The raucous cheers echoing through the rafters of CHI Health Center just seconds before came to a sudden halt. Everything was still. The crowd of 16,485 Bluejay fans held a collective breath as sophomore guard Austin Swartz emerged from the huddle and set his feet at the free-throw line.
Swartz had just made the first of two critical free throws, drawing the score within one point, though the lead barely stayed with the visiting Xavier Musketeers, 93-92. With 4.3 seconds remaining, a second made free throw would change that. But, then, Xavier took a timeout.
“I got iced out a little bit,” Swartz said of Xavier’s tactful use of a timeout to halt Swartz’s momentum.
Out of the timeout, the second free throw shot came off Swartz’s hands. But at a time where thousands of fans hoped to hear the satisfying sound of a swish, they instead heard the ball hit off the back of the rim. A unified gasp rumbled as the ball careened right. It seemed like ‘game over’ for the Bluejays.
But just as fast as Swartz was standing at the free-throw line he was gone, darting towards the loose ball. Swiping it away from Xavier guard Roddie Anderson III, Swartz looked to drive to the hoop, couldn’t find an opening and instead stopped and popped a close-range jumper with time expiring.
Fans in CHI Health Center watched anxiously as the shot left Swartz’s hands. Near the bench, head coach Greg McDermott angled his body backwards as if physically willing the ball to give the Bluejays a lucky break. At the same time, Swartz took a couple steps back and watched intently as the off-balance shot flew through the air.
Off the backboard. Through the hoop. Bluejays ahead by one.
Xavier had 0.06 seconds to make something happen, and while a long pass the length of the floor got closer than the Bluejays would have liked, nothing came of it as Creighton held on to win.
“If I make it through this season with this group, it’s going to be a miracle,” McDermott said by way of opening the postgame press conference. “They’re hard to explain, sometimes, how these games happen and that’s why you play until the end.”
But before the Creighton men’s basketball team executed a merely seconds-long sequence that scared fans — and McDermott — half to death but won the game 94-93 on Jan. 21, the Bluejays found themselves in a 40 minute shootout against a Xavier team that wouldn’t go away.
The game started off slow, a surprising fact considering that both teams eclipsed 90 points by the final whistle. But neither team scored in the first two minutes of the matchup, trading empty possessions before junior forward Jasen Green broke the 0-0 deadlock with a layup.
From there, what was once a series of trading misses became a series of trading baskets.
When Xavier’s Jovan Milicevic sank a triple to go up 3-2, Green responded with a layup on the other end. When Creighton’s 7-3 lead fizzled out into a tied 10-10 game with 15 minutes left in the half, the Bluejays countered with seven unanswered points.
“Obviously, we don’t like trading baskets. We’ve got to try to get stops at the end of the day, but being able to string some scores together just to keep it close and be put in a position to, you know, do what Austin [Swartz] did, is just as important,” junior guard Nik Graves said. Also important was Graves’s playmaking ability. The guard delivered nine assists to pair with 16 points in the game.
The first half continued in a push-and-pull fashion. Five straight points came in response to Creighton’s 7-0 run with 15 minutes remaining, and 13 minutes later, the back and forth showed Xavier with a 35-35 lead with halftime looming.
Ally Seevers / the Creightonian
It was then that freshman guard Hudson Greer delivered critical back-to-back threes, propelling the Bluejays to a 42-39 lead at the half.
Through the first 20 minutes, though, the biggest problem for Creighton was keeping Xavier forward Tre Carroll in check.
Just over halfway through the opening 20 minutes, Carroll had stepped up and converted on 15 critical points for his team. Running Creighton’s defense ragged, Carroll spent three-quarters of the half perfect from the field.
Even though a 42-39 lead pointing Creighton’s way shone on the scoreboard at half, Carroll had a team-high 17 points, the collective Xavier group shot 48.39% from the field and the team had overcome a seven point deficit to remain within three.
It was anybody’s game.
Second half implications were sky-high and the game was nowhere near secured when the second 20 minutes began.
But unfortunately for an already defensively-hindered Bluejay squad, Green, the backbone of Creighton’s defensive scheme, exited the game with 3:51 remaining in the first half and wouldn’t return to the floor.
For a Xavier team already aware of Creighton’s defensive weakness and attacking full force, Green’s exit was the greenlight to take the ball to the hoop. For the Bluejays, it was a humbling reality they would have to live with.
“I wouldn’t have guessed we could win it [the game] without Jasen Green, especially the way he was impacting the game in the 13 minutes he played,” McDermott said, alluding to the veteran forward’s 10 points, three rebounds and blocked shot. “Jasen quarterbacks our defense. He’s so important to us.”
With Green sidelined by injury and junior forward Owen Freeman out with illness, Karem Konan, Greer and Fedor Zugic were inserted into brand new rotations. This meant that the Bluejays would have to heavily rely on their shooting to get the job done.
“Sometimes you’re not going to have your best defense every night. That’s why there’s two ends of the court,” Swartz said. “At least execute on offense if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do defensively.”
Both teams got the same memo in the second half, each shooting over 60% from the field and scoring more than 50 points just in the second 20 minutes.
To begin the second half, All Wright dropped in a layup to get the score within one, junior forward Isaac Traudt responded, and the storyline continued in the same way.
As the offenses continued to ramp up, arguably the only solid and sustained defensive performances of the day for the Bluejays came from senior guard Josh Dix, who went from guarding Xavier’s Malik Messina-Moore (12 points on 5-of-13 from the field in 39 minutes) to hot-handed Carroll midway through the second half.
Guarding Carroll, Dix managed to limit the Musketeer to 12 points in the second half, a critical silencing of a once loud player.
“I just need him [Dix] to be able to guard three different guys … We decided to switch him to Carroll [because] we thought that’s where they were going late in the game and he [Carroll] wasn’t a factor with Josh guarding him,” McDermott said of his decision to shift Dix’s assignment.
In the end, Dix’s defensive effort — paired with 19 points scored at the other end — gave Creighton all it needed: a chance.
It may not have looked that way at first, as time dwindled down and the game began to shift — this time, in favor of Xavier.
From five minutes until under one minute remaining in the game, the Musketeers flirted with variations of a four point lead, barely holding off the Bluejays.
Credit to Creighton, the team never gave up, even as the Bluejays trailed 93-89 with under a minute remaining. Instead, these ‘comeback’ kids made fans and coaches sweat but found a way to win against all odds.
“At the end of the day, it’s 40 minutes of basketball [that] we’ve got to play. We’ve got to fight for all 40, no matter what the score is,” Graves said.
But before Swartz sealed the game on a bank shot, his teammates would put the sophomore in a position where the game was in his hands.
Swartz’s game-winner came after sophomore guard Blake Harper found a lane and delivered a clutch layup with 45 seconds remaining, putting Creighton down by just one score, 93-91. And it came after a critical defensive stand and defensive rebound collected by the Bluejays with 13 seconds left, setting up a possession with the potential to tie the game.
So, when Swartz’s feet set at the line for the second free throw and then the last-ditch jumper came off his fingertips, the roar from the crowd that followed the made shot reached fever pitch. The Bluejays had survived another thrilling Big East battle at home against all odds, 94-93.
“After [Swartz] made the first [free throw], I thought he was going to make the second one,” Graves said with a sigh as he relived the last shot from his vantage point. “But fortunately enough, [Swartz] got the rebound and finished that last shot. It wasn’t the prettiest play, but it [got] the job done and won the game, so that’s really all that matters.”
Graves’s reaction to the game-winner mirrored the mood inside CHI Health Center that night — a collective exhale and shared sigh of relief after another Big East battle survived.
Yet, the roller coaster of emotions felt in conference play is far from over. With their first near-week off in three weeks, Creighton looks to recover, reset and grab another win at Marquette. Heading to Milwaukee on Tuesday, Jan. 27, the Bluejays will meet the 7-13 Golden Eagles on their home turf. Tipoff is set for 8:30 p.m.
