Six weeks ago, Creighton knocked off #1 Kansas and then immediately lost the leading scorer from that game, Pop Isaacs, for the season. They lost two of the first three games without him, including an ugly 81-57 defeat at Georgetown. They’ve since won five of six, with two Quad 1 wins and two Quad 2 wins, as Greg McDermott has rebuilt the team on the fly.
Saturday’s 68-63 road win is the most impressive yet, coming against the two-time defending national champions in a hostile environment juiced by $2 beers and network FOX in the house.
Jamiya Neal carried them early, scoring 12 of their first 17. Isaac Traudt made huge shots in the middle of the game, including two 3-pointers and three free throws at the end of the first half to extend their lead to seven. And then Ryan Kalkbrenner and Steven Ashworth carried them across the finish line, scoring the team’s last 10.
“Jamiya really got us off to a great start and I thought Steven and Kalk brought us home,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “Kalk got a big basket out of a timeout on the block, and then they stepped up and made their free throws, which if you’re going to win on the road, you’ve got to defend, you’ve got to limit turnovers, you’ve got to make your free throws. They only got five free throws against us, we were able to get there 15 times, and that ended up being the difference.”
At the start, it looked similar to last year’s trip to Storrs as UConn built a 10-2 lead before the first media timeout. The Jays missed four of their first five shots, turned it over once, and the crowd sensed blood in the water.
Enter Neal. He scored on a back cut to the rim for a basket to stop the bleeding, and followed it with a three-pointer. He drove from 30 feet out straight to the rim for a dunk and met little resistance.
Sparked by Neal, Creighton ripped off a 15-4 run with 12 of the points coming from the Bluejay guard. The rest came courtesy of a long three by Ashworth, which gave the Jays the lead.
“They started off kind of fast, and I knew, obviously as a senior and a leader on this team, that I had to try to do something to get us going,” Neal said. “And tonight, that happened to be offense. I liked my matchup; I liked how they were guarding me.”
After UConn briefly retook the lead, Neal’s third triple of the half put CU back ahead 28-26 and started a 10-2 run that helped the Jays take a 35-28 advantage at the half.
The second half was one of big momentum swings. UConn got three-pointers from Solo Ball and Jaylin Stewart in the first three minutes of to close within 41-39, and Alex Karaban’s first basket at the 15:29 mark tied the score at 41. But Kalkbrenner answered for the Jays with a dunk:
And after UConn tied it at 43, Neal drove the baseline, taking a pass from Ashworth and throwing down a dunk, too.
A lob dunk from Ashworth to Kalkbrenner then extended the lead. And on the next possession, Traudt beat the shot clock with this step-back jumper.
And when Ashworth drained this ridiculously long three off of an offensive rebound, it gave CU a 55-48 lead and silenced the crowd for one of the few times all day.
A layup by Jasen Green made it 57-48 with 6:56 left, but UConn had one more run left in them. They got a floater from Karaban before a Stewart three-pointer that forced a Bluejay timeout with them clinging to a 57-53 lead. The Huskies retook the lead at 59-58 with 3:27 left on two free throws by Samson Johnson, but Kalkbrenner answered with a bucket to put CU ahead for good at 60-59.
Then with 1:50 to go, Mason Miller drew a charge on Karaban, and Kalkbrenner made two free throws to push the lead to three. A bucket by Stewart with 1:11 left trimmed CU’s back lead to one, and Ashworth twice made a pair of free throws sandwiched around another UConn bucket.
CU then used two fouls that it had to give to set up one final Huskies possession down three. There was some controversy on the second, as UConn’s Hassan Diarra hurled up a long three pointer after the foul had been called. Fans wanted it to be ruled a shooting foul. But it was called as a foul on the floor, with no free throws awarded.
For their part, UConn didn’t engage in any criticism of the call.
“I mean, the refs are going to call what they call,” Diarra said. “They did a good job today. Those missed calls are not the reason why we lost the game.”
“I didn’t really see it,” Dan Hurley said. “You’re mad in the moment, because you’re trying to scratch out a game. But James (Breeding) is a great ref. Clough (Tim Clougherty), Matt (Potter) are too…Today had nothing to do with those guys. The officiating we’ve had stateside this year has been excellent.”
In case that thinly-veiled shade at the refs in the Maui Invitational was a bit too opaque, Hurley kept on talking.
“That’s why my demeanor has been what it’s been in every game that hasn’t been played … on an island,” Hurley said.
In any event, after that foul, UConn inbounded the ball with less than five seconds left, Karaban missed a deep three-pointer and Kalkbrenner pulled down the board. He then made a pair of free throws with 1.4 seconds left to close out the win.
With the win, Creighton became just the third team in the last 10 seasons to have different games in the same season where it beat the nation’s #1 team and the defending national champ. Their NET moved from 51 to a season-best 44, thanks to their third Quad 1 win of the year, which is tied for 18th-most nationally.
