Monday night, UConn coach Dan Hurley appeared on ESPN’s SportsCenter with Scott VanPelt for an interview from his hotel room in Omaha ahead of their game with the Jays the next night. He gave VanPelt the perfect Hurley soundbite, equal parts swagger and hubris, spiced with a touch of machismo. “Our mindset is that someone’s gonna have to kill us to take that No. 1 ranking from us,” Hurley said. “They’re gonna have to play so well to rip that ranking out of our dead hands as we’re laying there. We’re pretty adamant about holding onto that.”
24 hours later, Creighton did exactly that. Their 85-66 win over unanimous #1 UConn wasn’t just a win, it was a decisive knock-out, the fourth-largest margin of victory over a #1 team in the last 20 years. But as anyone who witnessed the 19-point blowout can attest, the margin doesn’t indicate a lack of drama or nerve-wracking moments. The entire night was full of both of those traits, in excess, from well before tip-off until well after the court storming celebration had cleared.
How excited were Bluejay students for this one? Hours before the doors opened, students lined up in the hallway of the convention center to get first dibs on the best seats; upon hearing about the throngs of students outside, assistant coaches Ryan Miller and Derek Kellogg delivered pizzas to them.
How about the crowd in general? All 18,000-plus were primed, loud, and engaged, ready to give UConn the business and Creighton as much encouragement as necessary. And when the performance of the national anthem went awry because of technical issues, the fans improvised and sang it in unison instead.
The Jays were locked in, the crowd was boisterous, and it looked like a special night could be about to unfold. Then the game started, and the famous Mike Tyson line (“Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth”) came to mind. UConn scored the first seven points, and raced out to an 11-3 lead, by following the same script as the game in Storrs last month. The Huskies grabbed five offensive rebounds and forced three turnovers in the first four minutes; seven of their 11 points came on second-chance opportunities after CU’s defense had forced a missed shot.
“I think that your memory serves you well in moments like that,” Steven Ashworth said on the postgame radio show. “We were able to really quickly get to a place where it’s like, ‘Hey, if we don’t fix this, we know what this story is going to be like,’ and so at that under-16 media time out, we were able to really kind of tighten things up and talk it through.”
The Jays tightened things up, and then foul trouble soon changed the game for both teams. UConn’s star center Donovan Clingan picked up his second foul at the 14:59 mark with his team ahead 11-5, and the Jays were able to slowly chip away at the lead in his absence. By the time he re-entered with 6:49 to go, Creighton led 29-23.
CU had battled to tie the game at 21 when Baylor Scheierman picked up his second foul at the 8:31 mark; the resulting pair of free throws put UConn back ahead 23-21. He’d spend the rest of the half on the bench, but the Jays’ reserves did what UConn’s couldn’t with Clingan out — they provided more than enough production to make up for a star player sitting out with fouls. In fact, Creighton ripped off a 22-6 run with Scheierman out, taking a commanding 43-29 lead to the locker room.
How? By authoring the most unlikely of sequels, and nearly matching the legendary blitz of #4 Villanova in 2014 where they made 9-of-9 from three-point range over a six-minute span to overwhelm the Wildcats. This time they made 8-of-9 from three over a 10-minute span, with Ashworth playing the role of Ethan Wragge. He hit four of them, including three over a three-minute stretch where the Jays built their lead from 26-23 to 39-25, and Ashworth added a jumper and a pair of free throws to provide 100% of the offense in the game-changing 13-2 run.
“A large part of that run was just our consistent movement on and off the ball really allowed us to free up some of our shooters,” Ashworth said. “When you’re at your home gym, you’ve got that confidence to let it fly and that’s what Creighton basketball is all about. We’ve all got confidence in one another and that first half was was something special for sure.”
The space for his first three was created by UConn’s focus on Kalkbrenner, who had just executed the sequence above where he blocked a shot on one and scored at the rim on the other. They collapsed on him in the paint expecting a pass, leaving Ashworth wide open from 30 feet out. You can see the brief hesitation where he thought about whether or not to shoot it; he did, it went in, and then UConn was in trouble.
A couple of minutes later, movement away from the ball got the Huskies out of position and led to Ashworth flashing open. Trey Alexander kicked it out to him, and he splashed a second three.
