A big week for Creighton athletics just concluded with some massive results for both the positive and the negative. While the Creighton basketball programs split their games against Nebraska, the Creighton volleyball program managed a perfect season in their conference play. For this week’s edition of Kresin’s Playbook, we look at Lauren Jensen’s scoring outputs for the season, Creighton men’s basketball and the three-point shooting against Nebraska and Creighton volleyball’s total sets played in Big East conference play.
30 – Lauren Jensen of the Creighton women’s basketball team put up another 30-point game against Nebraska on Nov. 26. Despite it just being the fourth game of the season, it is her first season with multiple 30-point games in her career. Jensen is doing this shooting more shots than ever before in her career, averaging 16.8 shots per game, shooting what would be a career-high 52.2% from the field, and maintaining a 42.9% shooting percentage from three on 7.0 attempts per game. Against Nebraska, she built on her trends, shooting 10-19 from the field, 4-9 from three, and a perfect 7-7 from the line. The Creighton women’s basketball plays next against Wichita State on Nov. 25.
42 – The Creighton men’s basketball team, in their game against Nebraska, attempted 42 three-pointers. This establishes a new program record for most three-pointers attempted in a game. The last time Creighton managed 40 or more three-point attempts in a game was on Dec. 3, 2023, also against Nebraska. In terms of Big East competition, there have been just 18 games since Creighton joined the conference in 2013-14 where a Big East team attempted 40 threes. Creighton appears on this list the second most times, far behind Villanova’s 11 such games, but still the only other team with more than one game. Nationally, however, if you also factor in Creighton’s five made two-pointers on 10 attempts, and extend the search to when Greg McDermott became Creighton’s head coach, there is only one other performance that compares to Creighton’s effort on Friday (North Florida at Syracuse, Dec. 21, 2019). Creighton plays next against San Diego State in Las Vegas on Nov. 26.
57 – Creighton volleyball, across an 18-game conference slate, played just 57 sets, winning 54 of them. Since the 2015 season, when the Big East moved to an 18-game conference slate, this mark of 57 sets played is the fewest by Creighton excluding the shorted COVID season. Creighton managed to win 1,418 points over the Big East season and lost just 884 points, contributing to an average set score of 24.9 to 15.5. Another tidbit, thanks to Rob Anderson, is that Creighton is the first unbeaten Big East regular season champion to lose three or less sets since Notre Dame did it in 2001 with a 12-game conference slate. The Big East Conference Championships are being hosted in Omaha this year, with Creighton playing next against either DePaul or St. John’s on Nov. 29.
Numbers were found through Creighton’s athletics website, the Stathead tool and the Play Index tools on Sports-Reference.