As far as shooting percentages are concerned it was a tale of two halves for the Creighton women’s basketball team, neither of which were very good. In the first half they shot below their season average, in the second they shot below the temperature outside Pinnacle Bank Arena in a 63-38 loss to No. 19 Nebraska on Saturday afternoon. “If you had told me that we would hold Jordan [Hooper] to one field goal, and we would give up only one offensive rebound in the game I’d have a hard time believing that we’d lose by 25,” Creighton head coach Jim Flanery said. “I thought their defense was good, but we have to shoot the ball better than that.”
As was the case in last season’s 66-57 Creighton win, the Jays once again held Jordan Hooper in check and made other players beat them. This time her teammates stepped up and provided the punch they needed offensively to defeat their rival. Three Huskers scored in double figures, led by junior forward Emily Cady’s 14. “Their focus is to take Jordan [Hooper] away, so some other people have to score for us,” said Nebraska head coach Connie Yori. “We got contributions from some others when they were taking her away.”
A 10-2 run by the 19th-ranked Huskers gave them a 17-12 lead over Creighton midway through the first half. The Bluejays countered with a 7-2 run capped off by a three-pointer by Sarah Nelson to tie the game at 19-all. Cady hit a driving layup 13 seconds later and Nebraska took control from that point on, scoring in the paint 11 of their next 13 points to take a 35-27 lead at halftime. Creighton finished the first half shooting just 3-of-11 after going 8-for-19 in the first 11 minutes of the game.
It only got worse for Creighton’s shooting after halftime. They shot 1-for-17 in the first nine minutes as Nebraska extended their halftime cushion to 47-30. To cap off that miserable stretch by the Jays, Flanery received a technical foul, his 2nd of the season. Unlike his first technical which resulted in a 14-4 run to take a lead against South Dakota State, this one only served as an interruption to more poor shooting by the Jays, and more relentless attacking off the dribble by Nebraska.
Creighton finished 4-for-35 from the field in the second half, and overall they shot 7-of-48 (14.6%) after tying the game at 19 with 8:39 left in the first half. The Bluejays finished the game with their lowest total against Nebraska since a 27-point performance way back on January 31, 1975. “I know you can say they missed a lot of shots, but I thought this was a game where we made them miss shots,” the current Husker and former Creighton coach said. “I think there are games where you hope they miss, and today I thought we made them miss a lot of shots. We made very few defensive errors in what we were trying to do.”
To contrast the story lines of Creighton’s poor shooting and Nebraska’s attacking strategy, the Huskers finished with 34 points in the paint and added another 17 at the free throw line. “Last year we felt like we got attacked, and this year I thought we were the attacking team on both ends,” Yori said. “We actually ran some things that we had not run all year, other than in practice. We ran a different break than we normally run which allowed us to get some middle penetration, and that’s where we were getting to the basket. They’re a team that takes away baseline, so we felt like that was something we needed to do. I just thought we attacked.”
The Bluejays will have a few days to prepare for the Clemson Tigers in their opening game of the Duel in the Desert in Las Vegas, Nev., on Dec. 19. Creighton will play three games in three days in Las Vegas, then return to home action after Christmas break when Villanova comes to town to welcome the Creighton women’s basketball team to Big East play for the first time.