On the third one, the amount of movement involved in creating this shot is a thing of beauty. Ashworth initiates the set by passing it to Alexander, and then drags his defender with him across the court. Kalkbrenner sets a screen to stop a help defender from chasing Mason Miller, who’s running the perimeter as a decoy while Alexander dribbles in place. When Miller gets near Alexander and throws up his hand to indicate he’s open, UConn freezes for a split second. At that precise moment Ashworth sprints back toward Alexander, catches the pass instead, and buries a three in rhythm while 3/5 of UConn’s defense is confused.
Big runs require defense, too, and Ashworth played a key role there as well. He smothered Cam Spencer all night long, and the UConn guard took only five shots (making one) in the first half, with just one assist in 17 mostly invisible minutes.
“Spencer never stops moving, which means Steven never stops moving. He’s got to chase him for 25 seconds every offensive possession, and he was there on the catch every single time,” Greg McDermott gushed about his guard. “And then he’s got to, by the way, run our team, not turn it over, and make shots for us, and for him to have the kind of offensive game that he had tonight, when he had to exert that kind of energy defensively, it speaks to his development, his growth, his conditioning.”
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McDermott said that Ashworth is a different player than the one who faced UConn a month ago, and pointed to that game as the turning point where he began asserting himself.
“The last eight minutes of that game while we were getting our tails kicked really kind of catapulted him into the way he’s playing now,” McDermott noted. “At the end of that game, he stopped caring about ‘Am I fitting in? Am I making the right play?’ and started just being aggressive. We’ve had a lot of talks where I told him he can be aggressive and still make the right play. He was terrific tonight. Those were some back-breaking threes.”
CU picked up in the second half where they left off, with Ashworth burying another three — a second-chance opportunity, no less, off an offensive board. And after five straight from Miller on a layup and a three, Creighton led by 20.
Miller would add a second three a few minutes later, and upon exiting to a standing ovation, Jasen Green took his place and continued the assault from the Bluejay ‘4’ men. He buried a three at the 10:18 mark to give Creighton their largest lead of the night at 23, 69-46, and moments later made the signature defensive play of the night. Following a missed shot, UConn found a streaking Alex Karaban wide open for a three in transition because Green had slipped while running up the court. But he saw the play developing in front of him, and decided if Karaban was going to make the shot it was going to at least be contested. So he got up, sprinted 30 feet across the floor, sized up Karaban’s shot, and blocked it into the UConn bench with his left hand while running at full speed. Just an unbelievable play that encapsulates so much about why CU won on Tuesday.
“There’s some hustle plays that stick out in my mind over the years,” McDermott said. “I remember one with Ricky Kreklow on the baseline here a long time ago (editor’s note, it was in February 2015 against Marquette). But Jason’s play tonight where he fell down and blocked that three? I mean, that’s an incredible, incredible hustle play.”
CU led 69-52 after that block, and everyone in the building knew UConn had one more big run in them. The only question was whether Creighton could withstand it. Sure enough, the Huskies chipped away, and made two pushes to get the game within striking distance.
Creighton had an emphatic answer both times.
The first surge came when Tristen Newton hit a tough jumper in the paint, Karaban hit a pair of free throws, and a 23-point lead was down to 13. But Scheierman’s knack for making big plays at big moments showed up again, and he buried a contested three to push the lead back out to 72-56.
But 13 seconds later Newton answered with a three — and a free throw after he was fouled by Francisco Farabello. Scheierman punched back with a drive to the rim for a layup. Newton answered again with another jumper, followed by a dunk by Clingan, and it was down to 10 at 74-64 with 4:39 left.
This time, CU responded with near-perfection from the free throw line and on defense. They made 9-of-10 from the line, while holding UConn to 1-of-8 shooting with two turnovers. And after Farabello intercepted an inbounds pass that allowed them to run out the final seconds, Creighton’s student section stormed the floor for just the third time in the 20-year history of the CHI Health Center.
“This is crazy,” Alexander said on the postgame radio show as the student celebration raged on behind him. “It’s the craziest atmosphere I’ve ever been in, man. This is what college basketball is all about, baby. I love this.”
“I was a little excited,” McDermott said while laughing about his multiple fist-pump celebrations to get the crowd roaring over the course of the night. “Once in a while I get a little excited. Some guys get excited at the referees. I get excited trying to get the crowd going once in a while. I’m just really proud of our team, proud of our fans. This place was lit. It was so much fun, and the cool thing is you know those 16 guys that wear our uniform are never gonna forget tonight. I think most of the people that sat here and watched the game are never gonna forget it either, and that makes it pretty special.”
