Arthur Kaluma was leading the Jays. (Juszyk/WBR)
Over the course of 40 minutes on Tuesday night, Butler and Creighton hurled every inanimate object they could lift at each other. They wrestled, tripped, elbowed, grabbed, and thanks to an offensive rebound and go-ahead layup in the final minute by freshmen guards Trey Alexander and Ryan Nembhard, and a blocked shot in the closing seconds by sophomore center Ryan Kalkbrenner, the Bluejays walked off the court with a 54-52 win to improve to 14-8 on the season and one game above .500 in Big East play at 6-5.
Freshman wing Arthur Kaluma led Creighton with a game-high 16 points to go along with seven rebounds and two blocked shots in 25 minutes. Senior forward Ryan Hawkins added 15 on 6-of-9 shooting, and senior guard Alex O’Connell tied his career-high — set two games ago in a win at UConn — with 10 rebounds to help the Jays keep their heads above water in conference play and avoid a fourth loss in the last five games.
Creighton won for the fifth time this season when shooting below 40% from the field. They did it by overcoming an early 9-point deficit and holding Butler to 34.5% shooting overall for the game, including 4-of-17 from 3-point range.
“This league is hard,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “It’s really hard for a young group. We’re growing and we’re getting better, but as I told the team, this season and I’ve said it from the beginning, it’s about the process and about growing and learning. We live in a world where it’s result-based, and I hope at the end of the season we look back and there’s enough good results for us to do what we want to do in the postseason. But the result part can’t get in the way of growth. If we play poorly and win, that’s a problem. We have to try to clean some of those things up. Obviously offensively right now we’re kind of stuck in a shooting slump, but I thought our fight was there.”
Butler fifth-year senior Bo Hodges got off to a good start and helped the Bulldogs open up a 21-12 lead midway through the first half. The tone he set on that end pair well with the fact that Butler cranked up the physicality on the defensive end from the opening tip and made it tough for Creighton to establish any rhythm on offense. The Bluejays missed 10 of 15 shots from the field and turned the ball over three times on their 18 possessions of the game.
“I thought our movement was good,” Butler head coach LaVall Jordan said of his team’s strong start. “Obviously, we made a few shots there and I think Bo hit a three. I thought our mentality and mindset was what it needed to be … coming out of the locker I thought our guys were committed to the plan and had a good mindset, defensively especially. Offensively, the ball moved well, and we found some good opportunities.”
Coach McDermott’s technical at halftime was his first in 3 seasons. (Juszyk/WBR)
Creighton finally got themselves going with about 8 minutes left in the opening period when Ryan Kalkbrenner corralled CU’s first offensive rebound of the game on a play that resulted in a dunk inside, plus the foul, by Arthur Kaluma. He converted the old-fashioned 3-point play after a media timeout to spark what would turn into an 11-0 run that gave Creighton a 23-21 lead when Trey Alexander knocked down three free throws after getting fouled in the act of shooting on the left wing in front of Butler’s bench.
A long pull-up jumper and a driving right-handed layup by freshman guard Jayden Taylor allowed Butler to retake the lead at 25-23 with 1:17 left before halftime. Creighton struck back in a hurry with a corner three in front of Butler’s bench by Alexander nine seconds later to go up by one, but the Bulldogs got the last five points of the opening stanza on a tip-in by senior center Bryce Golden and a fallaway three in the left corner by Hodges.
The latter finished the first half with a game-high 10 points on 4-of-7 shooting, including 2-of-4 from 3-point range.
McDermott was heated at the end of a physical first half in which five fouls were called on each team, and he let official Tony Chiazza know about it to the point that he was assessed a technical foul after the buzzer. It was the first time he’d been T’d up since a double technical was assessed to himself and former Nebraska coach Tim Miles during their 2018 matchup in Lincoln.
Butler sophomore guard Chuck Harris split the technical foul shots with 20:00 on the game clock prior to start the second half to extend his team’s lead to 31-26. Creighton responded with a stop and a quick 6-0 run on a layup by Ryan Nembhard and post feeds to Kaluma and senior forward Ryan Hawkins to go ahead 32-31 with 17:47 to play.
The lead changed hands four more times over the next four minutes when Kaluma took Golden to the hoop off the dribble, scored at the rim, and drew a foul to give Creighton a 37-35 lead with just under 14 minutes left. He converted the and-one opportunity at the free throw line, giving the first-year wing a team-high 14 points, but 90 seconds later he would leave the game after injuring his right knee contesting a shot at the rim.
Clinging to a three-point lead with 11:30 to play and their leading scorer back in the locker room, Ryan Hawkins and his five-plus season of college basketball experience stepped up in Kaluma’s absence. Over the next two minutes, the 3-time national champion at the D2 level rattled of a one-man 8-3 run on a dribble handoff 3-pointer, a kick out corner three, and a layup in transition down the left side of the floor after a blocked shot at the rim by Kalkbrenner.
“Hawk’s just ‘Hawk,’ I don’t need to tell him anything,” McDermott said when asked if he had imparted any magic words to ignite an offensive outburst from the sixth-year senior.
“Obviously we weren’t able to give those guys much of a break because ‘Art’ was back in the locker room for a while. He hit some big shots — a couple big ones on the block to get us going, and then obviously the big 3’s at a critical time.”
That spurt gave Creighton a 48-40 lead with 9:17 to go, but that lead would slowly disappear as the Jays went on an untimely drought offensively, going without a field goal for all but the final 32 seconds of that remaining nine minutes and seventeen seconds.
During that stretch, Butler outscored CU 12-3 and took a one-point lead on a layup in transition by Jayden Taylor with 64 seconds on the game clock. Greg McDermott drew up a look for Alex O’Connell out of the ensuing timeout, but the senior guard missed the go-ahead 3-pointer to the right. Fortunately for the Bluejays, the shot took a long bounce off the rim and went right into the waiting arms of Trey Alexander. Alexander swung it over to Nembhard, who drifted over to the left wing before blowing by Taylor to his right hand, getting into the lane, and finishing with a go-ahead layup off the glass to put Creighton back in front, 53-52, with exactly 32 seconds remaining.
“Shot clock was going down and the floor was spaced out, so I just had to make a play,” Nembhard said of his go-ahead bucket. “I drove and just made a layup.”
After the freshman floor general’s clutch playmaking, Creighton got stops on Butler’s last two possessions to seal the victory. Jayden Taylor left a baseline jump shot short out of a timeout, and after Nembhard split a pair of free throws with 8.1 seconds left, Ryan Kalkbrenner blocked senior point guard Aaron Thompson’s shot in the lane as he tried to tie the game in the final seconds.
Creighton’s players and coaches made no secret of the fact that they did not handle the physical part of the game well at all in the first matchup against Butler two weeks ago, and early on in the rematch it was looking like a continuation of the first game. But the Jays eventually settled in, and in the end, they made the play on offense and got the stops on defense that they needed when it mattered most.
“I think the first five minutes or so of the first half you could tell we were kind of shocked by the physicality,” Hawkins said. “But then we kind of embraced it down the stretch, especially in the second half. I felt like we were the more physical team for a little bit there and kind of went on a run. This league is a very physical and athletic league, so we just have to make sure we match that physicality and intensity every single game.”