No. 1 UConn men overwhelmed, upset at No. 15 Creighton, 85-66

OMAHA – Creighton students flooded the CHI Health Center court as the final buzzer sounded on Tuesday night, putting the final punctuation on No. 1 UConn’s 85-66 loss to the 15th-ranked Bluejays.

The loss, UConn’s first in two months, ended a Big East-record 14-game winning streak. The program is 0-4 all-time in Omaha and has not beaten an AP top 25 opponent on the road in 10 years.

Creighton, led by Steven Ashworth’s 20 points and 16 from Trey Alexander, shot 54.7% from the field for the game and made a ridiculous 14 of 28 from beyond the arc. Tristen Newton had 27 points and 12 rebounds for the Huskies, who shot 44.1% and just 3 of 16 from 3.

“Kind of felt like (we) just ran into a buzz-saw there,” UConn head coach Dan Hurley said. “…Ashworth’s performance today, he’s been playing great for them and he was a major focus of ours to try to take away the 3-point line from him but obviously we did a bad job. We’ve had a great run, but it just felt like today we ran into them playing great and us not playing as well as we needed to.”

It was Hurley’s first time experiencing a court storming, for or against one of his teams.

“I mean, I guess that means you’re pretty good,” he said. “I was surprised by it just because most Big East schools are pretty arrogant about their program. And the level of program that they have, in a game that was between two top teams, I’m not sure it was a huge upset for us to lose at Creighton.”

UConn (24-3, 14-2 Big East) started the game up 11-3, but Donovan Clingan picked up a quick second foul on an illegal screen around the 15-minute mark and went to the bench.

Five minutes later, Creighton brought an avalanche.

The Bluejays (20-7, 11-5 Big East) made 12 of their next 14 shots from the field, including eight 3-pointers, and used an 18-2 run over a five-minute stretch to take a 39-25 lead. Hurley brought Clingan back into the game around the seven-minute mark to stop the bleeding but UConn trailed 43-29 at the break, its largest halftime deficit of the season.

“We didn’t guard, we didn’t execute the way we wanted to and we lost,” Newton said. “Losing’s never a good feeling but we weren’t, like, invincible. Coming out here the way we did today against a good team, a top 20-ranked team, that’s bound to happen.”

Shooting 57.1% from the field and 8 of 15 from deep in the opening 20 minutes, Creighton finished the first half just five points away from its final point total when the teams met earlier this season in Storrs. Ashworth, with Big East Player of the Year candidate Baylor Scheierman on the bench scoreless for much of the first half with two fouls, had a game-high 16 points and four made 3-pointers at the break.

The Bluejays continued to capitalize on open shots, making five of their first six to start the second half, three of which came from beyond the arc, to extend the lead to 21.

“I think part of it is they’re an excellent offensive team. Part of it, I think we had individual players (whose) poor offense was affecting their ability to guard at the defensive end of the court,” Hurley said. “We lost them a couple times when we shouldn’t have, and then they executed a couple times and got the shots.”

UConn, struggling to create space for open shots all game, strung together a 14-3 run fueled by Newton and cut its deficit to 10 with 4:29 to go after a dunk from Clingan. The Bluejays responded with a string of free throws to put the game away.

Creighton had four players finish in double figures as Kalkbrenner had 15 points and four blocks and Scheierman finished with 12 points, seven rebounds and six assists. Five different Bluejays made at least two 3-pointers.

“They were too open today, all of their 3s they were too open. I don’t know if they made any contested 3s,” Newton said. “We’ve got to run them off the line. We were watching too much on the perimeter and they were just getting open 3s. That was all on us, we weren’t focused and like I said, it was just open 3s. A good shooting team at home, they’re bound to make them, so that’s all on us.”

UConn, with five regular season games remaining, returns to Gampel Pavilion on Saturday for an 8 p.m. tip-off against Villanova.