STORRS – There was a big-game atmosphere in Gampel Pavilion on Wednesday night, but the UConn men’s basketball team had fans streaming out of the building with time still on the game clock. Its regressing defense had it facing a double-figure deficit against Creighton, a team it beat by 27 points on the road less than three weeks ago.
The fifth-ranked Huskies extended the game, but not long enough to overcome the mistakes and the shot-making of the Bluejays as they pulled away for a 91-84 win.
“Crowd was awesome, I feel like a little bit of an idiot. You criticize your home environments and then today they were just awesome. But like I said (Monday), we’ve got a tendency with this year’s team to kill the crowd,” coach Dan Hurley said. “Our defense has just been so bad. These last four games, we’ve been around the 165th-best defense in the country. So we’ve been playing with fire with this, overall defense obviously dreadful and then, minus Braylon (Mullins) in the second half, just the shot-making was just ice cold. But this has been brewing for us just based on what the defense has looked like.”
UConn, losing on campus for the second time this season, dropped to 24-3 overall and 14-2 in the Big East. With Creighton coming in at No. 83 in the NET rankings, it was the first Quad 3 loss for the Huskies this year and will make earning a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament a long shot.
Creighton, which shot 49% from the field and 48% from beyond the arc, improved to 14-13 on the year and 8-8 in the league.
The Bluejays were led by a 21-point effort from guard Josh Dix, who lost his mother, Kelly, to cancer just days after the Huskies went to Omaha for the annual Pink Out game. UConn honored her memory with a moment of silence before the game.
Mullins scored 17 of his career-high 25 points in the second half. He and Silas Demary Jr. (17 points, nine assists) were the only two Huskies to make multiple shots from the field after the break as the rest of the team went just 4-for-18 (22%). Tarris Reed Jr. was the third Husky in double figures as he contributed 15 points and 12 rebounds as Alex Karaban struggled to play through a leg injury and finished with two points.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have played Alex today,” Hurley said. “We’ve got to figure out what’s going on with him physically, because he was moving around out there like a cargo ship.”
The game featured 12 ties and 11 lead changes, but the Bluejays shot 7-for-12 from beyond the arc in the second half on top of the ease they had all game getting into the lane. An undersized team, Creighton also managed a 41-35 rebounding advantage.
“Obviously their game plan was just to go at individuals that they’d identified that can’t guard the ball. On 27 made field goals, they had 10 assists, so they just went at individuals and that’s what’s been going on the last couple of games,” Hurley said. “Coaches are smart, they’re targeting our guys that can’t guard. And if we can’t fix that, we’re gonna obviously have issues moving forward.”
UConn’s offense kept the pace early under Demary’s direction as he scored or assisted on 15 of the first 20 points. Malachi Smith took the controls when he went for a breather and sparked a 5-0 run with a corner 3-pointer to get the “White Out” crowd going and force a Creighton timeout.
But the Huskies continued to struggle on the perimeter defensively and immediately allowed back-to-back drives into the paint to surrender the short-lived lead.
Creighton shot 51.6% from the field in the first half, getting bounces regardless of how hard the Huskies fouled (nine times in the first half). Guard Nik Graves (18 points) took a Demary hand to the face and was sitting on the hardwood as he watched his midrange attempt fall in off the rim to give Creighton a 40-34 lead with halftime nearing.
Jayden Ross played almost 27 minutes in an attempt to reinforce the perimeter defense as Solo Ball spent significant time on the bench with three fouls. He started a response, forcing a steal and sprinting the court for a transition layup before Eric Reibe added two more bench points under the basket.
Hurley hinted at a potential lineup change moving forward.
“Maybe just a jolt,” he said. “That first group is obviously lacking a perimeter defender. That’s why you saw J-Ross playing 27 minutes, and that wasn’t just because of foul trouble. Just having a guy out there that could be disruptive, potentially shut someone down out there, and in the frontcourt.”
Mullins struggled at both ends of the court for most of the first half, but scored six points in the final minute and tied the game at 45 with a 3-pointer just before the halftime ceremony retiring Emeka Okafor’s No. 50.
The 2004 national champion joined Ray Allen (No. 34) and Rip Hamilton (No. 32) as the only UConn men’s players to have their number retired.
The prized freshman, Mullins, came out of the locker room the way he went into it, nailing a 3-pointer 14 seconds into the second half. He scored five points out of the gate before Demary took over with his active hands on defense, which led to baskets in transition as UConn opened the half on a 10-3 run.
Creighton had an 8-0 response to jump back ahead.
Mullins landed awkwardly and wore a brace on his left knee for a short stint on the bench, but he came back into the game and immediately rose up to catch an alley-oop pass. He missed the finish, but reassured the crowd he was okay with back-to-back 3-pointers, his third and fourth of the game.
“I’ll be ready for Saturday (at Villanova), that’s all that matters,” he said post-game.
The rest of the offense fell flat, making just one of 10 attempts from the field over the next six minutes as Creighton went on a 14-2 run. Mullins took the lid off the rim with his fifth 3-pointer of the night, but the Bluejays kept getting shots to fall and built an insurmountable lead.
It was an 11-point game with just over a minute left when fans started heading toward the exits.
“The fans were everything you’d hoped they could be and it just sucks to let them down,” Hurley said. “Obviously this has ramifications to a degree on the things that we’re trying to do. Tomorrow’s obviously gonna be a really brutal day here, but at some point we’re gonna have to turn the page because we do control our own destiny relative to the things that we want to accomplish still. But that was tough.”
UConn is set to visit Villanova, currently third in the Big East standings at 12-3, on Saturday, then host St. John’s, which jumped to the top of the table at 14-1, in Hartford Wednesday.
