[dropcap]Creighton[/dropcap] sophomore point guard MC McGrory hit a game-tying 3-pointer from the top of the key at the end of regulation, and 3-time reigning Big East Freshman of the Week Sydney Lamberty made a driving layup with 8.8 seconds left in overtime to lead the Bluejay women’s basketball team to an 84-81 win over the visiting Kansas Jayhawks on Monday night at D.J. Sokol Arena.
“That one feels a little better than the last 11 times we played Kansas,” Creighton head coach Jim Flanery said in his open statement after the game. “The game obviously could have gone either way. We obviously made some huge plays and what you’ll talk about is MC’s shot and Syd’s layup. Those are huge plays, but it’s the aggregate of the whole game.”
As Flanery and many others prior to the game mentioned, the Bluejays entered the game having lost 11 in a row to the Jayhawks, but they put together a full 45-minute effort to exercise those demons. “We played a really unselfish game,” Creighton junior guard Marissa Janning said. “It was just fun. We weren’t thinking, we were just playing, and that’s the best part about it. We just played as a team, and people came in clutch. People played their roles and we did exactly what we needed to do.”
It started with stifling defense, especially by starters Alexis Akin-Otiko and Brianna Rollerson. The front court duo got the Bluejays off to a strong start, holding Kansas to 4-of-15 shooting to start the game and Creighton capitalized with a 9-0 run after the midway point of the half to take a 17-10 lead with 7:52 to play before halftime.
Kansas senior center Chelsea Gardner gave the Jayhawks some momentum by scoring four straight points after the under-8 media timeout to cut Creighton’s lead to 17-14, but Marissa Janning and Sydney Lamberty traded pull-up jumpers from about 12-13 feet out to push the lead back to seven points.
The Jayhawks made another run to cut the deficit to 22-21 with 4:25 to play in the first half, but Brianna Rollerson grabbed her own miss on the other end and put it back up and in while drawing a foul. The lead would trade hands five times in the final 2:32 and it would be Kansas taking it into halftime as forward Chayla Cheadle hit her first shot of the game, a 3-pointer from the right wing, just before the buzzer to give her team a 32-30 lead heading into the break.
“I thought we got good shots, but we didn’t make them,” Flanery said of his team’s first half performance. “I felt like at halftime both teams should probably feel both good and bad, because I didn’t think either team played as well as they could and yet both teams were in pretty good position.”
In the battle of the bigs down low, Creighton’s Brianna Rollerson bested Chelsea Gardner in the opening 20 minutes. Rollerson finished with six points, eight rebounds, and three blocked shots in 14 minutes of action, while also forcing Gardner into three first-half turnovers. Despite the impressive stat sheet, it was the little things that Rollerson did that stood out to her teammates.
“She did a great job of doing things early offense to get everyone else open,” MC McGrory said. “That makes Gardner guard and she gets confused and then [Rollerson’s] open for those putbacks. It was her work early that really helped.
“And her rebounding,” Janning added. “Offensively and defensively, whether they were her own [misses] or not, she did a great job in rebounding.”
As the second half got underway, Kansas point guard Lauren Aldridge hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key to put her team ahead 35-32 after Creighton had briefly tied the game. The Bluejays then blitzed the Jayhawks with a 10-0 run over the next 2:59, capped off by 3-pointer from the left corner in transition by Marissa Janning that put Creighton ahead 42-35 with 15:43 left in the second half.
Kansas regrouped and started chipping away at the lead, never letting it reach double digits. With 7:50 on the game clock, freshman guard Terriell Bradley hit a pair of free throws to make it a one-point game. Then, 19 seconds later, Bradley, who finished with a team-high 21 points off the bench, dished it off to guard Asia Boyd for a 3-pointer to put the Jayhawks in front 54-52.
After a timeout by Flanery, the Bluejays got the lead back when Marissa Janning drove down the baseline and scored off the glass through the contact for two of her game-high 23 points. She buried the free-throw for the old fashioned 3-point play and gave Creighton a 57-56 lead with exactly 6:00 to go. That lead didn’t even last a minute as Kansas senior guard Natalie Knight tipped the scales back in favor of the Jayhawks with a 3-pointer to make it 59-57.
Kansas extended the lead to 63-59 with 3:40 left, but the Bluejays eventually tied it up a minute later on a pair of free throws by Janning when she was fouled from behind by Gardner after she stole the ball from Terriell Bradley. The Jayhawks’ reserve guard made up for the turnover by burying a 3-pointer with 2:21 left to make it 66-63. The Bluejays would cut that deficit down to one point on two separate occasions over the final minute and change, but with 3.2 seconds left they found themselves trailing by three once again, 70-67, after Lauren Aldridge sank a pair of free throws.
