Thursday night was a get right game for the Creighton men’s basketball team. The shots fell from 3-point range, the offense had balanced production in the paint and on the perimeter, and the defense made life difficult on Butler for most of the night. Most importantly, big man Ryan Kalkbrenner was back in the lineup after missing three game due to what was described officially as a “non-COVID illness.”
The third-year center and reigning Big East Defensive Player of the Year logged 29 minutes in his return to action against the Bulldogs. He scored a game-high 19 points and made eight of his nine shots, including a 3-pointer from the top of the key and a 19-footer from the right wing to spearhead a dominant 78-56 win. That marked the end of a 6-game losing streak for the Bluejays that lasted only one day shy of an entire month. Missing time wasn’t easy for the 7-footer, especially in the losses to BYU and Arizona State that both went down to the wire over the span of three days in Las Vegas.
“It’s always really tough when you’re on the bench, but especially the BYU and Arizona State games,” junior center Ryan Kalkbrenner said. “Those were one or two-possession games. I feel like if I’m out there I make a difference on at least a handful of possessions. Nothing you can do about that now, though, so you just have to focus on the rest of the season.”
The results of the first game back compared to the three consecutive DNP’s were eye-popping in a number of ways. The most obvious was his own efficiency. He was 7-for-8 from inside the arc, 1-for-1 from 3-point range, 2-for-3 from the free throw line, and also chipped in two blocked shots, one steal, two assists, and no turnovers. His gravity was even more jarring. Without him available in the losses to the Cougars, Sun Devils, and Marquette, Creighton was 40-for-90 (44.4%) from inside 10 feet. Take away freshman center Fredrick King — who, to his credit, parlayed back-to-back double-doubles in the last two games into his Big East Freshman of the Week award — and that performance drops to 22-of-67 (32.8%). Against Butler, the Jays were 19-of-30 (63.3%) in that range and 10-of-20 if you take away Kalkbrenner and King. Sophomore point guard Ryan Nembhard and senior wing Baylor Scheierman were the biggest beneficiaries of Kalkbrenner’s return. That duo in particular was 7-for-8 in the lane on Thursday night after going 11-for-29 (37.9%) in the last three games.
“He’s just a huge presence offensively and defensively for us,” Nembhard said. “He’s our anchor on both ends. He gets our offense flowing. He knows where to screen. He just knows where to be on the floor. It’s easy to play with him.”
The proof is baked into the pudding on this one. Creighton averaged a staggering 1.46 points per possession on the 24 trips up the floor where Kalkbrenner touched the basketball either at the point of attack on the perimeter or in the post with his back to the basket. The offense was fairly efficient on the 39 possessions that didn’t involve getting Kalkbrenner a touch at some point, but at 1.10 PPP, there was a stark contrast at the end of the night.
Creighton’s D Gets Sharper As Night Wears On
Creighton’s defense picked things up against Butler (Spomer / WBR)
Butler established the paint from the onset. They scored 10 of their first 14 points of the game in the lane to help race out to a 16-7 lead with 12:16 left in the first half. But after starting the game by converting on each of their first four shots at the rim, Creighton held the Bulldogs to 5-for-13 shooting inside over the final 30 minutes. Points in the paint ended up 38-32 in favor of the Bluejays over the full 40 minutes. But it was 34-22 over the final 32 minutes after Greg McDermott burned a timeout when Butler went on a 10-2 run just before the under-12 media stoppage. Both head coaches felt that Creighton’s physicality got better as the game played out.
Butler’s Thad Matta: “They were a lot more physical. That was probably the biggest thing. They were feeding off of their offensive motion because they were scoring at one end and getting stops at the other end. We came out in the second half and attacked the basket a couple times, then all of a sudden, we settled for threes. That wasn’t what we wanted to do on offense.”
