On a night where the outcome of senior guard Antoine Young’s final home game was in jeopardy for 40+ minutes, Creighton dug in deep and gave him the send-off he deserves.
Creighton defeated the University of Evansville Tuesday night 93-92 on junior guard Josh Jones jumper with 23 seconds remaining in overtime before an announced crowd of 16,447 at the CenturyLink Center Omaha.
Young and Creighton may have come away with the victory, but the real star of the game was Evansville junior guard Colt Ryan. Ryan connected on 17-24 shots and finished the game with an arena record 43 points.
“When a guy like Colt Ryan gets going, he’s tough to stop,” said Creighton head coach Greg McDermott, “[It was] one of the best offensive performances I’ve ever seen.
The Bluejays played behind most of the game, as Evansville jumped out to a quick 10-5 lead early in the game. The Jays fought back, however, with freshman guard Avery Dingman scoring nine points in the first half. His back to back 3-pointers towards the end of the half gave Creighton its first lead since 3-0 and put the Jays up by six. Then Evansville went on a 7-0 run to close the half, capped off by Ryan’s 3-pointer at the buzzer.
Turnovers and sloppy defense plagued the Jays in the first half. Evansville scored nine points off seven CU turnovers compared to one turnover for the Purple Aces. Denver Holmes and Colt Ryan took advantage of the sloppy play and combined for 32 of Evansville’s 40 first half points.
The Purple Aces took a 40-39 lead into the break and took advantage once again at the start of the second half of sloppy play and turnovers by the Bluejays.
Ryan ignited the second half surge by connecting on his first five shots of the half as his team made their first eight shots of the half and saw a one point lead for Evansville at half balloon into a 14 point lead at the 13:57 mark. At that point, even Young admitted that the outlook for his team was bleak.
“You think that, but you don’t want it to turn out that way,” Young said. “We were busting it to try to not have it turn out that way. We buckled down and fought a little bit toward the end. We just fought through it the whole game and came out with a win.”
After Evansville’s initial second half run, the Bluejays clawed themselves back with eight points from Young and a 3-pointer by Jones that clipped the Purple Aces lead tofive with 4:55 remaining.
Two free throws by Ned Cox put Evansville up seven with less than two minutes remaining. On the ensuing possession, sophomore forward Doug McDermott hit a 3-pointer to cut the lead to four. Then Evansville was charged with a shot clock violation and on the next trip down a missed Young shot led to a tip in by center Gregory Echenique to cut the lead to two with 49 seconds remaining.
After forcing another shot clock violation, Creighton had the ball with 17 seconds remaining. A similar situation occurred Saturday against Long Beach State, where Young’s floater in the lane with .3 seconds left gave the Jays the victory.
The ball was in Young’s hands and although his off balance jumper didn’t connect this time, the offensive rebound was snared by forward Ethan Wragge who missed the put back. The ball then came to Echenique, who awkwardly threw the ball up and it went in at the buzzer and sent the game to overtime.
In the extra period, the teams traded baskets until Doug McDermott’s free throw put the Jays up one with 1:11 to go. On the ensuing possession, Colt Ryan hit another tough jumper to put the Purple Aces up by one. Then Jones hit his jumper with 23 seconds left and on Evansville’s final possession, Ryan missed a pull-up three, and the Jays escaped with a victory.
A second straight emotional victory for the Jays, Jones said his winning jumper was more than just for him and his team; it was for Antoine, whom he has known since the fifth grade.
“I needed him to go away with this,” Jones said. “It meant a lot to me.”