess cleaned up, with CU’s managers and assistants wiping it up; no one would have blamed them if they’d expected Kelsey and his staff to be the ones on their hands and knees using towels to do the cleaning, since they’d instigated the nonsense.

The result was two made free throws from Ashworth off of the technical, and a jumper by Neal on the technical possession. If Kelsey’s intent had been to fire up his team for one last push, what had actually happened was handing CU four points and ending any chance of a comeback.

“I felt a splash when it landed,” McDermott said. “I don’t know what happened on the other end, and that led to the technical. But it ended with a couple of free free throws. Those were nice at that point in time.”

“I got frustrated and said something I shouldn’t have said and he teed me up, you know,” Kelsey said. “Far less than an ideal time to get technical, I realize that. So it is what it is.”

From there, the Jays closed out an 89-75 victory as most of the crowd filed out early. After a convincing win, it was time to celebrate. On the court, that meant a piggyback ride for Zugic.

In the locker room, that meant dancing — and advancing themselves in the bracket. To no one’s surprise, Neal got the honors on both counts.

Next up: top overall seed Auburn, who won their opening game 83-63. They opened as 9.5 point favorites, as to be expected. But that’s to worry about later.

Inside the Box:

Jamiya Neal picked a heckuva time to have his best game as a Bluejay.

  • 29 points
  • 12 rebounds
  • 6 assists
  • 11-of-16 FG (68.8%)

Neal is the first Creighton player to lead the team in points, rebounds and assists in an NCAA Tournament game since assists became an official stat in the early 1980s. Only two others have even led them in points and rebounds (without counting assists) — Arthur Kaluma vs. Kansas (24 & 12 in 2022) and Mitch Ballock vs. Kansas State (16 & 8 in 2018).

But it’s not just rarified air among Bluejays. Neal is the first player for ANY team with at least 25 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 assists while making 65% or more of their shots in an NCAA Tournament game since Marquette’s Dwyane Wade in the 2003 Elite Eight.

Going back further, according to Elias Sports, this is the complete list of players to ever have 29+ points, 12+ rebounds and 6+ assists in an NCAA Tourney game:

  • Jamiya Neal
  • Ed O’Bannon
  • Larry Bird
  • Marques Johnson
  • Bill Bradley
  • Oscar Robertson

That’s the kind of performance we’re talking about here — if legends are made in March, Neal cemented his status in Bluejay lore with this one.

His 29 points were five more than his previous career high, set in a road win at UConn in January. His 12 rebounds tied a career high set against Georgetown last month. And his six assists marked the tenth time he’s had six or more in a game this season — notable only because he did that ZERO times in 93 games over three seasons at Arizona State.

Neal has talked openly about how much he’s improved in his one season at Creighton, and said on Thursday that he wasn’t ready for it to be over. He certainly played that way.

“I’d say the difference here is leadership, consistency, and stability,” Neal said after that win over Georgetown in February. “In my last situation, it wasn’t that stable. If we won, we might have not practiced. If we lost, we might have run all day. We’re really process-oriented here, and everybody really likes each other.”

“The coaching staff and Mac, they’re all like, basketball junkies. They’re always watching basketball. They’re always finding new ways to get better,” Neal continued. “The biggest thing is we don’t accept mediocrity here, you know? If you come in here and you don’t want to work, this is not the place for you. Mac and everybody, any of your teammates, are going to hold you to a standard and hold you accountable to be great. I’m happy I chose here and I’m happy I’m around guys that push me to be great and I’m happy we’re doing this together.”

Here’s what I wrote a month ago when those quotes originally ran:

That might sound like a poor review of the culture around Bobby Hurley’s program in Tempe, and maybe it is. But it’s also an honest assessment of what Neal knew he needed to find in order to be the best version of himself — he’s used the phrase “process-oriented” on multiple occasions this season in describing what sold him on transferring to Creighton. And the structure and culture of CU’s program have grown him into a player who will be vital to whatever happens over the next month.

