Creighton’s played two games since their season was thrown into turmoil by Greg McDermott’s inappropriate remarks to the team following the loss at Xavier. It’s hard to know exactly where they stand heading into the Big East Tournament based on those two performances, especially with McDermott now back on the bench.
The first game featured perhaps their worst half of basketball of the season, as we called it in the Morning After. They fell behind by as many as 22 points, looking exhausted mentally. Yes, a crazy 17-0 run in the second half got it down to a two-possession game before the Wildcats sealed the win. But the Wildcats played the second half without co-Big East Player of the Year Collin Gillespie, who left the game due to a season-ending knee injury. As CU fans know all too well, losing your star point guard to injury tends to wreck things.
Three days later, with McDermott suspended, they won by 20 and hung 93 points on a Butler team that came in giving up the second-fewest points in the Big East. How much of that improvement was the team just being in a better place mentally compared to the first half Wednesday in Philly, and how much was a continuation of the momentum they began building in the second half against Villanova? Those are impossible questions for someone on the outside to answer. Complicating matters is that it was against a Butler team playing without three of their top six players: Aaron Thompson is out for the year due to injury, Bo Hodges didn’t get into the game, and Bryce Nze exited early due to injury. So even from a straight-basketball standpoint, it’s a bit of a tough game to gauge much from.
Creighton will now play that same Butler team in the Big East Tourney quarterfinals. It’s a Butler team who entered the Big East Tournament 9-14 overall, including an 8-12 mark in conference games to place the Bulldogs 10th in the league, but they’ve won three of their last four. They knocked off Seton Hall, Villanova and Xavier, with the only loss coming to the Bluejays. And they rallied from 19 points down to beat Xavier in overtime Wednesday night, 70-69. Underestimating this team because of their season record is foolish; they’re much better, much more dangerous, today than they were two months ago.
Hodges and Nze both returned to the lineup in last night’s win, though admittedly at less than 100% health. Nze scored 19 points and made all four 3-pointers he attempted; he carried the Bulldogs in a first half where not much else was going right, scoring 13 of their 26 first-half points. Hodges only scored six points for the game, but hit a huge three in overtime.
But the stars of the game were Chuck Harris and Bryce Golden.
The 6’9″ Golden tied a career-high with 20 points on 9-of-11 shooting last night, and had 19 points against the Jays last weekend on 8-of-11 shooting. He’s a tough matchup for a lot of opponents because he moves so well off the ball, and because he cleans the glass so well that he creates second chance opportunities for himself. Look at this play with 90 seconds left in last night’s game: Golden powers his way in between three Xavier players to put back a missed shot. Tough.
And Harris? My goodness. The freshman guard basically took over the game last night, twice giving the Bulldogs the lead in overtime with clutch three-pointers, and then making a pair of free throws with three seconds left — the first to tie it, the second to win it. He scored 21 points, all of them after halftime.
The first of his overtime threes broke a 59-59 tie in the first minute:
And the second was simply an unbelievable shot for a freshman to make. Trailing 67-65 with 45 seconds left in OT, he dribbled around a double-team to sink a three for the lead.
Harris lit up the Bluejays for 29 points a week ago, making 7-of-10 inside the arc and 3-of-8 outside, plus 6-of-7 from the line. He’ll be Job One for the Bluejay defense tonight, and it will be a tough job. Harris is a shifty, smooth player with sky high confidence at the moment.
Bigger picture, pace of play is typically the biggest key when Creighton plays Butler. As we noted in our postgame writeup:
“For 40 minutes on Saturday, Creighton looked precisely like the team they were expected to be at this point of the season. Against a Butler defense giving up the second-fewest points in the Big East, partially due to their defensive talent but mostly because of the methodical pace they play at, Creighton hung 93 points on the board. They did it by turning the game into a 72-possession affair, a veritable track meet by Butler standards; itโs the most possessions in any Butler game that didnโt go overtime in over two years. The last time they played a regulation game at a faster pace? January 25, 2019 in Omaha against Creighton, a 75-61 Bluejay win with 73 possessions.”
