In a game that had seven ties and 18 lead changes, Creighton prevailed despite not scoring a field goal in the last four minutes and 46 seconds: all their scoring came at the free throw line, including Trey Alexander’s ice cold pair of free throws to win it. And then a defensive stand on the final possession clinched the win.
Over the first half of the 2023-24 season, Creighton had yet to check the box of winning a down-in-the-mud, old school Big East rock fight. They’d yet to win when they shot below 30% from three-point range, and they’d yet to win a game where their defense had to be the star. After Saturday’s intense one-point win, consider those boxes checked.
“We’ve often been accused of not being able to win a mud fight, and today we did,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “When you get in a mud fight like this, where baskets were hard to come by for both teams, you better stay in the fight. Fortunately our guys were tough enough to get to the rim and put their chin to the goal and get to the free-throw line. You know, Trey hasn’t shot free throws this year like he normally does, but man those last two didn’t even didn’t touch anything. Just big time free throws.”
The teams went back and forth for 28 minutes, but the intensity was ratcheted up several notches with 12:37 to go. Ahead 45-42, the Jays had a disastrous sequence of events. Ryan Kalkbrenner was fouled taking a three and missed all three free throws; a turnover gave St. John’s a fastbreak dunk and a 48-45 lead; Baylor Scheierman missed the front-end of a one-and-one; and the Red Storm’s Chris Ledlum buried two straight jumpers sandwiched around another Bluejay turnover. The 10-0 St. John’s run in just under two minutes flipped the game — it was now 52-45 Red Storm.
And then after Scheierman was slapped on the wrist on a jump shot, the refs slapped him on the wrist with a technical for protesting the no-foul call. (Hat tip to Friend of WBR Lance Raabe for that turn of phrase, by the way.) Two made free throws and a made jumper later, it was a 14-2 run and a nine-point deficit.
“He was frustrated,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “That ticked the crowd off, and, you know, not just the crowd. I was close to getting (a technical) myself. I’m glad I didn’t. But that really got our crowd going.”
Indeed, the technical foul fired up an arena that’s been criticized all season long for being too quiet, and the noise they created gave the Jays a spark. Their defense stopped St. John’s on four of the next five possessions, and they answered the 14-2 run with a 12-2 run of their own. Kalkbrenner started the scoring by drawing a foul and hitting two free throws, and then Francisco Farabello picked off a pass intended for Brady Dunlap and took it the length of the court for a layup.
“I knew they would try to get (Dunlap) going, and he’d just come on the court right before that,” Farabello said on the postgame radio show. “He’s a great shooter. So I kind of anticipated that play and yeah, it just happened like we scouted it. Credit to the film room and the coaches for stressing it over and over again.”
On the next trip down, Kalkbrenner’s shot at the rim was blocked but he grabbed an offensive rebound. Scheierman hit the second-chance bucket, then hit a pair of free throws on the next trip down the court. And after Farabello hit a pair of free throws, Kalkbrenner gave them back the lead with an alley-oop to make it 59-58 Bluejays, capping a wild six minute stretch of hoops.
“That’s big-time,” Kalkbrenner said. “Obviously with the home crowd, it’s a little easier to respond to something like that, and they were great tonight giving us energy. But anytime that teams go on a run and that gets capped off by tech or whatnot, obviously you’re going to face a little adversity, but this team’s got full confidence in just our ability to stay with our plan, stay with our approach and I knew once we got back out there after the tech we were going to turn it around.”
They weren’t done trading haymakers. The Red Storm’s RJ Luis hit a tough shot to give them back the lead 60-59, and Scheierman answered with one of his own to make it 61-60. Then Daniss Jenkins buried a long three, and it was 63-61 St. John’s.
Kalkbrenner hit 3-of-4 free throws on the next two possessions, putting CU back ahead. Then Joel Soriano hit a contested shot at the rim to give St. John’s the one-point lead back. Who would blink first?
Creighton’s defense, led by two-time Big East Defensive Player of the Year Ryan Kalkbrenner, made sure it wasn’t them. Still trailing 65-64 with 37 seconds left, he blocked a shot at the rim and kept it inbounds, giving them a chance to win it.
And after Trey Alexander’s shot at the rim missed, Farabello secured the offensive rebound to give the Jays one more chance. Given a re-do, Alexander took advantage by drawing contact and making two free throws for the lead. The defense did the rest. St. John’s had not one but two chances for a game-winner, but both were solidly contested, and both missed. Was there contact? Sure. Just like there had been all day, and just like the officials had done most of the day, they let it go. Ballgame.
