Creighton blasted out to a 10-0 lead on Saturday, with Trey Alexander scoring eight of the 10 points. And then when they’d given away a 24-point lead and needed a bucket to avoid going to overtime after blowing a second double-digit lead to Villanova this season, Alexander finished what he started. With the clock ticking down, he dribbled across the paint, rose up from 15 feet, and buried a game-winning turnaround jumper at the buzzer.
Moments before with the Jays clinging to a 67-64 lead, Alexander had made the mistake of fouling Eric Dixon while he was attempting a three. Dixon made all three free throws to tie the game.
“I made a little bit of a hiccup on the other end of the court right before that. I mean, I had to make up for it,” Alexander said on the postgame radio show. “I knew that it was a dumb decision. I was trying to get (Dixon) off the line, but he took one dribble to the side and I fouled him. I knew that Mac was going to trust me with the ball in my hand, so I just went for a shot that I’ve taken a million times.”
“We’ve had a lot of confidence in him. I watch his work and I watch how much time the guy puts in to a variety of shots and getting to different spots, and there was no doubt in my mind,” Greg McDermott added. “We didn’t take the time out. I knew what defense they were in, and the plan was to get it to Trey in a little two-man game with Kalk over here. If they would have went under the screen, Trey would have got it inside to him. He got to his spot and made a shot that looks really difficult, but I’ve seen him make it thousands of times.”
McDermott said when Alexander opted to return to Creighton last summer, he told his star that he’d have the ball in his hands when games were on the line. Sometimes, that’s gone spectacularly — see the 3OT game at Seton Hall where not once but twice he hit go-ahead shots in the final minute of the third overtime. Sometimes, not — see the home game at Villanova where he fumbled the inbounds pass, and the home game against Butler where he dribbled the ball off his foot driving to the rim. But McDermott has delivered on his promise, putting the ball in Alexander’s hands time after time. And with his history — no one will ever forget his game-winning overtime buckets to beat San Diego State in the 2022 NCAA Tournament — it’s been a good bet more times than not over the course of three seasons. Alexander has delivered more game-winning buckets than any Bluejay in recent memory.
Given how the game started, you’d have never figured the Jays would need last-possession heroics to win it. They opened the game 11-of-16 from the field and 8-of-12 from three-point range, with eight threes in the first eight minutes. They opened leads of 12-0, 21-3 and 30-8, with Baylor Scheierman hitting his first three 3-pointers all in a span of 106 seconds. It was a reasonable facsimile of their 2014 rout at Villanova, with Scheierman in the role of Ethan Wragge. If FOX’s Kevin Kugler had channeled his inner-Gus Johnson and cackled while saying “You’d better get a timeout, Kyle Neptune!” no one would have blamed him.
In the Wragge Game, they had a 27-8 lead and scored 35 points on their first 16 possessions. He made six threes without a miss in the first six minutes, an absurd display leading to Johnson’s famous call on the FS1 broadcast. That’s the stuff everyone remembers. Less memorable: the fact that Nova went on a 22-7 run to cut the deficit to just 13 before halftime, threatening to un-do the hot start.
On Saturday, a 16-2 Villanova run got them back in the game, coinciding with Scheierman checking out after picking up his second foul (they had led 32-8 when he headed to the bench at the 9:02 mark; when he returned five minutes later the damage had already been done). It eventually became a 21-5 run spanning over eight minutes, nearly erasing what CU had built in their opening blitz. A three from Eric Dixon briefly cut the lead to single-digits before this ferocious dunk by Kalkbrenner, where he was fouled by two players at the rim simultaneously. One of them fell to the court from the collision; the other stumbled away. As for Kalkbrenner? He sank a free throw after the dunk to push the lead back to 11.
Early in the second half, Villanova ripped off seven of the first 10 points to cut the lead to only seven, but CU answered with three pointers from Scheierman, Mason Miller and Francisco Farabello to temporarily halt the comeback. Then came the next wave: leading 63-49 with 5:15 left, the Jays were on the wrong end of a 14-2 Wildcat run with Eric Dixon scoring the first five and Justin Moore scoring the last five; the disastrous sequence left them clinging to a 65-64 edge with 1:33 to play.
