From an outside perspective, the 85-58 loss to No. 2 UConn at CHI Health Center on Jan. 31 was an unsurprising but nonetheless frustrating defeat for the now 12-10 Creighton men’s basketball team. For many it was yet another example in the ever-circulating narrative that this Bluejay team is “not the same without Ryan Kalkbrenner,” “not talented enough,” and “not like it used to be.”
But to those 18,650 decked out in pink for the 16th annual Pink Out game, who raised $43,535.25 for Hope Lodge Nebraska — a place for cancer patients and their caregivers to stay during treatment — Jan. 31 was bigger than those 40 minutes of basketball on the court, bigger than the Bluejays’ struggles this season.
And as CHI Health Center turned pink in the stands, the weight of the night settled quietly inside the Creighton locker room.
“This event is always a little bigger than the game. Obviously, we’re playing a game and it’s important to a lot of people — it’s important to me, it’s important to the guys — [but] tonight was a little different because of the personal impact that cancer’s had on our locker room,” head coach Greg McDermott said.
The cause meant a lot to everyone there that night but hit especially close to home for many of the 16 players in the locker room, hearts heavy in pink. Senior guard Josh Dix wore the name of his mother, Kelly Harper, across his back in bright pink, a homage to her ongoing battle with cancer.
Across the room, sophomore guard Blake Harper dedicated the game to his mom, Linda Harper, who lost her battle with cancer in May 2023. He wore her name proudly on his back. In the quiet of the locker room before tipoff, the meaning of the game settled in for Harper, and the emotions tied to his family washed over him.
“I was just thinking about my pops and how he be handling it, this whole situation,” Harper said, getting choked up. “I wear my emotions on my sleeves, good and bad, so it was a lot but at the same time I was grateful for representing her, the son she made and raised. That’s my birth giver, that’s my mother, [and] there’s not no other bond like that. I was blessed to have her for 18 years.”
Harper’s emotions ran deep, but the support of his teammates helped him channel those feelings into something meaningful before tipoff.
“The guys helped me … Coach Mac picked my head up … [and] that’s what I came [to Creighton] for: the guys that picked me up, the brotherhood,” Harper said. “Like coach said in the locker room, ‘We’ve got to stick together.’ So I felt like before the game, that’s the definition of what happened … Really never in my life [have] I had teammates that I just met in June talking to me like we’ve known each other our whole lives. That’s really what I took from tonight and for our team.”
From the perspective of tenured head coach McDermott, in his 16th Pink Out, this one felt different — and it shaped how he spoke to his team before tipoff.
“The last thing you would want to do is not talk about Blake’s mom or not talk about Josh’s mom. So, I made the decision that we were going to talk about it and talk about how Blake’s mom — how proud she would be — and Josh’s mom — how proud she is — of what they’re doing that someone their age shouldn’t have to deal with,” he said.
It was that feeling — both heartbreaking and uplifting — that followed the Bluejays out of the tunnel and onto the court where the No. 2 team in the country awaited them.
Wrapped in what felt like a loving embrace on all sides by the eighth-largest crowd in Bluejay basketball history, Creighton began the uphill climb to dethroning the UConn Huskies.
The game’s first 15 minutes didn’t disappoint. Even then, the implications of the game could not help but seep into every possession on the floor.
Fittingly, Harper opened scoring with a layup to put the Bluejays on the board 2-0 to begin the game in his first start since Dec. 7. After that, the Huskies came firing back, and the push-and-pull battle began.
Over the first 10 minutes, UConn never led by more than four. Creighton kept the score so close that, with 10:36 remaining, the Bluejays reclaimed the lead, 18-17 — for the first time since 2-0 — on a bouncing triple from junior forward Isaac Traudt.
Senior guard Nik Graves also had his hand in the fight to keep up with the second-best team in the nation, coming up with 13 points on five-of-six shooting from the field in the first half. The points he put up, though, meant more than a number on a stat sheet.
“Obviously, this game means a lot for a lot of people, just all the families coming here to support us, and the whole community coming to the game to support one message,” Graves said. “Honestly, I was able to hit a few shots, but really just trying to play hard and trying to play for something bigger today.”
Graves and the rest of the Bluejays rallied to try and make every possession count, but by the five-minute mark, UConn began to heat up from the field in a way that Creighton couldn’t counter.
From a tie at 27 apiece with 4:41 left in the half, UConn eclipsed a 14-3 run to end the half, using eight second-chance points to bolster a 41-30 lead at halftime.
“I thought for 15 [or] 17 minutes we played the way we wanted to play [and] the game was kind of where we needed it to be in terms of the pace of it,” McDermott said. “That run at the end of the first half obviously hurt us and then they came out of the locker room and were able to extend it right away. There’s a reason they’re ranked number two in the country. That’s a heck of a basketball team.”
Creighton ended the first half shooting 40.9% from the field and 50% from three. The Bluejay offense was led by Graves (13 points) and Harper (7 points). Meanwhile, UConn shot a combined 50% from the field and made eight threes for a 53.3% success rate from beyond the arc.
But the opening minutes of the second half quickly made it clear that nothing could stop the visitors from taking control of the game.
After two points from Harper to open Creighton’s second-half scoring, UConn took advantage of another 14-2 run, giving the Huskies a 62-40 advantage with 12:48 to play. On the other end of the floor, the UConn completely stifled Creighton’s three-point offense, holding the home team scoreless on 11 attempts throughout the half.
Graves’s double-digit first half was followed up with four free throws in. Over the entirety of the second 20 minutes, sophomore guard Austin Swartz scored just two points, and Dix couldn’t find a bucket. Junior forward Owen Freeman led scorers in the second half with seven points.
But more than scoring woes, the Bluejays couldn’t control the boards, losing the rebounding battle 37-24, which further hindered any chance of the score differential getting back within reach.
“I think we had some decent looks [from the field], but the defensive end of the backboards, that’s where the game was decided. We weren’t good enough there,” McDermott said.
With better rebounding or not, the Bluejays couldn’t deny that the Huskies shot the lights out of the ball, scoring on 58.1% of their 31 attempts from the field in the second half and managing to sink eight more 3-pointers by game’s end.
As the night came to a close, the score reached an insurmountable deficit, and Creighton accepted an 85-58 defeat.
When all was said and done, the Bluejays may not have won the game — improvements can certainly be made — however, they did something far more important: they never lost sight of what this night meant, for their community and their teammates.
“We have our warts, we certainly do, and we’re still growing, we’re still developing, but what transpired in that locker room [with Harper] before the game was pretty special,” McDermott said. “It speaks to the people that raised those 16 guys in our locker room. They came from a pretty good place, because the way they rallied around their teammate in there — that’s what you want Creighton to stand for.”
The entire Creighton community stood for that message that night, spreading awareness for cancer and showing why every effort, every dollar, every gesture, and every pink shirt mattered.
“One person, if they get screened and it gets caught, and they can be cured because it was caught early … that makes this all worth it,” McDermott said.
The game against UConn might not have transpired the way the team hoped, but Harper is convinced that this team is not done yet.
“It’s a long season still. We’ve still got some life and we not going to quit, we not going to back down, so we got to go back to the drawing board and fix up those mistakes, that’s all,” he said.
Creighton gets a chance to prove that on Wednesday as they travel to face Georgetown. Tipoff is set for 6:30 p.m.
