‘We lost to a championship program,’ Creighton coach says of Kansas Jayhawks basketball
No. 9 seed Creighton might have emerged as a “Cinderella” story in this year’s Midwest Regional if not the entire NCAA Tournament had the Bluejays not been dominated in the final 55 seconds of Saturday’s Round of 32 game against No. 1 seed Kansas.
After all … the Bluejays lost one of their best players — sophomore big man Ryan Kalkbrenner — to a serious knee injury in Thursday’s 72-69 first-round overtime win over San Diego State. Their rotation down to six players — three seniors and three freshmen because of injuries to Kalkbrenner and others — the Bluejays trailed by just one point in the final moments, ultimately getting outscored 6-0 to close their 79-72 loss to the Jayhawks at Dickies Arena.
“As I told them in the locker room, there’s a part of me that would like to cry. But that’s for selfish reasons, because I’m not quite ready for this to be over,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott told the media after the loss that ended the Bluejays’ season at 23-12.
McDermott, 57, who has just completed his 27th season as a head coach, noted that it’s “been an incredible journey with this group. We’ve had more adversity than any team I’ve ever coached. And when I say adversity, and we talked about this yesterday with the team, it’s not life-and-death stuff, it’s not that kind of adversity. But teammates getting hurt, and next guy having to be ready to step up. And it’s just happened time after time after time after time. And today was another example.”
McDermott’s squad might have survived and advanced — as 2022 “Cinderella” Saint Peter’s has done — against a lesser opponent.
He knows all about blueblood KU’s ability to win close games under 19th-year Jayhawks coach Bill Self. McDermott is 0-10 in head-to-head coaching matchups versus the Hall of Fame coach. That’s 0-8 in his four years at Iowa State, 0-2 in 12 seasons at Creighton.
The Jayhawks nudged the Bluejays 73-72 during the 2020-21 nonconference season at Allen Fieldhouse.
“We lost to a championship program today, but we certainly have nothing to be ashamed of. I’m really proud of this basketball team and what they’ve accomplished this season,” McDermott said.
One of the Bluejays seniors is Ryan Hawkins, a 6-foot-7 native of Atlantic, Iowa, who won three Division II national championships in five years at Northwest Missouri State.
“Emotional,” Hawkins said of the mood in the locker room after the defeat. “Just to be resilient enough to come back and keep getting up every time you get knocked down. … it’s just a silly little game, but I think it teaches you a lot about life in that regard. I think this group has got a lot of fire in them. I couldn’t be prouder of how we finished this season out.”
The Bluejays on Saturday left Dickies Arena impressed with KU senior point guard Remy Martin, who scored 16 of his 20 points in the first half, helping KU take a 39-38 lead into halftime. Without Martin, KU might have been buried early by an avalanche of threes. Creighton hit 8 of 15 threes the first half (to KU’s 3 of 9) and 12 of 28 for the game (to KU’s 6 of 16).
“I think he’s a pretty good player. Obviously, it was his night,” said Creighton freshman point guard Trey Alexander. The Oklahoma City native scored 14 points with nine assists and three rebounds (with three turnovers) in 40 minutes. Alexander at one time considered KU during the recruiting process.
“We kind of had it set up as a personnel game to where we could help off of him (Martin) a little bit. When you have a good player like that and he gets going, when you see any player in college, when you see the ball fall a couple times and you get in your rhythm, it’s kind of hard to stop you. That’s kind of what happened tonight. But I feel like our game plan is what kept us in the game. And a part of that was trying to keep Agbaji (Ochai, 13 points second half, 15 total, 34 minutes) and Braun (Christian, 13 points, eight rebounds, 38 minutes) from getting going, and have those other guys beat us. I feel like that’s what put us in a position to win, was to keep those guys from scoring,” Alexander added.
McDermott said former Arizona State standout Martin has benefited from playing a year in Self’s system.
“We played him while he was at Arizona State. I was just talking to my coaching staff in the locker room, his growth and improvement from the guy that was at Arizona State to the guy that’s playing now is night and day,” McDermott said.
“Like, his engagement defensively compared to how he defended at Arizona State and the unselfish nature of the way he’s playing is totally different than the guy we played against when he was at Arizona State. Obviously, Coach Self and his staff have done a great job of getting him to understand how he can best help this team. And if you look at the stat sheet, there’s one thing that jumps out at you today and, you know, he was a big difference in this game.” McDermott added.
Self returned the compliment concerning Creighton’s young point guard, Alexander.
“I thought Trey played a terrific game and controlled it. And we did our best to sit on his right hand, but he still got right several times,” Self said.
This story was originally published March 20, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "‘We lost to a championship program,’ Creighton coach says of Kansas Jayhawks basketball."