“We’re improving, there’s no question,” McDermott said. “We had to retool everything when we lost Pop [Isaacs]. Jamiya’s role changed, Steven’s role changed, Mason [Miller], Jasen [Green], Fedor [Žugić], Jackson [McAndrew], Isaac [Traudt], everybody’s role changes when something like that happens and it takes a little bit of time for you to settle in and understand what we need from you and what your role is going to be with this new-look Bluejay team. We’re getting there, but to come and get a win like this with the respect we have for this program is huge for us. It keeps us in the conference race, which we want to be in.”
Inside the Box:
UConn was 6-of-19 from three-point range, 11-of-18 on layups and dunks, and 9-of-21 on non-rim 2s. And they only attempted five free throws. Creighton’s ability to steer teams into taking the shots it wants them to take was in full effect in this game — they took UConn completely out of rhythm by running them off the three-point line and then once inside the arc, Kalkbrenner forced them to take low-percentage, high-arching two-point jumpers from awkward distances.
UConn finished shooting 44.8% from the field yesterday, their 2nd worst performance of the season. They missed 19 shots inside the 3-point arc. According to Ryan Cassidy (@ryancassidycbb), Kalkbrenner significantly changed 13 of them. This thread has clips of eight of them with analysis of each.
UConn has scored more than 70 points just once against Creighton since rejoining the Big East, and it was an overtime game. The Huskies have had a top 30 offense in all five seasons, and top 10 each of the last three. But against Creighton’s defense, they’ve scored 74 (66 in regulation), 66, 59, 55, 62, 69, 53, 62, 66, and 63. Unsurprisingly, Creighton is 8-2 in those 10 games.
Individually, Jamiya Neal, scored a career-high 24 points on 10-of-16 from the field (3-of-5 from 3) and 1-of-2 from the free-throw line while playing all 40 minutes. But he was especially effective in the first half, scoring 17 points on 7-of-8 shooting including 3-of-3 from three.
“First year guys in our program, transfers, they haven’t exactly become themselves in the first year,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “It usually takes late into that first year and into the second before they really grow into what we’d like them to be. And Jamiya has had to switch gears, not only coming to a new place from Arizona State, but then after seven or eight games, nine games, his role changed when Pop goes down. So he has to play different, he has the ball in his hands more, he becomes more of a decision maker, and he’s adjusted to what we’ve asked him to do and I’m really proud of that. Some transfers want you to become them, and Jamiya has bought in and he’s become one of us, and the way we play and what we value, and today it was on full display.”
The coach on the other bench was complimentary of Neal, and frustrated with his players inability to execute their gameplan. Solo Ball, Jaylin Stewart, and Jayden Ross all took turns guarding Neal in the first half, and none were able to contain him.
“How we let him keep getting his right hand, how can you let a dominant righty driver, and a guy that loves to go right, just continue to drive the ball right? It’s a lack of attention to detail,” Dan Hurley said. “And it’s a lack of will.” Then he sat still for a minute pondering his next thought, and with a frustrated look on his face, simply uttered “Mmmph.”
Kalkbrenner finished with 16 and 10, along with stellar defense. And Steven Ashworth became Creighton’s first player in the last 20 years (at least) with 8+ assists in 3 straight conference road games, according to research from Rob Anderson.
Jackson McAndrew is now the only freshman in Creighton history to make a 3-pointer in seven straight Big East games. But Isaac Traudt played the bulk of the minutes at the ‘4’ in this one, finishing with 11 points in 22 minutes, shooting 2-of-5 from three point range. Traudt also hit a fadeaway off one foot to beat the shot clock in the second half, and fought for an offensive rebound that led to a second-chance 3 from Ashworth. He played the final 15 minutes of the game, and rewarded that trust.
“With him and Jackson, they’re kind of playing 50-50 right now a little bit, and it’s kind of who’s got it going that night,” McDermott said. “We decided to ride with the group that was playing well defensively, and Isaac was part of that.”
And Alex Karaban, UConn’s leading scorer, finished with eight points, less than half his average on 3-of-12 shooting, including 0-of-3 from three, and took just two free throws. Jasen Green and Mason Miller tag-teamed him defensively and handcuffed him.
“Jasen and Mason’s job was to stay attached to him and not worry about switching, not worry about helping — just make his looks difficult,” McDermott said. “I thought they both did a terrific job. Mason had his fingerprints all over this win, and he didn’t take a shot. He just made some great plays for us on the defensive end of the floor.”
Finally, there’s this: UConn’s 28-game home winning streak was snapped. When Neal was told of this by John Bishop on the postgame radio show, he replied that he wasn’t aware of that.
“Well, it’s zero now,” Neal quipped.