Creighton’s Greg McDermott: “They are tricky to guard because you have to make some decision on [fifth-year center Manny Bates]. You have to decide whether you’re going to come with a double team or at least make it look like you’re coming. I just thought it was a little too comfortable in that the first half, so we went away from it. I thought Ryan and Fredrick were more physical and made his catches a little more difficult and a little farther out on the floor. And they held their ground a little bit. They stuck in there with their chest and didn’t let him back them down where he could get a deep one. That was big for us.”
Along with making it difficult to execute at the rim, the Bluejays also shut off the other areas Butler has proven to more effective at producing points. The Bulldogs came into the game averaging 14.6 free throws per game. They attempted seven on Thursday. They usually dish out just under 14 assists but finished with eight. They were shooting 35.7% from 3-point range and averaging 7.2 makes per game. They ended the night 2-for-12.
“The big thing for us when we struggle a little bit on defense is when we’re not communicating very well,” Kalkbrenner said. “When we talk and let each other know where we’re at and how we’re helping each other that leads to us flying around more, which then leads to our defense being put together the way we want it to be. The big thing for us today was we just talked more.”
Early Three-Point Shooting Opens Up Lane
Creighton’s 3-point shooting got things going (Spomer / WBR)
While Creighton was beginning to make things difficult in the paint on the defensive end, their own effectiveness in that area was leveling up as well. And they owe that in large part to the reemergence of the hot shooting from the perimeter. After shooting 27.7% from beyond the arc in five games since returning to from the Maui Invitational, Creighton flipped the needle back in the right direction on Thursday night against Butler. Four different players — Arthur Kaluma, Ryan Nembhard, Ryan Kalkbrenner, and Baylor Scheierman — combined to get the Bluejays off to a 6-for-8 start from 3-point territory.
That allowed them to build a 28-22 cushion with just over six minutes remaining in the first half. From that point on, Creighton was able to get the ball into the teeth of Butler’s defense with far more frequency and less resistance.
“Whenever you make shots it’s tough for the other team,” Nembhard said. “They have to make a decision whether they want to stay connected to shooters or clog the paint. Whenever we make shots it opens up our whole offense. Things become a little easier because the lane is not as plugged up.”
Creighton scored 18 of their first 28 points from 3-point range. After that, all but eight of the last 50 points they put on the scoreboard either came in the lane or at the free throw line.
“We knew they were capable of making [threes], we were just hoping it wasn’t tonight,” Butler head coach Thad Matta said. “The big kid hit one and then they hit one at the end of the shot clock that gave them momentum. That was something we didn’t want to do tonight was give them momentum. The 3-point shooting was definitely a big difference, because when they are making shots they have a phenomenal inside-outside attack.”
Creighton on Christmas
McDermott checked with his players before committing to a Christmas Day game (Spomer / WBR)
Win, lose, or draw in their next one, Creighton (7-6, 1-1 Big East) will be making Big East history when they host DePaul (6-6, 0-1 Big East) on Sunday afternoon in the conference’s first-ever game on Christmas Day. Normally, a day reserved for the NBA and a handful of NFL games, the league decided to take a crack at the afternoon time slot following Dolphins-Packers on big FOX. The potential audience for the 3:30 p.m. central time tip-off was too enticing to pass up for Bluejay head coach Greg McDermott, athletic director Marcus Blossom, and university president Fr. Daniel S. Hendrickson.
“Obviously it’s a FOX national game right after the football game, so it’s an incredible exposure opportunity for our program, for our university, and for our fanbase,” McDermott said.
Before green-lighting the holiday matchup with the Blue Demons, McDermott texted his five starters to gauge how they felt about lacing up their kicks instead of spending it watching their favorite professional hoopers go shot for shot as they did when they were growing up. They were all on board.
“They think about the NBA on Christmas Day and how cool it is,” McDermott said. “There is not a lot of college basketball on Christmas Day, so they were all about it.
“I think our fans will embrace it. By 3:30 on Christmas afternoon you are kind of looking around for something to do anyway. It’s a bit of an experiment, but sometimes when those opportunities present themselves you have to take advantage of them and that’s what we did.”