“The ball got tipped out and you’re kind of in that unfortunate spot right? (Dingle) got in his hands and I’m right next to him,” Farabello said of the final sequence. “It was the longest five seconds of my life. I mean, we knew they were going to go to Jenkins. They’ve been going with him the whole game, so we kind of expected him to be the last shot. And then, as soon as the shot was released, it was a war zone in there. And I was caught in the middle of it. I was praying at that point, just please don’t go in.”
“The plan was just to play our drop coverage and I saw (Jenkins) about to raise up to shoot,” Kalkbrenner said of the final play. “I honestly I thought I almost blocked it. And then the guards did a great job of cracking down on Soriano, making sure he didn’t get the rebound. So yeah, we executed that pretty well.”
An exuberant Scheierman, running the length of the floor pumping his fists and high-fiving fans sitting courtside, provided the lasting image from this one. A hard-fought battle ended in a well-earned one point win. Coming into the game, many figured offensive rebounds would be the key to a win — and they were, just not quite the way we thought.
It was a Bluejay offensive rebound that tipped the scales. And it was Farabello of all people who corralled it.
After the game, New York media tried in vain to get St. John’s coach Rick Pitino to take the bait and give them a tabloid, clickbait-worthy quote blaming the officials for not calling a foul on their last-second shot attempt. He gave them a viral quote, alright, but not the way they thought it would happen.
“Look, referees have to do their jobs, and call it as they see it,” Pitino said. “I’m not gonna blame it on them. We’ve gotta be tough enough to go get the loose ball, or to make a mid-range jumper in the lane.”
As the questions continued, with the writers more caught up in the lack of a whistle than Pitino was, he snapped back. “Why are we talking about the officials? Are you going to rip the officials in your piece tomorrow? Let’s talk about basketball.”
Then came the viral quote. Asked if he felt like a close, hard-fought game where they came up a point short on the road could be considered a moral victory of sorts, he answered no in the most emphatic way possible. “When we lose, I fucking hate the world. Just so you understand that. No, I don’t feel good. I’ve never felt good with a loss. Pardon my language. I don’t believe in those valiant efforts on the road.”
Then with a smile and a wink, he finished, “I want to kill myself, go jump into the cold and die of frostbite.”
Inside the Box:
Offensive rebounds were thought to be the key coming in, and the teams finished in a dead heat in that category: St. John’s had one more, 12 to 11. On second chance points, it was 14-12 in favor of St. John’s. Staying even in those two stats kept the Jays in the game.
This is the first time this season that the Jays went an entire half without making a three pointer, as they were 0-for-4 in the second half. Even more surprising, they took just one 3-pointer over the last fourteen minutes — Scheierman’s transition three attempt with roughly a minute to go — making a concerted effort to pound the paint.
It was quite a big halftime adjustment; they had 23 attempts from beyond the arc in the first half, making just six.
“We didn’t shoot it well. I really felt that the first 12-minute timeout in the first half, I felt we should be up 20 or 22-6. We had great looks at the basket. I thought our pace in transition and the quarter-court was really good. We just missed a lot of open shots,” McDermott said. “In the second half, we didn’t get a lot open shots, and that’s a credit to St John’s. They cranked up the physicality and fortunately, we were able to withstand that and get to the free-throw line and make some free throws when it counted.”
Trey Alexander was 3-of-14 overall and 0-of-4 from deep. Baylor Scheierman finished 1-of-6 from three-point range. Steven Ashworth was 3-of-8, and Mason Miller was 1-of-5. With their shots not falling, they pivoted and made a concentrated effort to get the ball inside to Ryan Kalkbrenner and Baylor Scheierman. To say it paid off would be an understatement.
Kalkbrenner finished with 18 points, nine rebounds, four blocks and an assist for a three-point play. Defensively, he held Joel Soriano to four points on seven shots in the first half with his only field goal coming in transition, and he ended up with 13 points on 11 shots, with 11 rebounds.
Meanwhile, Scheierman finished with 17 points and 12 rebounds despite a rough overall shooting line (5-of-15 overall, 1-of-6 on threes.) And he came up big when it counted. So did Alexander, who hit the pair of game-winning free throws on a day when he struggled overall.
And what can you say about Francisco Farabello? In 22 minutes he scored four points with four rebounds and two assists, but his one steal was a big one, keying their big second-half run. And his defense was huge the entire second half, never moreso than on the final play, where he stayed vertical to avoid committing a foul.
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