Through 20 minutes of Saturday’s pink out game, Creighton’s offense scored 40 points on 43.8% shooting, with the big three of Trey Alexander, Baylor Scheierman and Ryan Kalkbrenner combining for 30. But defensively, they were not as sharp — not even close. DePaul shot even better (45.2%) and trailed by just three points, their closest halftime deficit in Big East play this season.
“As I told the team, normally if you don’t respect your opponent it shows its face in your preparation, and I didn’t sense that one bit. Not Thursday, not yesterday, not the shoot around this afternoon,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “I thought we were loose. I thought we were locked in. But DePaul’s record is what it is, and our guys are human, and then you add in this pink out stuff and the emotion of some of that…I don’t know. I just felt like we were half a step slow. But give credit to DePaul. (Interim coach) Matt Brady’s done a really good job in a short period of time.”
DePaul got the ball to start the second half and on their first trip they threw the ball into freshman big man Churchill Abass, who backed Kalkbrenner under the rim and dunked over him to pull the Blue Demons within one at 40-39. Game on, right? As it turned out, it was actually game over. Brady had to burn all three of his remaining timeouts while his team scored just six points over the next nine minutes as Creighton pulled away for a comfortable 85-62 win at CHI Health Center Omaha on Saturday night.
Junior guards Trey Alexander and Steven Ashworth ignited the avalanche for the Jays with 21 of their 23 second-half points coming in a 28-6 run that gave CU a 68-45 lead with 10:50 to go.
“I think we moved the ball a lot better in the second half,” Alexander said. “There was a lot more movement on the offensive end. And after that dunk I think they only scored on two of their next 15 possessions. I think it was big for us to get a couple of stops because we were able to get out in transition after that.”
Alexander was 10-of-20 from the field to finish with a game-high 23 points, seven assists, and only one turnover in 34 minutes. Ashworth tied his season-high with five made threes, wrapping his night with 17 points on just nine shots and two technical foul free throws. Seniors Ryan Kalkbrenner (22 points, 10 rebounds) and Baylor Scheierman (16 points, 10 rebounds) rounded out the core four production with a pair of double-doubles.
DePaul senior guard Jalen Terry got his team off to a good start in Omaha, freeing himself to splash a three from left wing that put Creighton in an early 5-0 hole just two possessions into the game. The Bluejays got their bearings and used a 7-0, Trey Alexander-fueled run to get the lead, but each time it looked like they were about to land a knockout blow, a turnover or a missed open shot combined with a defensive lapse would keep the Blue Demons in the game. CU went up 27-23 on a corner three by Ashworth off a baseline out of bounds play but turned the ball over on four of their next five possessions. They opened up a 36-29 lead with 5:24 to go, but they came up empty on six of their final eight possessions of the opening half to go into the locker room with just a 3-point cushion.
The Jays didn’t waste their third opportunity to put the game out of reach. After the dunk by Abass cut the lead to one, Alexander knocked down a three and finished at the rim for an old-school three-point play to spark a 14-2 run. After another Blue Demon dunk, this time by senior forward Jeremiah Oden, Alexander knocked down a mid-range jumper and set up a three by Ashworth in transition to fuel another 14-2 run that effectively sealed the deal for Creighton.
“I think we better attention to detail defensively to start that second half and we were able to create some separation,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “Give credit to DePaul as well. Coach Brady, in a short time, has done a really good job of getting those guys to believe in themselves. They were prepared for some of the stuff that we do, and they were able to take it away. They got downhill, got to the rim, and scored more points in the paint than generally teams do on us, especially in that first half. I’m proud of the way the guys kind of flipped the script at halftime.”
While four Bluejays finished with double figures in the scoring column, sophomore wing Elijah Fisher was the only player to do it for DePaul. He had 12 points. Despite knocking down his first three of the game, Terry finished just 1-of-2 from beyond the arc in 30 minutes after entering the day off of a 5-for-7 performance against Butler and a 6-for-8 effort against Marquette. Between Ashworth and Alexander, the Bluejay backcourt was able to limit Terry and fellow senior guard K.T. Raimey to only one made three on four attempts. It’s the fourth straight game that Ashworth has held the opposing team’s hottest scorer in check.
“He’s been physical, and he’s been elusive in terms of avoiding screens,” McDermott said of his point guard’s recent stretch on the defensive end. “He’s just really embraced this role that probably in his wildest dreams he never imagined he’d be playing. We don’t win the last four games without him.
“Trey did a great job, too, because they did play [Terry] and Raimey together, and those are the two guys that you really worry about from the 3-point line. Raimey was 0-for-2 and Terry was 1-for-2, so when their two best shooters only get four shots from the perimeter your defense is doing what it’s supposed to do.”
With the win over DePaul, Creighton closes out the month of January with a 7-1 record — their only loss coming at reigning national champion and AP No. 1 UConn. They’ll enter the month of February with a 16-5 overall record and sitting two games back in the loss column of the aforementioned Huskies in the hunt for a Big East regular season title.
“We started 0-2 in the league and our backs were against the wall,” McDermott said. “In the month of January, we were able to dig our way out of that, and we had some tough games on the road during that stretch. Unfortunately, February is not going to be easy. There are no easy games left on the schedule.
“We’re going to take a couple of days off first. We really haven’t had an opportunity since we got back from Christmas. It’s been a grind. Mentally, they just need a little bit of a break. Fortunately, the group gets along really well and they like being around each other. It’s really difficult with a group that isn’t as cohesive when you have to be at practice every day and you’re traveling and on the road for five days … but I just think a little bit of a reset is good. It’s good for the coaches as well. We can kind of take a step back and watch some film of ourselves from a different lens.”
The announced crowd of 18, 571 was the second-largest Pink Out crowd in the 14 years of the event, and the ninth-largest home crowd in school history. And the $36,002.46 raised with the jersey auction was the third-most out of those 14 years.
“It was another incredible event,” McDermott said. “The Hope Lodge is a wonderful facility and being able to hear some of the stories of the people that have stayed there, I think, motivates you even more to make sure we do a good job. But, you know, everybody’s been impacted by cancer and as I said in the pregame, I lost a relative this week to a brain tumor at a young age and it just reminds you that it’s not going away. The way our community embraces it is absolutely incredible. To have 18,500 people here all in pink, it sends a powerful message about the importance to continue to fight this disease and the importance of the screening and the early detection of cancer.”
