It wasn’t pretty, but the No. 9 Creighton Bluejays improved to 23-4 and cracked the top 10 of the polls with a 72-71 win over Seton Hall.

Lackluster defense and struggles at the charity stripe down the stretch gave the Pirates a chance to pull off the upset at CenturyLink Center Omaha on Sunday, but the Bluejays survived as a desperation heave by Seton Hall at the buzzer clanked off the side of the backboard.

The Jays held a five-point lead with two minutes on the clock, but failed to score another point. Creighton closed out the game with a turnover, a missed 3-pointer and a pair of missed free throws each by senior forwards Doug McDermott and Ethan Wragge, yet held on for the one-point victory.

“It says a lot about us, our maturity,” McDermott said. “We kind of won an ugly way. Ethan and I don’t miss those free throws much … We found a way to get the win.”

Over the past few years, Creighton has had its struggles during the month of February, dropping three straight games each of the last two years. This year, the Jays are finding ways to win even when they don’t play their best.

“Oftentimes, what determines whether you have a good season or a great season is if you find a way to win on the days when you don’t play perfect, and today was one of those days,” head coach Greg McDermott said. “We weren’t ourselves in some ways, and part of the reason we weren’t ourselves was because of Seton Hall.”

Seton Hall played without second-leading scorer Sterling Gibbs, who was suspended for the game by head coach Kevin Willard, but Gibbs’ absence created opportunities for other players.

“They’re much different without Gibbs, and in some ways, that was more difficult for us because of their determination to throw the basketball inside as much as they did,” Greg McDermott said. “It seemed like they haven’t given teams as steady a diet of [Euguene] Teague as they did us today, and obviously that was difficult for us at times.”

Teague — Seton Hall’s 6-foot-9-inch, 270-pound senior center — finished with 14 points and out-rebounded the entire Creighton starting lineup 11 to nine. Overall, Seton Hall won the battle of the boards 34-20 and 10-3 on the offensive end, which led to the Pirates outscoring the Jays 15-4 in second chance points.

Creighton led by as many as 10 points, but couldn’t pull away. The Pirates kept themselves within five points throughout the final 10 minutes of the game and cut the lead to one three different times, but they weren’t able to get over the hump to take the lead.

Despite his struggles at the free-throw line as well as a near turnover with less than 10 seconds to go, Doug McDermott finished with a game-high 29 points and moved into 10th place on the all-time scoring list on “Doug McDermott Biobblehead Day.”

“It’s really cool. [It’s] hard to believe, really hard for me to even get my arms around it,” Greg McDermott. “To do it on bobblehead night is something that he’ll always be able to remember … I think as all of us look back on it five years from now or 10 years from now, we’ll probably appreciate his accomplishments more than we do today just simply because we’re all in the middle of it right now, and the most important thing to all of us right now is finding a way to win the next game.”

Senior guard Grant Gibbs stepped up offensively and lived up to his Twitter handle, finishing with 16 points on 5-7 shooting and 3-4 from 3-point range.

Like McDermott, junior point guard Austin Chatman also surpassed a milestone, recording five assists and moving into 10th place on Creighton’s career assists chart.

Senior forward Fuquan Edwin led the Pirates with 21 points, while forwards Patrik Auda and Brandon Mobley rounded out the double-figure scorers with 12 and 11 respectively.

Creighton will hit the road for the next two games before returning home to close out the regular season on senior night.

“We’re going to play three teams that are fighting for their NCAA Tournament lives,” Greg McDermott said. “Those are scary teams to play because they’re going to throw everything but the kitchen table at you, they’re focused, their intensity is going to be off the charts, and we’ve got to find a way to match that and then some.”

First up is Xavier on Saturday, and tip-off is set for 4 p.m. on Fox Sports 1. On Tuesday, the Bluejays will head to Georgetown. Finally, they return home to face a Providence team that handed the Jays their third loss of the season in the team’s first meeting. All three teams are squarely on the bubble for NCAA Tournament bids and a win over a Creighton would go a long way towards bolstering their resumes.