With 4:41 to play in the first half, Creighton and #2 UConn were tied 27-all after a three from Nik Graves, his third of the game to that point. He’d scored 13 of their 27 points and was the only player with more than one made basket. Greg McDermott had re-inserted Graves into the starting lineup along with Blake Harper, in place of Ty Davis and Isaac Traudt, for the first time since the loss to Nebraska in early December. And it paid immediate dividends.
“Some of it was matchup driven,” McDermott said his thinking behind the lineup change. “Blake has probably been, per minute played, one of our best rebounders, and we knew we were going to need some rebounding help against them. And we needed Nik’s pace and ability to get into the paint and be quick in transition. I think Ty’s done a good job, and that Isaac was doing a good job. I just felt like was probably time to mix it up, and as you heard them say, that they don’t care. Fans make a bigger deal out of starting lineups than we do in the locker room. Everybody needs to do their job, whatever that job may be, on that particular night.”
“I was really just trying to set the tone early,” Graves said. “Obviously, this game means a lot for a lot of people, just all the families coming here to support us and the whole community coming to the game to support one message. Honestly, I was able to hit a few shots, but really I was just trying to play hard and play for something bigger today.”
But after knotting it at 27, the Jays didn’t make a basket the rest of the half. Over the final 4:41, UConn ripped off a 14-3 run with eight of their points coming on second chances. Ahead 41-30 at the break, a 14-2 run early in the second half blew it open as the Huskies took a 60-40 lead with 12:48 to go.
“We had a couple turnovers in the last five or six possessions of the first half that hurt us,” McDermott said. “Eight of their last ten points were a result of an offensive rebound — two threes and a two — and you know, had we been able to get those stops and kept it, you know, within four or five points at halftime, maybe it’s a different outcome. And then we just couldn’t get stops to start that second half. They scored in about every imaginable way.”
UConn eventually led by as many as 30, and while they shot the ball extraordinarily well, it didn’t help that the Bluejays were massacred on the offensive glass. Of the 13 offensive boards UConn secured, they scored on 10 of them, making 9-of-10 from the floor (and 4-of-5 on threes), plus a free throw and two turnovers. You can’t give a team as good as UConn two chances to score on that many possessions and live to tell the tale. Their ruthless efficiency when given a second chance led to 23 points.
“I mean, we knew it, and my message to the team before the game was, ‘Guys, we’ve got to be physical on the defensive glass, because you’re going to chase them around for 25 seconds, and do you really want to do it again, because you give up a rebound?’,” McDermott said. “I think a lot of time Jasen (Green) or Owen (Freeman) was forced into a help situation, and now Tarris (Reed Jr.) is running free, and we’re trying to tag him with someone that’s not big enough or strong enough to tag him. And then a lot of them just got tipped and we weren’t able to come up with them.”
The 85-58 loss handed the Jays consecutive losses by 20 or more points for the first time since early in Dana Altman’s first season. That 1994-95 squad dropped games at Nebraska (85-57) and Saint Louis (83-56) on December 7 and 10, 1994. Following their ugly 86-62 loss at Marquette on Tuesday where their 52-23 halftime deficit (29 points) was their biggest since December 1, 1993 at Iowa State, it was a week filled with comparisons to the end of the Rick Johnson Era and the start of Altman digging them out of the hole.
They hadn’t lost more than three games by 20 or more points in a season since then, either; Altman’s 1994-95 team lost six games by 20+. Rick Johnson’s 1993-94 team lost five games by 20 or more and and three by 30+. The 2025-26 Bluejays have lost four games by 20+ already this year, with road games at St. John’s and UConn still to come.
The difference, of course, is neither of those teams were expected to be very good. On the contrary, they were pretty much exactly as terrible as people thought they’d be. This year’s Bluejays began the year ranked 23rd and were picked third in the Big East. After 22 games, they’re 12-10 and 6-5 in the league, and enter February without a realistic chance to make the NCAA Tournament (short of winning the Big East’s auto bid) for the first time in a decade and just the third time in McDermott’s 16 seasons.
Inside the Box:
UConn shot 54.1% on the floor while eclipsing the 70 point mark in regulation for the first time in 13 all-time meetings against Creighton. Not coincidentally, it was the first time the teams have met without Ryan Kalkbrenner manning the middle for the Jays.
Nik Graves (17) and Blake Harper (11) returned to the starting line-up and were the lone Bluejays to score in double-figures. Harper drew four fouls and was 5-of-6 from the line, and added five rebounds (two offensive). Graves did a little of everything in one of his best all-around games at CU, making 2-of-2 inside the arc, 3-of-4 from three, 4-of-4 from the line, with four rebounds, two assists and just one turnover in 28 minutes.
Highlights:
Press Conference: