With three games — featuring a two game road trip and one home game — crammed into a six-day stretch, Creighton men’s basketball was tested not just by opponents, but by the grind of a condensed schedule.
With a tough loss, 90-73 against St. John’s at CHI Health Center on Jan. 10 to round out the packed six-day stretch, Creighton’s latest home performance revealed as much about its endurance and depth as it did the final scores.
“We look like a team that’s played three games in six days,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “I just didn’t think we had a lot of energy. I think we survived early on some made jump shots, but I didn’t think our pace was great and then defensively we didn’t have a lot of teeth.”
The Bluejays got off to a rocky start to begin the game, as the Red Storm converted on three of their first four possessions to take a quick 7-0 lead.
Yet Creighton’s response seemed to show early that the road-weary Bluejays had more in the tank to pull out a competitive victory over the visiting Red Storm. Promising signs included back-to-back triples from Isaac Traudt — who looked to be bouncing back from a tough scoring lull over Creighton’s road trip — followed by a Traust-assisted three from senior guard Josh Dix to take the lead, 12-11.
Creighton even went so far as to take a five point lead, 23-18, with 10:53 remaining. From there, though, the wheels fell off the tracks and the gap between the Red Storm’s execution and Creighton’s lack of a response left the Bluejays’ lead in the dust .
“The end of the first half — the last seven or eight minutes — was the game. The second half was back and forth for the most part, but games can flip on you in a hurry,” McDermott said.
Following the halfway mark of the first half, St. John’s quickly ripped off a 17-2 run in five minutes.
“We weren’t able to get stops. They were scoring and I don’t exactly remember what happened after that five point lead, but I’m sure it involves some kind of turnovers, some missed shots in there. I know we didn’t end the half the way we wanted to,” sophomore guard Austin Swartz said.
Turnovers and missed shots did prove troublesome, as Swartz suggested. During the 17-2 stretch in favor of the Red Storm, Creighton racked up five misses and three turnovers.
The Bluejays trailed by 18 at the half and though the second half showed a much more even back-and-forth matchup — with Creighton leading the half 39-38 in points scored — the double-digit lead at half sealed the game for the Red Storm. Creighton was never able to close the gap to less than eight points.
When the whistle blew in a quiet CHI Health Center, the Bluejays fell to their visiting Big East foe 90-73. The Red Storm left Omaha with just their second win in the building in 15 tries.
So, in a battle predicted to be anybody’s game — 52.9% favoring St. John’s and 47.1% favoring Creighton according to ESPN Analytics — what caused Creighton’s collapse at home? Here are three takeaways from the Midwest versus East Coast battle:
#1- Missed shots sunk the ship
Over Creighton’s road trip, one of the larger takeaways was the need for Creighton to have a fourth shooting man. The Bluejays boast the consistent and well-rounded talents of Dix and redshirt-junior forward Jasen Green, as well as the hot hands of Swartz, but Creighton’s success at Villanova came thanks to help from sophomore guard Blake Harper and failures came in part due to the lack of that fourth man at Seton Hall.
So, though St. John’s shot the ball extremely well at CHI Health Center, a lack of shotmaking from Creighton’s end — especially from those that the team has come to rely on for points — made the goings even tougher for the road–worn Bluejays. Pair that with the fact that the Red Storm’s defensive arsenal is tough to play against and Creighton clearly faced no shortage of trouble offensively.
One big problem was getting favorable shots, even for Creighton’s consistent scorers. Swartz, who had not scored less than 15 points in the last four games, managed just five against the imposing St. John’s defense.
Dix, another pillar of Creighton’s offense, scored just seven points on the afternoon. His scoring on Jan. 10 was only the sixth game where the guard has scored less than 10 points for Creighton.
Obviously, St. John’s was doing something to smother Creighton’s offense. As Swartz stated in the postgame press conference, the Red Storm’s size at four of five positions was a quick way to snuff out the Bluejays’ offense.
“Their three-man is 6-foot, 10-inches, long, athletic, as well as their four and five man. We’re setting screens at the top and even when Jasen [Green] would set a really good screen, they would later switch and put out the fire,” Swartz said. “They forced us into a lot of things that we didn’t want. We’ve got to be better.”
Creighton only saw two players in double-figures by the time the whistle blew at the end of 40 minutes: Harper and Traudt. Harper racked up 12 points and four rebounds, while Traudt emerged from his shooting slump to reach a team-high 14 points on the afternoon.
When all was said and done, Creighton’s undersized presence didn’t make it easy to find shots. But to beat the Big East’s best, Creighton needs to find a way to make plays despite facing off against bigger athletes on the opposing side.
Not to mention, Creighton’s consistent scorers need to be just that: consistent. At this point, Swartz and Dix’s performance against St. John’s can be chalked up to just one bad game, but moving forward the Bluejays need those two guys to make shots, even if nobody else is.
#2- Double Trouble
A common phrase goes like this: “When it rains, it pours.” Unfortunately for the Bluejays, St. John’s’ performance was the embodiment of this phrase.
Coming into the game, Creighton understood the size and power of St. John’s big men Zuby Ejiofor and Bryce Hopkins, which is why when the duo looked downhill to make shots, McDermott decided to plug the paint and take a gamble on the 3-point line.
That was where the first part of the double trouble came into play. Double teams didn’t pay dividends.
“We ran with some double teams at Bryce and Zuby on the block and got burned on the backside on 3-point shots, so you have to pick your poison and my feeling was [that] we couldn’t have Jasen Green in foul trouble, so we had to run some help, especially the first half,” McDermott said. “To their credit, they made us pay for it.”
Picking your poison, as McDermott called it, can sometimes work: challenge the outside shooters to make their shots but keep the near-unmissable shots from inside the paint at bay. However, the Bluejays got unlucky making this gamble, as the Red Storm came out with hot hands and never slowed down.
In the first half alone, the Red Storm made 63.64% of their 3-point attempts (7-of-11). In the second half, they tacked on five more successful triples for a 41.67% success rate. The end of the game yielded a 52.2% success rate from beyond the arc for St. John’s.
The second part of double trouble came from double-digit point scorers. Over the course of 40 minutes, six players shot in the double-figures, two coming off the bench.
Starters Oziyah Sellers (16 points), Hopkins (12 points), Ejiofor (12 points) and Ian Jackson (12 points) took a piece of the double-digit pie, and two of St John’s’ players off the bench added their own high-flying scores to the final result.
Lefteris Liotopoulos scored a game-high 17 points while Dylan Darling tacked on 11 of his own. It was these reserve players that made all the difference, McDermott said.
“I thought that [Lefteris Liotopoulos] and [Dylan] Darling coming off the bench … were the difference in the game,” McDermott said. “They make 7-of-12 three point shots. When you’re trying to plug the lane a little bit to provide a little help on [Bryce] Hopkins and [Zuby] Ejiofor, that’s a killer when that happens.”
In the end, when Creighton chose to pick its poison, St. John’s made sure there was no right answer.
#3- It’s not how you start, but how you finish
Heading into the 2025-26 campaign, it was clear that the Creighton men’s basketball program was going to look a lot different than it had in years past. After Creighton’s second game of this season at Gonzaga, where they were blown out 90-63, nobody’s concerns were eased. After two tough losses to Baylor and Iowa State the worries continued to climb. By the time the Big East rolled around, Creighton was 5-5.
But thanks to a starting lineup change and some time to grow as a team, things are looking up for the Bluejays and people can feel the shift.
Yes, they did drop the game at Seton Hall that they were minutes away from winning. Yes, they did lose to St. John’s in a game that got away from them pretty quickly.
But these losses, especially the one to St. John’s, felt different. It wasn’t that fans were watching a team that didn’t seem to have enough intensity, that wasn’t gelling, that wasn’t aggressive enough or tough enough or believing enough. Against the Red Storm, they simply had a poor shooting night, and fans can get some solace knowing that it was (as far as we can tell) just that.
This doesn’t mean that the Bluejays don’t have work to do or areas in need of improvement. That doesn’t mean that it was a favorable outcome to lose at home to St. John’s. But it does mean that the pieces are coming into place and it is palpable that the team on the floor now is much improved from the team that stepped on the court in November.
The Bluejays have Swartz and Traudt to make the threes. They have Dix to lock down the opponent’s best player defensively and swish and dish on the other end. They have the heart of Green and Davis, who make the hustle plays. They have the players off the bench, like Harper and senior guard Nik Graves, to make an impact on the floor.
In other words, the Bluejays are finding something. McDermott seems to think it’s identity.
“I think we have a better understanding of who we are … Obviously we have some warts, and there are some things that we can’t control and we’re going to have to try to figure out how to be successful knowing that we have a few shortcomings,” he said. “[But] this group has become more connected … When you’re not winning and you’re a program that’s accustomed to winning, sometimes that can really fracture, on some teams, and the season can go south in a hurry and you can’t wait for it to be over. I don’t think there’s one person in that locker room that feels that way.”
Overall, the Bluejays face a long stretch ahead, with Big East challenges coming at them from every angle over the next couple of months. But though the St. John’s game was a loss on the score sheet, the pieces are still there. The talent is there. All the Bluejays need to do is start to figure out how to make the shortcomings less noticeable and their talents and strengths undeniable and unstoppable.
Now, a quick turnaround sees Creighton hoping to bounce back against Georgetown at home tonight. Tipoff set for 8 p.m.