When I said “vital” I didn’t think that meant he’d make a star turn. But here we are. What a time to be alive.

“(Neal) defied all human nature when it comes to basketball metrics today because that young man was shooting it in from the mid-range, and I give him a ton of credit. Tip the cap,” Louisville coach Pat Kelsey said. “He had an amazing game. I mean, he had 29, 12, six assists, and many of them were tough, tough shots. He was hitting tough dagger middies that every time you turned around, you’re like, gosh.”

Steven Ashworth, meanwhile, added 22 points, five rebounds and five assists. Ashworth and Neal are just the second pair of teammates in the past 20 years to each post a 20/5/5 line in the same NCAA Tournament game, joining Colorado’s KJ Simpson and Eddie Lampkin. The only other Big East team to do it was UConn in 1996, when Ray Allen (25/10/7) and Doron Sheffer (27/7/5) did it vs. Eastern Michigan.

They also became just the fourth and fifth Bluejays to ever have a 20/5/5 line in an NCAA Tournament game. Gene Harmon was the first in 1973-74, ironically also against Louisville — he had 22 points, eight rebounds and five assists in an 80-71 win. Kyle Korver did it against Central Michigan in 2003 (21/9/5), Trey Alexander did it against Akron last March (22/5/5) — and now Neal and Ashworth join that list.

They needed just 29 shots to get their 51 combined shots. Meanwhile, Louisville guards Chucky Hepburn and Terrance Edwards Jr. combined for 43 points — but they needed 45 shots to get them. In terms of efficiency, it was night and day.

“We felt like we had to win the three-point line battle, so we did what we do to try to force them into twos, and if they were taking threes, they were going to be challenged,” McDermott said. “And I think for the most part, we were able to do that. But they are hard to guard because they have so many weapons and Chucky, besides being an elite scorer himself, he sets other guys up. We felt in this game it couldn’t be a game where he had 18 points and 14 assists. Only ten assists, under 30 baskets, that’s how we tried to make them play, and fortunately, it worked.”

All of that is amazing. But the biggest number was three. That’s how many turnovers the Jays’ primary ball handlers, Neal and Ashworth, combined for. It meant Louisville had very few opportunities to score in transition.

Jackson McAndrew had 11 points and made three 3-pointers. He’s just the sixth Bluejay freshman with 11 or more points in a Round of 64 game, joining Tony Pruitt (1981), Terrell Taylor (2000), Mitch Ballock (2018), Arthur Kaluma (2022) and Trey Alexander (2022). And with 65 made threes for the season, he moved past Ryan Sears (63) and Kyle Korver (63) and now trails only Ethan Wragge (68) for most three-pointers by a CU freshman.

Jasen Green had eight rebounds — five of them offensive! — and scored nine points with a pair of exclamation point dunks late in the game. And Ryan Kalkbrenner added 14 points, taking just eight shots.

After scoring just 12 in their semifinal win over UConn last week in a similar game where the defense dared someone else to beat them, Kalkbrenner said “If they want me to be a decoy, I’ll be a decoy all night. I’ll let Jasen cook. I’ll let Jamiya cook. Whoever’s night it is, I don’t care.” He was more than just a decoy, but his presence certainly opened up looks for everyone else — and the fact that they knocked them down is the biggest reason CU is advancing.

Which leads us to that first-half avalanche. My goodness.

Creighton missed its first 5 shots, all from three-point range. The Jays then made 17 of their last 25 including 9-11 from deep — and seven in a row. It was a blizzard of points, especially when they made four in 97 seconds.

Creighton has done this before in the McDermott Era, certainly. It’s become their calling card — combining defensive stops and made threes to bury an opponent. But doing it under the bright lights of the big dance? That’s new. That’s fun. The 49 first-half points were their most-ever in an NCAA Tournament game. Their 89 total points tied a program record for an NCAA Tournament game, as CU also scored 89 on March 9, 1964 against Oklahoma City.

Highlights:

Press Conferences:

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