Last night’s overtime win had 61 possessions in 45 minutes. That’s Butler basketball. The more Creighton can speed the game up, the better.
- Tip: 5:00pm Central
- Venue: Madison Square Garden, New York, NY
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Gus Johnson and Bill Raftery
- In Omaha: Cox channel 78 (SD), 1078 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 620 (SD), 1620 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: FS1 Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 219, Dish Network channel 150
- Streaming on FoxSportsGO
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Nick Bahe
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Satellite Radio: SiriusXM channel 207
- Butler overcame a 19-point deficit last night, as Xavier went on an extended 25-4 run to take a 32-13 lead with 5:57 remaining in the first half. That comeback is the largest for the Bulldogs since erasing a 20-point deficit at Georgetown Dec. 27, 2017, a 91-89 double overtime win. Notably: Five of Butler’s 10 wins this season have included overcoming double-figure deficits, including their win over Creighton on January 16 where they rallied from 13 down.
- Butler shot 54 percent in the second half and went 3-of-6 from the field in overtime. All three of Butler’s overtime baskets were three-pointers.
- Butler committed only seven turnovers over 45 minutes of action, the team’s ninth game this season with single-digit turnovers.
- Marcus Zegarowski has lit up Butler each of the past two years in Omaha. In the past two seasons, Zegarowski has scored 57 points in 57 minutes, making 19-of-24 shots (79.2 percent) from the field, 12-of-14 three-pointers (85.7 percent) and helped CU outscore the Bulldogs 174-132. If only this game were in Omaha.
- This matchup marks first time since 2011 that the Bluejays open league tournament play against the same opponent it faced to end the regular-season. In 2011, Creighton beat Northern Iowa 63-55 in Omaha, then beat the Panthers 60-57 in the MVC Tournament quarterfinals.
- In Big East games, Creighton is 8-1 when scoring 72 or more points against Butler and 1-6 when scoring 71 points or less.
Creighton is 13-10 all-time vs. Butler, but has never played them in the Big East Tournament.
Creighton and Butler split a pair of regular-season meetings this season, with the home team winning each time. Butler rallied from a 13-point deficit in the final eight minutes of regulation to beat the Bluejays 70-66 in overtime on January 16th in Indianapolis. Denzel Mahoney led CU with 29 points in a game Marcus Zegarowski missed due to injury. On March 6th, Creighton defeated Butler 93-73 in Omaha. Marcus Zegarowski made 10-of-12 shots and tied his career-high with 32 points.
Thereโs nothing in basketball quite like a three-point shooter with โin the gymโ range, and thereโs no one in major college basketball with deeper range than Mitch Ballock. As the Bluejaysโ senior prepares for one final March run, WBR presents a collection of our favorite โBallock Bombsโ from four years on the Hilltop. Enjoy!
On March 11, 1999 Creighton upset Louisville 62-58 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. You can read about the game here, or relive the highlights:
The Bottom Line:
Creighton is a double-digit favorite everywhere you look. Vegas had them at 11.5 when we went to press; KenPom predicts a 10-point win, and ESPN’s BPI gives them a 87.5% win probability.
But this is March, and Creighton hasn’t won a game in the Big East Tournament since 2017. That’s right: this senior class is winless in NYC, dropping a pair of heartbreakers — 72-68 in overtime to Providence in 2018, 63-61 to Xavier in 2019 — and having their opening round game stopped at halftime one year ago today against St. John’s.
On the other hand, Butler will be less than 24 hours removed from a high energy overtime game. And Marcus Zegarowski — unstoppable against these Bulldogs a week ago –has fresh motivation thanks to Big East coaches giving the Co-Player of the Year award to three players not named Marcus Zegarowski.
Bluejays 76, Bulldogs 65