LINCOLN – Creighton’s first trip to Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln produced the same result as each of the last three times the Bluejays faced the Huskers – a Creighton win. Led by senior point guard Austin Chatman, the Jays ventured into a hostile environment and emerged with a 65-55 victory.
Sunday evening’s meeting between the two in-state rivals got off to a rough start for the Jays as the Huskers jumped out a 24-14 lead. However, from that point forward, Creighton (7-2) outscored Nebraska 51-31.
“It’s a heck of a win for us at this stage in the season for this group of guys, to come on the road against a team as good as Nebraska and really execute our game-plan – almost to perfection,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said.
The Huskers (5-2) set the tone on defense from the opening tip, cutting off penetration, jumping ball screens and not giving the Jays any room to breathe. Creighton looked flustered offensively in their second true road game of the season.
Nebraska scored the first five points of the game and the Jays did not get their first bucket – a goaltended layup by Chatman – until the 15:52 mark. During the course of the first 15 minutes, Creighton made just four shots, missed 11 and turned the ball over nine times, and the 10-point deficit was the result.
Facing the prospect of the game getting out of hand by intermission, the Bluejays drew from a game earlier in the season – the 18-point comeback win over Oklahoma in Omaha.
“Down 10 in the first half with the crowd in the game, we had to put together a run of stops to get back into the game before halftime,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said. “You learn from everything, and certainly we learned from our experience with Oklahoma.”
Chatman took control and got the Creighton offense going, turning a missed 3-pointer by Nebraska junior wing Terran Petteway into a transition layup on the other end. Nebraska failed to score and on the next possession Creighton senior guard Devin Brooks got into the paint and found fellow senior Rick Kreklow in the right corner for a 3-pointer. Following another stop, Brooks got into the paint again and found Chatman in the same corner. Chatman pump-faked, dribbled in and pulled up from the elbow.
The two teams traded a couple of scoreless possessions until Chatman found senior wing Avery Dingman in the corner for a 3-pointer that completed a 10-0 run and tied the game at 24-all.
“We’ve been at that point before this season,” Chatman said. “Like that Oklahoma game, we were down 18. We stayed resilient, we kept our composure, we executed when we had to, which I think was big, and we got stops when we had to on the defensive end.”
Nebraska senior center Moses Abraham got a putback to end a four-plus-minute scoreless stretch, but nine seconds later Chatman found Kreklow for another triple and Creighton’s first lead of the game at 27-26 with just over a minute to go in the half.
Petteway hit a pull-up jumper just before half to retake the lead at 28-27, but Creighton still had managed to cut the deficit from 10 to one in less than five minutes.
Creighton made 11 shots and turned the ball over 10 times in the first half yet kept the Huskers within reach by holding them to 36.4 percent shooting.
Nebraska junior wing Shavon Shields, who had averaged 20 points per game on 60.6 percent shooting in the Huskers’ first six games, was held scoreless at the half. Creighton used multiple defenders on the 6-foot-7-inch Shields, including the 5-foot-10-inch Chatman, and focused on keeping him out of the paint.
“I thought the guys really dug in defensively, made Shields’ looks tough and you know Petteway is going to take some tough shots and he’s going to make some tough shots, and we were prepared to live with that,” McDermott said.
Petteway scored 14 points on 5 of 10 shooting in the first half, but his teammates combined to go 7 of 23.
Early in the second half, Shields finally entered the scoring column with a pair of buckets on consecutive possessions, and Nebraska led by five three times in the first five minutes.
Creighton eliminated the third and final five-point deficit with a pair of 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions – one each by Chatman and Kreklow – and pulled ahead 37-36 at the 14:06 mark.
Nebraska took back the lead on a 3-pointer by junior guard Benny Parker two possessions later, but a 7-0 run by Creighton featuring a pair of buckets by senior center Will Artino sandwiched around a 3-pointer by sophomore guard Isaiah Zierden gave Creighton a lead it would not relinquish.
Nebraska kept within two possessions throughout the next eight minutes, pulling within one point twice and keeping the outcome very much in doubt.
“The crowd got into it a few times and we found a way to really answer each time that happened without having to burn a bunch of timeouts,” McDermott said. “I’m really proud of my team.”
Those answers most often came from Chatman, creating shots for either himself or his teammates off the bounce.
“We obviously look to [Chatman] for a lot of leadership and to make plays on the floor,” McDermott said.
Look to him the Jays did, and the senior responded. Perhaps his most significant play of the game came with Creighton up three and two minutes on the clock. Petteway had just hit a trey on the other end to pull his team within one possession. Chatman calmly brought the ball down the floor, crossed up an excellent defender in Parker not once but twice and pulled up for a 15-footer.
Nebraska scored two points in the final two minutes, while the Jays hit their free throws to secure the win.
“I thought [Greg McDermott’s] game plan was better than our game plan, my game plan, I really did,” Nebraska coach Tim Miles said. “I thought they did a nice job playing off guys and playing with their discipline … Those guys held firm with our game plan. I felt like we could go out and run what we run and beat them, and I was wrong and he was right.”
Creighton held Nebraska to 37.7 percent from the field and 26.1 percent from 3-point range. Petteway finished with 21 points, but it took him 20 shots to get there and he was the only Husker in double figures.
On the other end, Creighton shot 47.1 percent for the game and scored 38 second half points. Most importantly, they only committed two turnovers in the final 20 minutes.
“You have to give those guys credit; they shot the lights out,” Petteway said. “They hit 10 threes, shot [44] percent from the 3-point line. We didn’t play good enough defense. When you give a team like that open looks, they build momentum and kept hitting them down back to back.”
Creighton has three seniors (Chatman, Artino and Dingman) that have played against Nebraska each of the last four years; this win secures a 4-0 record against Nebraska for that trio, and each one of them made their mark on this game.
Chatman was the best player on the floor for most of the night. He finished with 17 points on 7 of 11 shooting, seven rebounds, six assists and two turnovers.
Artino came off the bench for the first time this season after McDermott decided to insert sophomore Zach Hanson into the starting lineup, and Artino struggled mightily in the first half with no points and three turnovers. He bounced back to score eight points in the second half, though, including a key bucket with less than three minutes to go. Artino checked in with six seconds left on the clock and the ball on the baseline. The Jays got it in to him, he split two defenders and laid it in to put Creighton back up by seven.
Dingman made his second start of the season after returning from an offseason ankle injury, and he played a season-high 29 minutes. The 6-foot-6-inch wing hit two 3-pointers, assisted on two more and was a significant part of the defensive effort against Shields and Petteway.
“They’re leaders; that’s exactly what they are as seniors and we have great ones,” Zierden said. “As an underclassman, you just try to send these guys out on top. You don’t want them leaving their senior year and getting beat their last time playing so we tried to send them out with four wins in four years against them.”
Zierden did his part to secure the win by hitting three triples and scoring 13 second-half points after missing all his shots in the first. Between Zierden, Artino and Kreklow (nine points on 3 of 3 from deep), the Jays’ bench outscored the Huskers’ 30-8.
Every win is important, and bragging rights are always at stake when these two in-state foes face off, but this game held added importance for McDermott and his team.
“We haven’t found a way to beat a quality opponent on the road, and we needed to check that off our list, because I think there’s something to having the belief that you can do it,” McDermott said.
Creighton finishes up its road trip with a 2-2 record and now returns home to host South Dakota on Tuesday. Tipoff is set for 8:15 and the game can be seen on Fox Sports 1.