The No. 19 Jays fell just short of upsetting No. 10 Marquette, 73-71, running out of time as they tried to make up ground on what was a poor start to the second half that let the contest get away from them.
“I’m glad that we fought, and I’m glad that we got back and gave ourselves a chance to win the game,” head coach Greg McDermott said. “We came up a little bit short, but that was a really good team we lost to tonight.”
The shortcoming was the Bluejays’ first home loss in Big East play. However, a regular season title would now require a miracle, with their conference record now sitting at 12-5 and first-place Marquette (14-3) playing three of the four worst teams in their remaining schedule.
The Jays first broke free with six minutes left in the first half, going on an 8-0 run to build their largest lead of the night at 32-20 and send the fourth consecutive sold-out crowd into a frenzy. By the half, Creighton’s lead was 40-32 on 77% shooting from inside the arc and six made threes from beyond it.
The Jays would have a much lousier first 12 minutes of the second half, however. Their shooting percentage from the field plummeted to below 35%, and turnovers continued to be an issue. Marquette was able to get back into the contest early in the period and tie it up after five Creighton turnovers in the first five minutes.
Marquette rode that momentum and started to build their first lead of their own, going on a 13-0 run and putting themselves 10 points in front with eight minutes remaining.
Yet the Bluejays wouldn’t quit. They slowly clawed back and found themselves within reach with under 30 seconds to go at 71-69. After physical play at both ends, that became 73-71 with just two seconds left; the problem being Marquette had the ball at their end.
At first, it looked as though Ryan Nembhard had avenged his five second half turnovers as he stole the inbound, deflecting it to Ryan Kalkbrenner who had a wide open jumper for the tie. But the shrill of the referee’s whistle called a foul on Nembhard, the fans booing and whistling back at the referees in disapproval.
After outscoring the Jays 41-31 in the second half, Marquette completed the season sweep of Creighton, also topping a Kalkbrenner-less Jays team in December, which was their sixth straight loss at the time.
Three Golden Eagles scored 18, while Scheierman led the Bluejays’ scoring contingent with 18 himself. Both teams shot 48% from the field in the contest, but Creighton outshot the visitors from three with a 10-28 clip.
A positive takeaway is that of late, bench players, particularly Shareef Mitchell, Mason Miller and Francisco Farabello, have shown that McDermott can trust them to make big plays in their limited minutes. For the second straight contest, the bench combined for 15+ points.
“We’re on to the next, [we’ve] still got a lot of things to play for this year,” Nembhard said.
The Jays, now 18-10 overall, have another tough battle coming up on the road at Villanova on Saturday, with tip set for 11 a.m. and hopes to stay in the Top-25.
“We’re also playing for seeding in the Big East tournament, seeding for the NCAA tournament,” McDermott said. “We dug ourselves a pretty big whole in this league and were able to fight our way out of it, now we just gotta find a way to finish it.”