Inside the Box Score:
Creighton committed three turnovers in the first four minutes, and just four more over the final 37 minutes. Likewise, they gave up five offensive boards in those rough first four minutes, and gave up just 10 more the rest of the night. CU came up with three steals to somewhat offset the four steals UConn had, and the Jays grabbed 10 offensive boards of their own.
As a result, while UConn won the battle of extra points, it was only by two (29-27). In the first meeting, UConn got 18 more shots than the Jays, and the Huskies had 25 more points than CU on extra possessions. Talk about a flip of the script.
Defensively, two of UConn’s four lowest point totals this season have come against Creighton (the other two? Their two other losses, to Kansas and Seton Hall.) It was also their fourth-worst effective field goal percentage of the season at 46.6%, with one of the others also coming against CU when the Huskies eFG% was just 39.3% in the first meeting (which is their worst mark of the year.)
The Huskies attempted only 16 threes, their second-lowest total of the season, and made just three, which is their worst of the season. That’s indicative of how well Creighton’s defensive gameplan worked — in both games they ran UConn off the line and forced them into tough mid-range jumpers and contested shots at Ryan Kalkbrenner in the paint.
At 59 possessions, it was the slowest-pace game Creighton’s played in two years — the last game contested at a sub-60 possession pace was a 75-41 loss at Villanova on January 5, 2022, which also had 59. CU has traditionally had problems in games like this, but the fact that they didn’t, and that the eye test would lead you to believe there were more possessions than there were, is really astounding. CU had 1.44 points per possession in this one, showing patience and working to get the right shots.
It’s true that they won’t made 14-of-28 from three-point range every night. Or most nights. But these weren’t wild, uncharacteristic, out-of-system shots magically falling in (like, say, Butler in the game in Omaha.) These were, stylistically, the exact shots Creighton schemes to get. That they were able to repeatedly generate clean looks against a defense as elite as UConn is impressive because it’s unlikely they will see a better defense the rest of the way — even in the NCAA Tournament.
Which brings us to Steven Ashworth. His emergence changes the flow and function of the entire offense, giving them four top-shelf weapons with different weapons for defenses to take away. His shooting numbers are catching up with what he did at Utah State as he adjusts to Big East defenses, which most figured would happen at some point. What almost no one expected is that his defense and rebounding would become integral to the Jays’ success. Over the last four games, all wins, Ashworth has 24 assists and 23 rebounds, with just seven turnovers. Over the last 10, he’s averaging 15.6 points, 4.0 rebounds, 5.3 assists and shooting 39.5% from three.
On the milestone front, not only was this the Jays’ first-ever win over an opponent ranked #1, it was the 600th career win for Greg McDermott.
“I mean it’s a culmination of a lot of things. I’ve coached some really good players over the years that have, especially here at Creighton the last 14 years, bought into the way that we wanna play. It’s not for everybody. We’re gonna play an unselfish brand of basketball. We’re gonna try to turn a good shot into a great shot, and some guys aren’t wired that way, and that’s okay. But this is the way we like to play, and to have this win come tonight in front of this crowd? You know, I think of Doug’s senior night, maybe the the first Big East game against Marquette. And then tonight. That’s three of the best that I’ve experienced here. This crowd was into it virtually every defensive possession for 40 minutes.”
McDermott noted that both Marcus Foster and Ryan Hawkins were in attendance, sitting together cheering on the Jays despite not playing for CU at the same time, part of a fraternity of Bluejay greats who take pride in what the program has accomplished after they left.
“There’s there’s a lot of people that came before this group who allowed us to be where we are today,” McDermott said emotionally. “They put in a lot of work and you know, Ryan Hawkins, the work he did his senior year when all these guys were freshmen, somehow to get that team to the NCAA Tournament and win a game, it really has set the tone. And we all know how good Marcus Foster was and and how he had his fingerprints all over our success. So just think back to a lot of the guys we’ve coached, that we’ve been fortunate to coach, that believed in us — and to do it tonight against the number one team in the country, against a UConn program that we have tremendous respect for, is pretty cool.”
And finally, how’s this for a stat: Creighton has now beaten the likely regular season champs from the SEC in Alabama, and the Big East in UConn. They also own wins over the current co-leader in the A-10 (Loyola-Chicago) and the second-place team in the MAC (Central Michigan). And their 12 combined Quad 1 and Quad 2 wins (six of each) are the third most in college hoops, behind only Purdue (15) and UConn (13).
Highlights:
Press Conference: