Those who enjoy a good wager every now and then probably could have listed off eight or nine players they thought would come away as the points leader in Tuesday night’s Top 25 showdown between 20th-ranked Creighton and 22nd-ranked Nebraska. Jays junior point guard Molly Mogensen probably would have been eighth or ninth name listed during that exercise, but that didn’t stop her from picking apart the Huskers’ ball screen defense over and over again on her to way to a career-high 22 points on 9-of-14 shooting in a 77-51 rout to help CU improve to 3-0 on the season and earn their second win over a ranked team.
Molly Mogensen led all scorers on Tuesday night (Juszyk / WBR)
The Bluejays drew 2,306 fans for their home-opener against the Huskers — a D.J. Sokol Arena record for a women’s basketball game — and put on a show for the roughly 80/20 blue split to earn their sixth win over their in-state rivals in the last seven seasons. Mogensen scored 19 of 22 points in the first half as the Bluejays never trailed the entire night and led by 20 or more for over 13 minutes of game time.
“I’m thinking we should break out the blue uniforms every home game,” Creighton head coach Jim Flanery said. “I’m really proud of our team. I thought we defended pretty well and communicated and just were tough. Offensively, Molly was incredible in that first half. I told her she’s not used to getting that many shots up because she plays with [Lauren Jensen and Morgan Maly] right next to her, and normally they are taking a few. But yeah, that was fun. When we move the ball and involve everybody and make teams have to defend, I think we have the chance to be really special.”
Creighton assisted on 19 of their 30 made baskets and only turned it over nine times all night. They hit 11 3-pointers on 45.8% shooting from deep as a team. That offensive balance was on display to start the game as Mogensen and Maly hit mid-range jumpers from the right and left elbows on back-to-back possessions, then Jensen got as open as she’ll be all year in transition and buried a deep 3-pointer from the right wing to put the Bluejays up 7-2 after the first four possessions of the game. They led 9-5 coming out of the first media timeout with 4:56 to go in the first quarter, and it was Mogensen’s show for the rest of the half. The Farmington, Minnesota native hit a pull-up jumper, a 3-pointer, a layup, back-to-back threes in a span of 31 seconds, a layup, and another mid-range jumper off the dribble — 17 of the team’s last 36 points of the period in total to give Creighton a 45-28 lead at the break.
“They were switching everything in the first half,” Mogensen said. “I knew that I could attack their bigs and that pull-up jumper was open a lot, so I took it. Like Flan said before, when these two start going off, we know to get them the ball, so they started getting me the ball so I could do what they usually do.”
Lauren Jensen didn’t lead the Jays in scoring, but found other ways to help the team (Juszyk / WBR)
As clinical as Creighton was on offense, this game did offer moments for them to show off their mettle. Nebraska had stretches — in the first half where they cut the deficit to 13 and in the second when they cut it to 16 — where they appeared to be coming together offensively while Creighton was simultaneously losing rhythm. But if there was a loose to ball to scrap, often times Creighton won the battle for it. If there was a stop, score, stop, score sequence that was needed to build momentum, it was usually the Bluejays pulling it off. They never let the crowd get restless or tense for too long at any point throughout the game. Even with their senior firestarter Rachael Saunders in street clothes due to an injury, CU still managed to make the right plays at the right times to keep the fuse lit.
“I feel like it was a testament to how competitive we are,” Jensen said. “We’d always say in the summer and fall about our practices that they are super competitive. We would go at it. You can tell that none of us like to lose and that was really apparent tonight. Obviously, Rachael wasn’t playing and she’s a huge spark for us, she’s our energy player who does all the little things, so we knew that we were going to have to come out and absorb some of that ourselves tonight.”
Jensen did her part with 13 points, six rebounds, and a game-high seven assists. Maly did as well with 16 points and a team-high eight rebounds. But the unsung hero of the night was the player who took Saunders’ place in the lineup: Carly Bachelor.
Carly Bachelor was an unsung hero for the Jays on Tuesday night (Juszyk / WBR)
The senior from Topeka, Kansas was 7-of-10 from the floor for 15 points to go along with six rebounds, four steals, and a team-best plus/minus of +27 in her 33 minutes of action. Her length and versatility on defense helped Creighton switch screens and not get chewed up by Nebraska’s dynamic ballhandlers, while her quickness and relentless activity level on offense consistently exposed cross-matches throughout the game.
“We noticed that they were switching screens early,” Carly Bachelor said. “That’s difficult on defense when you have to constantly switch and communicate with each other. There are always going to be miscues and miscommunications that usually will lead to something for us, so I think we were really focused on getting into screens and making reads from that whether it was slips or just trying to get open cuts. That’s what really helped our offense. Just waiting and being patient for the open cut, the open layup, or a three. Even in practice every day it’s tough to guard each other, so for people that aren’t used to it I can imagine that it’s tough on communication defensively.”
Nebraska’s top scorers after their first two games of the season were sophomore guard Allison Weidner (19.5 ppg) and junior forward Isabelle Bourne (13.5 ppg). On Tuesday night, the Jays held them to a total of 12 points on 14 shooting possessions (4-12 FG, 3-4 FT) and forced them into eight combined turnovers. Sophomore center Alexis Markowski had 12 points on her own, but she needed eight shots from the floor and seven free throw attempts to get it. Junior point guard Jaz Shelley led the Huskers with 14 points, but she missed 10 of her 14 shots from the field and finished just 2-of-8 from beyond the arc in 35 minutes.
“We played their shoulders, and we knew personnel,” Maly said of Creighton’s defense across the board. “We hammered that in practice all week, and we limited them to one shot pretty well most of the night. That helped to limit their offense and the energy that they could get from those opportunities.”