That set up one chance for Creighton to tie the game, and MC McGrory obliged. She took the inbound pass on the run and dribbled to the top of the key before rising up and sinking the game-tying 3-pointer as the buzzer went off to send the game into overtime tied at 70. “I’m not really quite sure [what I was thinking in that moment],” said McGrory. “I was just trying to get down the floor. I knew they were backpedaling, we needed a three, so I was like why not just stop here and go up. I was looking at the clock when I shot it, not at the basket, so I knew I got it off. I made sure of that. I was trying to get the ball up on the rim see what happens.”
On the first possession of the overtime period, senior forward Alexis Akin-Otiko stepped in front of Chelsea Gardner and drew the fifth personal foul on the Kansas’ go-to option in the low post. Akin-Otiko then drove into the lane and scored without much resistance on the ensuing possession to put Creighton in front 72-70. The senior forward out of Bellevue finished with 13 points and a career-high 10 rebounds for her first career double-double to go along with a pair of blocks and a pair of steals.
After Akin-Otiko’s second blocked shot of the game on the ensuing defensive possession, Sydney Lamberty stretched that two-point lead to 75-70, scoring three of her 15 points on a long distance shot after a dribble hand-off on the left wing.
One minute later, with Kansas trailing by four points, Lauren Aldridge drove in and drew the fifth personal foul on Creighton’s dominant inside presence, Brianna Rollerson. Aldridge made both free throws to cut it to 78-76 with 1:47 remaining in overtime.
Rollerson finished the game with a career-high in points with 16 and rebounds with 13, while also matching her personal-best with four blocked shots in 32 minutes.
After losing her starting center, Sydney Lamberty pushed the Creighton lead back to four points, going two-for-two at the free throw line, but Kansas guard Natalie Knight scored five straight points, including a huge steal and layup in transition to put the Jayhawks ahead 81-80 with 14.4 seconds left to play.
Akin-Otiko threw the ball in to Lamberty, who drove down the court and faked a hand-off to Marissa Janning that fooled the entire Kansas defense. This gave Lamberty enough room to get all the way to the basket and lay it in to put Creighton back in front 82-81 with 8.8 seconds on the clock.
“It was really nice, because they thought I was going to give it to Marissa,” said Lamberty. “Flan told me to just fake like you’re going to hand it to Marissa, because they had been switching onto her the whole game. So they were pretty sure that last-second shot was going to her. I was just thinking do not miss this layup.”
Flanery said it’s not something the Bluejays usually do, but felt it might be there if Kansas defended his best player the way he guessed they would, “Marissa’s our best player, but I felt she had forced a couple and wasn’t in a tremendous rhythm,” he said. “I felt like they would completely glove her in that corner and we could just run basically a fake hand-off. It’s not in our playbook, not that we have a playbook, but we don’t have that play. I really felt like Syd could get to the basket if we spread them out. Having Bri out of the game and [Taylor Johnson] and Lex who can both make threes, now your spacing is better and they’re not going to help as much.
“But Syd is strong and she doesn’t get sped up. I’ve seen a lot of game poise and plays from her, so it couldn’t have worked out much better. You still have to make it, but you’re not going to get a much easier shot than that in a late-game, one-point game.”
The Bluejays got a stop on the next trip down the court and MC McGrory hit two free throws to make it 84-81 with 1.3 seconds left to seal the game as a desperation heave at the buzzer by Kansas was well off the mark.
McGrory tied her season-high with 14 points, none bigger than the 3-pointer she hit to tie the game at the end of regulation. Combined, she and Lamberty had 12 rebounds and seven assists with only one turnover in 81 minutes between the two of them.
The thrilling win by the Bluejays ends an 11-game losing streak to Kansas. It had been 10 years and one day since Creighton last defeated the Jayhawks. “It’s a heck of a way to go into the break and should give us a lot of confidence going forward,” said Flanery.
It also wraps up a rigorous non-conference schedule along with giving the Bluejays that boost of confidence. “We’ve come a long way,” Janning said. “We put two halves together [tonight]. We came out strong and put two halves together. We played a complete game, and we played together for a complete game. It gives us confidence, but yet we have to come back on the 27th and come to practice with the mindset that yeah, we won that game, but we got conference now. Conference is a big deal and we have to come in and work hard. We know the team that we can be, but I think we can be better than we were tonight.”
Creighton will return to the court on December 30, when they host the Georgetown Hoyas in a 7:05 p.m. tilt at D.J. Sokol Arena.
The Hoyas, losers of nine games in a row, will bring a 2-10 record into Omaha for their 2014-15 Big East debut. The Bluejays on the other-hand will come in 7-5 on the year and 0-1 in Big East play after a 79-74 setback at home against Seton Hall.