With 93 seconds left in Friday’s epic offensive explosion of a game, it certainly felt like whichever team had the ball last would win. Ordinarily, that’s a cliche, but this was no ordinary game: in scoring a combined 197 points over 40 minutes, there were seven ties and 14 lead changes.
And it felt like that team was going to be Creighton — impossibly, improbably — after trailing for most of the second half. Butler committed two turnovers and missed a free throw in the final 35 seconds, but Creighton missed their final four shots, all of which would have tied the game, and turned it over a fifth time when they had a chance to take the lead.
With 1:33 to go, Baylor Scheierman missed a wide-open three that would have tied the game. A defensive stop gave CU the ball back, and Butler began a bizarre strategy of fouling rather than give up a three — which makes sense on the final possession, but with 1:08 left? Who does that? Butler did, and Trey Alexander made a pair of free throws to make it 97-96. Jahmyl Telfort answered with this ridiculous fadeaway over Scheierman where there was a body on him and a hand in his face, and it splashed down anyway.
Steven Ashworth missed an open three on the next trip that would have tied it, and then CU fouled to extend the game. After Pierre Brooks missed the front end of a one-and-one, CU got an open look at a three for Alexander. It missed, but Ryan Kalkbrenner secured the offensive rebound and kicked it back out, where Alexander attempted a nearly-carbon-copy version of the shot he’d missed seconds earlier. This one missed, too, but Kalkbrenner rebounded this one, too, and was fouled in the process.
With 11 seconds to go, Kalkbrenner made both free throws to make it 97-96 Butler. Then Kalkbrenner and Francisco Farabello trapped Butler’s DJ Davis in the corner on the inbounds pass, and Farabello knocked the ball loose off of Davis’ leg. Rather than fouling and hoping for more missed free throws, it was Creighton ball under their own basket with a chance for the win.
Getting the ball in to Alexander, he lost the handle while driving to the rim and turned it right back over. It was still 97-96 Butler, and now there were just 8.0 seconds left.
“Trey’s been terrific in clutch moments,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “We cleared out that side of the floor to his right hand. I liked the matchup with Brooks, and we had Steven in the corner, but they stayed attached to him. Trey had a line to the rim, and you know, Trey’s pretty good at that shot going right, and had a chance to get fouled too. He just dribbled it off his foot. It happens once in a while, you just hope it doesn’t happen in that situation.”
Farabello fouled on the ensuring inbounds pass, and after a pair of free throws by Butler it was back to a three-point lead at 99-96. But continuing with their “foul up three” strategy, Butler fouled the Jays on the inbounds pass to prevent them from tying it. Alexander made both free throws to make it a one-point game…and then the strategy nearly blew up in their face when Farabello AGAIN stole the inbounds pass.
Unfortunately for the Jays, after making a brilliant defensive play to steal the pass, Farabello tried to drive toward the basket, where he had the ball tipped away from him just as both Alexander and Scheierman flashed open. Had he kicked it out to either of them, they’d have had uncontested look at a potential game-winning shot. Had he called timeout immediately, they would have had around four seconds to get a potential game-winner.
“Yeah, I mean I tried to make a play,” a dejected Farabello said on the postgame radio show. “It was just the heat of the moment, and I tried to make a play. The safer play would have been to just call the timeout as soon as I got it. But I don’t know. Everything happens so fast.”
Instead, by the time Mason Miller secured the loose ball, there was only 0.5 seconds left — giving them time for a inbounds pass opportunity at a tip near the rim. It missed, and the Jays fell 99-98.
“We got what we wanted, we got the switch,” McDermott said. “But their freshman went up and got a hand on the ball, and with .5 seconds, you don’t have a lot of room for error there.”
There’s an argument to be made that the real turning point in game came late in the first half. Ahead 40-37, Creighton opened up a 10-point lead with a 7-0 spurt that saw Alexander bury a three to force a Butler timeout. But after Pierre Brooks buried a three to cut the deficit to seven, the Jays made a mental mistake by taking the final shot of the half too soon. Ashworth took a three with five seconds left, and when it missed, Butler was able to run a play in transition — resulting in a 45-foot heave at the buzzer for freshman Finley Bizjack, a reserve player in the game for defense on that final possession who had just made just six 3-pointers in his career to that point.
The shot went in, and CU’s 10 point lead with 59 seconds left was just four at the half. Within the first two minutes of the second half, Butler had taken the lead. It’s Exhibit A for why teams run conservative end-of-half offensive plays despite fan complaints about waiting too long to initiate, only to get a contested shot at the buzzer. If Ashworth waits, he likely gets the exact same shot — but if it misses, CU goes into the locker room up seven instead of four.
In a one-point loss, those extra three points loomed large.
Inside the Box:
Butler scored on eight of its first 10 possessions in the second half, four of them three-point possessions (two on three-pointers, two after fouling a three-point shooter that led to three free throws each time). After 14 minutes, Butler had made 16-of-22 shots, or 72.7%. Even though they cooled off slightly over the final six minutes, the Bulldogs still ended with an absurd 1.543 points per possession — and were at 1.356 for the game.
Butler’s 99 points are the most Creighton has given up in regulation since 2018 when #1 Gonzaga hung 103 on them. Those Bulldogs were slightly better than these Bulldogs, with no offense to the 2023-24 Butler team.
This was just the fourth Big East regular-season game in the last 35 years where both teams scored 96 or more points in regulation:
- Friday: BU 99, CU 98
- 1/19/91: Providence 108, UConn 102
- 2/11/90: Pitt 117, Providence 102
- 1/28/89: Syracuse 100, Providence 96
Those ugly defensive numbers obscure what was a terrific offensive show.
Creighton has now scored 97, 85, 85 and 98 points in its past four games. That sets a program record for consecutive 85 point games in conference play. Creighton had previously done it three games in a row when it scored 94, 87 and 93 from Feb. 8-15, 2020 and 93, 85 and 95 from Jan. 15-20, 2003.
Baylor Scheierman (26), Steven Ashworth (26), Trey Alexander (22) and Ryan Kalkbrenner (20) all scored 20 or more points; the 26 points were Creighton-highs for both Ashworth and Scheierman. It was the first time since at least 1980 that Creighton has had four men score 20 or more points in the same game.
They’re the first Big East school with four players with 20+ points since Syracuse vs. UConn in their famous six-OT thriller on March 12, 2009 (Jonny Flynn 34; Paul Harris 29; Eric Devendorf 22; Andy Rautins 20). And it’s just the fifth time in 14 seasons under Greg McDermott that Creighton’s had three men score 20+ in the same game, but second time in two weeks (also Jan. 20th at Seton Hall).
AND, it was the first time that Creighton’s had two men score 25 or more in the same game since Booker Woodfox (26) and P’Allen Stinnett (30) vs. New Mexico on Nov. 16, 2008.
“You look at the stat sheet, in some ways it’s hard to believe we lost,” McDermott said. “We made double the free throws they did, out-rebounded them by 10, shot 55% on our home floor. If you would have told me that going in I would tell you we’re going to win handily. But their shot-making was elite … As I said going into this game, February is going to be a beast. It’s going to be a bear. I knew Butler was really good. You don’t go to Marquette and win unless you’re really good, and they played as well offensively tonight as anybody’s played against us all season.”
Highlights:
Press Conference:
