Trey Alexander continues to be calm and collective for the Jays (Williams / WBR)
Creighton came out of the second-to-last media timeout of the night faced with the reality that was once a 16-point lead had now turned into a 50-50 ball game. With 7 minutes and 41 seconds left on the game clock and with their NCAA Tournament hopes hanging in the balance, seven-foot-one sophomore center Ryan Kalkbrenner cranked up his intensity to a ten, bit the lever off, and spit it at UConn.
The second-year big man single-handedly scored the next 10 points for the Bluejays over a five-minute stretch to give his team a 60-55 lead with 71 seconds left and his teammates, Trey Alexander and Ryan Hawkins, did the rest at the free throw line to carry CU over the finish line, 64-62, over a Huskies team that entered the night ranked in the top in every human poll and computer metric worth paying attention to these days. Kalkbrenner finished with his fifth double-double of the season, scoring a game-high 22 points and hauling in a team-best 10 rebounds. 20 of those points and eight of those boards came after halftime, including 10 points and six rebounds down the stretch over the last six and a half minutes of the game. He logged 35 minutes on the floor and didn’t sub out of the game one time in the second half.
“I thought UConn was getting a little tired, and obviously we were tired, but Ryan has really worked hard on his conditioning,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “I think anybody who watched him play last year saw that after two minutes up and down the floor he was tired. He really worked to get himself in shape for the U.S.A tryouts, and he piggy-backed that into the rest of this season.
“His pace in and out of ball screens — we ended up jumping some ball screens there late — and he had enough in the tank to do that. That’s a heck of a player in [Adama] Sanogo across from him, but [Kalkbrenner] is pretty darn good.”
Sanogo, an imposing sophomore big man in his own right, entered the game leading the Big East in field goal percentage at 51.0% in conference play. He was held to 6-of-16 shooting. It’s the third time this season he’s been held below 40% shooting in a game where he’s attempted at least 10 shots. Two of those games have come against Kalkbrenner and Creighton.
Every play he made down the stretch felt like a big moment. Every dunk, of which there were three in game-clinching stretch, every rebound, and every altered shot in the paint. Many of them were followed up with a roar from Kalkbrenner, as if he was trying to be the loudest person in the arena among the 10 players on the court and the 17,126 in the stands.
“Being at home when you make a big play the whole crowd is screaming and yelling,” Kalkbrenner said of his emotional outbursts after every big play. “It’s just natural for me to get into it and play with a little emotion.”
“I was just playing with a lot of energy. UConn, they play hard, that’s their thing, so to match their energy was going to be big for us. Having the crowd here for every big play you could just feel the energy coming from them. It was big and it just made it so easy to play hard for the next play.”
Ryan Kalkbrenner appears to dunk it a majority of the time (Juszyk / WBR)
The win pushes Creighton to 20-9 on the season and moves them into a tie for third place in the Big East standings with UConn at 12-6. More importantly, it gives them a season sweep of the Huskies and improves their record in Quadrant 1 games to an even 5-5. Ten days ago, the Jays felt pretty good about their chances at earning an at-large bid, but a season-ending injury to starting point guard Ryan Nembhard, followed by a 21-point loss at Providence suddenly cast some doubt over what type of resume they would truly be submitting to the selection committee.
Their head coach, however, never wavered in his belief that they belong in the field. Another physically draining, mentally taxing win by his undermanned Creighton team over a UConn team that entered the night on five-game winning streak, his level of concern couldn’t have appeared to be any lower.
“I think we’re already in the tournament, and I thought we were in no matter what happened,” McDermott said. “How many bubbles teams, or whatever they call us, have won at UConn, have won at Marquette, have won at St. John’s, have beaten Villanova by 20? Nobody has that on their resume.”
Indeed, this Bluejay squad that was picked to finish a distant eighth in the Big East preseason poll has put themselves in prime position to secure a spot in the field of 68 for the fourth time (fifth if you include the 2020 tournament that was cancelled by the COVID-19 outbreak) in the last six seasons. In the short term, with the win over the Huskies coupled with Marquette’s loss at DePaul, Creighton has secured a first-round bye in next week’s Big East Tournament in New York City. With one game left in the regular season the Jays will either get the No. 4 seed with a loss to Seton Hall and a UConn win at home over DePaul, or the No. 3 seed with a UConn loss or a win over the Pirates at home on Saturday afternoon.