VILLANOVA, PA –\u00a0The Creighton men’s basketball team handed Villanova\u00a0its first home loss of the season, overcoming an early 10-point hole to pick up a 76-72\u00a0victory over the Wildcats inside Finneran Pavilion.<\/p>\n
Creighton improved to 10-6 with the win and is 4-1 in BIG EAST play, while Nova suffered its initial BIG EAST loss to drop to 12-3 overall and 3-1 in league play.<\/p>\n
Villanova\u00a0led at the onset and moved the margin into double-figures at 25-15 after a pair of free throws by Acaden Lewis following the under-eight media timeout.<\/p>\n
The Bluejays\u00a0clawed back with an 13-4 run in the next six minutes to make it a one-score game, getting as close as 29-28. Back-to-back baskets by Lewis pushed VU’s lead to 34-28 before a lay-up in the closing seconds of the half by\u00a0Austin Swartz narrowed the Nova margin to 34-30 at halftime.<\/p>\n
Josh Dix had eight points and\u00a0Blake Harper added seven in the first half for CU. The Jays owned a 19-15 rebounding edge in the first half and its bench outscored Nova 13-5 in the first half. Lewis led VU with nine points, five assists and two steals in the first half for a Villanova side that shot 48.3 percent in the first half.<\/p>\n
After a Tyler Perkins three-pointer to open the half gave VIllanova a 37-30 lead, CU’s Swartz made three straight mid-range jumpers to bring CU within one. The Jays forged the first tie of the game at 41-all on a Dix three-pointer with 16:33 remaining.\u00a0CU also knotted the game at 43-43 and 45-45 before a 6-1 run by Nova put the Wildcats up 51-46 with 12:57 to play.<\/p>\n
A basket inside by\u00a0Harper with 10:06 left gave Creighton its first lead of the game at 55-53. That was part of a 9-0 Bluejay run that moved the CU lead to 59-53 and forced a pair of Villanova timeouts.<\/p>\n
A foul on\u00a0Nik Graves, upgraded to a Flagrant 1 foul after video review, gave Nova a four-point possession to bring Villanova within two and the crowd to its feet before a Swartz silencer from deep returned CU’s lead to five. Another floater from Harper gave CU its largest lead at 64-57.<\/p>\n
The Jays led 74-68 and got a pair of offensive rebounds to prolong an extended possession and take the clock under a minute. A lay-up by Bryce Lindsay trimmed VU’s deficit to four and after a Bluejay turnover, but\u00a0Ty Davis hit two clutch free throws to make it a six-point game and Swartz\u00a0<\/p>\n
Swartz had 20 points to lead four Bluejays in double-figures, just ahead of Harper (17), Dix (17) and Green (10). Creighton won the rebound battle 39-30 and owned a 27-9 advantage in bench points.<\/p>\n
Lewis had 20 points and Perkins had 18 points to lead Villanova. Duke Brennan had 16 points and 12 rebounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Creighton is back in action Saturday at 1 p.m. when it hosts preseason BIG EAST favorite St. John’s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VILLANOVA, PA –\u00a0The Creighton men’s basketball team handed Villanova\u00a0its first home loss of the season, overcoming an early…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,10830,231,772,1544],"class_list":{"0":"post-525653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-creighton-bluejays-men","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaab"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115861354110852951","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}