While Dixon and Moore were unstoppable on their end of the floor, Creighton was busy going 0-for-3 from three-point range with a turnover. Kalkbrenner scored on back-to-back possessions, attempting to hold off the surging Wildcats; his second bucket was a dunk that came courtesy of an offensive rebound after Alexander missed a circus shot, giving CU a 67-64 lead with under a minute to go.
That set up the final sequence, where Alexander fouled Dixon on a three-point attempt and redeemed himself by making the game-winner.
“Oh, man. The finish to this regular season was huge. We showed we can get through adversity and it’s going to work out in the long run like it did last year,” Alexander said. “We went through a lot of tough games, and were able to win those games. I mean, I’m proud of this team. I love these guys and I love the way that we play. I love the unselfishness on this team. It’s been a great, great year and it’s not over yet. We’ve got one box to check, well we’ve got several boxes to check, but the next box, is to win in New York City.”
Inside the Box:
Creighton made 8-of-12 (66%) from three to start the game, and 6-of-25 (24%) the rest of the way. Interestingly, in the first game against Villanova they made 5-of-24, so taking away the early heater, they struggled mightily for 77 of 85 minutes against the Wildcats this year.
Their 37 attempted threes were the fourth-most of the season, trailing only the season opener versus Florida A&M where they took 38 and wins at Nebraska and against Texas Southern where they attempted 40. But as a percentage of their total shots, there’s only been one game this year where more of their attempts were threes: 61.7% of their shots in this was were threes, and in the aforementioned win over Texas Southern, it was 63.5%.
That game on December 30 also featured a long cold snap. They had four points over a 16 possession stretch in the second half, shooting 2-of-11 from the field and 0-of-5 from three as Villanova erased a 14-point lead. This one had a 16 possession stretch in the first half where they were 2-of-9 from the floor with five turnovers.
The 69-67 win was Creighton’s eighth road win of the season, their most since moving to the Big East — the last time they won this often on the road was in 2011-12, when they won 10 road games en route to a 25-5 regular season record.
Six of the eight road wins came in Big East play, trailing only the 2019-20 team who won seven road battles on their way to a regular season Big East title. Creighton has only won six or more conference games five times: 2001-02 (7), 2002-03 (6), 2008-09 (7), 2011-12 (7) and 2019-20 (7).
With a 14-6 record in conference games, they tied a program-best since joining the Big East (along with the 2020-21 team and last season, both of which also won 14). It’s one shy of their most in any league, trailing only the 15 wins the 2002-03 team collected in the MVC.
They’ve now finished in fourth place or better for eight consecutive years, and in nine of the 11 seasons they’ve played in the Big East.
And it completes a closing stretch where they won seven of eight, including home wins over #1 UConn and #5 Marquette and road wins at Xavier, Butler and Villanova, historically three of the harder venues to win at in the Big East. On the morning of February 7, they were coming off an overtime loss at Providence sitting at 16-7 overall and 7-5 in the league, and discontent was percolating online; they lost just once more the rest of the season.
It’s reminiscent of the run that the 2019-20 team went on, as they also won seven of their final eight — and that team’s lone loss also came at St. John’s, funny enough.
“I think I mentioned it after Senior Day, it’s just been so much fun,” McDermott said. “The connectivity of this group and how they get along with us and each other, and how we can laugh at each other and ourselves, it’s just made it a very enjoyable ride. Starting 0-2 in the Big East and ending up finishing second, going 14-4 from that point forward is a real credit to this group and my coaching staff. Ben McNair has done a great job of keeping guys healthy on the floor. And Jeremy Anderson, I say it all the time but we’ve played our best basketball at the end of every year since he’s arrived. So, a lot of work has gone in by a lot of people to have a season like this take place. Obviously, we’ve positioned ourselves well for New York and the NCAA tournament. It’s going to be sad when it ends, so I hope it doesn’t end for a while.”