Huskers suffer another blowout loss to rival Creighton, 83-67
OMAHA - Make it five in a row.
While Nebraska was at least able to temporarily withstand another devastating start to the game, the result of Wednesday night’s latest edition of its rivalry with Creighton ended just as the previous four meetings before it, with another blowout victory by the Bluejays, 83-67.
The Huskers fell to 9-17 all-time against CU in Omaha, and head coach Tim Miles is now 0-12 all-time against Bluejay head coach Greg McDermott.
"They got us a little bit of every way," Miles said. "In transition, and they especially hurt us inside all night, which we knew was a possibility... I was just frustrated tonight."
In front of a sold out CenturyLink Center crowd, Nebraska couldn’t have imagined a much worse start to the game than what played out over the first 14 or so minutes of the first half. The Huskers only made 2 of their first 14 shots from the field while Creighton came out blazing to take an 18-4 lead right out of the gates.
Five straight points by junior guard Andrew White helped cut the deficit down to 22-14 with 8:30 left in the half, but Miles was hit with a technical foul for complaining about two missed moving screen calls on CU, which led to a 10-4 spurt by the Bluejays and pushed their lead back to 16.
Just when it seemed like the first half was going to be a complete runaway, the Huskers slowly started crawling their way back. A long two-pointer from White with 53 seconds left capped a 12-4 run to close out the half that sent Nebraska into halftime down just 36-30.
A quick basket by White to open the second half got Nebraska to within four points, but that would be as close as the Huskers would get the rest of the night. Creighton immediately responded with a 16-2 run that push its lead back up to 52-34 with just under 15 minutes left to play.
The Bluejays would eventually take their biggest lead yet at 64-45 on a 3-pointer by Maurice Watson with just over six minutes remaining, and it would be all semantics from there on. In fact, the arena began clearing out with roughly three minutes still to play as NU used all of its timeouts and continued to foul despite the game essentially having long been decided.
When the final buzzer sounded, Creighton had shot 21-of-34 from the free throw line to Nebraska's 9-of-13, and the Huskers had racked up 27 fouls.
"I didn't have any sense they weren't ready (for the game)," Miles said. "I knew it would be a very difficult matchup. I like these guys a lot, so when we looked at it, they seemed prepared... It seemed like they were mentally ready."
White ended the night with a game-high 28 points with 10 rebounds, while junior guard Tai Webster added 15 points. No other Husker scored more than six points in the loss, including just six points from senior forward Shavon Shields, who came in as the team's leading scorer on the year.
Creighton's Geoffrey Grosselle scored 15 points, as the Bluejays shot 51.9 percent from the field as a team in the game.
Nebraska returns to Pinnacle Bank Arena on Sunday for another tough test against Rhode Island. Tip-off is set for 1 p.m. CT and will be streamed on ESPN3.
"I promise you, every single day at practice I'll be the hardest worker trying to get my teammates going," Shields said. "I know Benny (Parker) and Coach and Drew and Tai (Webster) and all the upperclassmen, I know we're going to come back on Friday and get ready to go. We know what it takes, and we've just got to get everyone going. It was just kind of one of those nights... But I guarantee we'll be ready to go on Sunday."
