The number 25 was on the minds of people who follow the Creighton women’s basketball program on Tuesday night as the Bluejays opened the 2019-20 regular season at Baxter Arena against their cross-town rivals Nebraska-Omaha. Before the game, it was a question — how would the Jays go about replacing 25.2% of the scoring that Audrey Faber provided last season. Two hours later, it was an answer in the form of the career-high 25 points that junior guard Temi Carda dropped on the Mavericks in a 67-54 win for CU.
“Tonight was her night,” head coach Jim Flanery said. “She’s not going to do that every night, but I thought she did a good job of recognizing that maybe some of our other kids were a little tight, weren’t making shots, and weren’t maybe quite as aggressive as they needed to be. That’s what you do when you’re a junior. You take that and say ‘ok, maybe I need to be a little bit more aggressive.’
“I liked the fact that she had a sense for that. That’s a huge positive that she can assume that role, especially this early into her junior year.”
The 5-foot-9 Minnesotan stuffed the stat sheet in front of the 798 fans in attendance. She led the team in rebounds with six, assists with four, and steals with four to go along with the aforementioned career-high of 25 points. She also tied three other Bluejays for the team lead in blocks with two and didn’t commit a single turnover on the night.
Carda shot 7-of-12 overall from the field, including a 4-for-5 clip from behind the 3-point line. She also went a perfect 7-for-7 at the foul line, which started on Creighton’s first possession of the game when she slipped to the rim, caught an entry pass from senior forward Jaylyn Agnew, and finished through the contact of UNO’s Claire Killian, who was late helping in the lane.
Carda scored nine of her team’s first 11 points, and 14 in total in the first quarter alone as Creighton held a 23-13 lead after the opening 10 minutes. She circled back to that first sequence as the spark for the rest of the night.
“Getting that first basket of the game is a big momentum play, and for myself I’m big into shooting free throws well,” Carda said. “That is one thing that I try to constantly do well — I’m in the gym multiple times a week getting free throws up.
“But getting a stop on defense and then getting that first bucket it really put the game in motion for us and gave us some momentum.”
Midway through the second quarter, sophomore Payton Brotzki keyed a stretch that helped the Bluejays extend their lead to 30-19 with 5:45 to go before halftime. With UNO switching to a 1-3-1 zone, the former All-Nebraska and Super State First Team standout scored in the lane on consecutive possessions, blocked a shot on the defensive end of the floor, then capped off a four-possession stretch by finding senior guard Olivia Elger alone in the left corner for a rhythm three.
The Mavericks cut the lead to eight at one point, but the Bluejays put together a 10-3 run to end the half, capped off on a put-back at the buzzer by true freshman forward Carly Bachelor to send CU to the locker room with a 40-25 lead.
UNO countered Creighton’s spurt to end the first half with a 10-3 run of their own to start the second, holding the Bluejays to 1-of-10 shooting with 2 turnovers on their first 12 possessions of the third quarter. Jaylyn Agnew and sophomore point guard Chloe Dworak snapped the Jays out of the offensive funk with consecutive 3-pointers 23 seconds apart to push the lead to 49-35 and force a timeout by the Mavericks with 2:59 to play in the third.
Creighton’s lead was once again trimmed to eight in the fourth quarter, but another three-ball from Jaylyn Agnew push it back to double figures, and it stayed that way for the rest of the night, ending in a 67-54 decision for the Bluejays.
Agnew finished with 14 points on the night, and although she struggled from the field — going 5-of-15 overall and 2-of-8 from beyond the arc — she made up for in other areas with five rebounds, three assists, two blocks, and a steal in 35 minutes.
“I thought [Jaylyn] fought through not making shots,” Flanery said. “There are times where I think she can let that affect her a little bit more, and tonight I don’t think she let that happen.”
The Bluejays (1-0) got key contributions off the bench from Payton Brotzki and true freshman center Mykel Parham. Brotzki finished with seven points, three assists, and two blocked shots in 17 minutes. Parham, a 6-foot-2 old school big from Burnsville, Minnesota, chipped in six points, five rebounds, and a pair of blocks in 11 minutes of action.
After an offseason spent devoted to cultivating a revamped defensive identity, the Bluejays put some good stretches on film in game one, especially at times when their offense was struggling to find a rhythm. Creighton finished with nine steals and nine blocks, forced 18 turnovers in total, and held the Mavericks (0-1) to 40.4% shooting from the field and 20.0% from beyond the arc.
“That has been our focus,” Carda said. “I think we fell off a little bit in the second half and that’s why the game was a little slower paced, but that goes to show the work that our team and our coaches have put in as a whole. Starting off our first non-conference game with nine steals and nine blocks, that’s a great statistic for us compared to past years. It’s a testament to an area where we’ve made a big jump as a team.”
Creighton will return to the court for their second game of the season when they welcome South Dakota State to town on Tuesday, November 12. Tip-off between the Bluejays and Jackrabbits is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. at D.J. Sokol Arena.