UConn routs Creighton for long-awaited dominant win

Braylon Mullins (24) led UConn with 16 points as Huskies shot 54 percent from field in rout of Creighton Saturday. (Photo by Dylan Widger/Imagn Images) 

OMAHA, Neb. — Dan Hurley admitted earlier in the week that it was a mistake to compare this UConn team to either of the two he led to national championships in the two seasons before last.

The coach again reiterated his roster is nowhere near that level, but the response he received Saturday was reminiscent of the squads that were the last teams standing in the NCAA Tournament.

A 14-3 run to end the first half sent UConn to the locker room with an 11-point lead over Creighton, and the second-ranked Huskies added to it out of the intermission, cruising to an 85-58 win over the Bluejays, their 17th in a row.

“We’ve been looking for a performance like this for a while here, where we were able to get some separation and play a full game,” a relieved Hurley declared. “We’ve been searching for a full 40 (minutes) and a relentlessness, a ruthlessness, and then just better quality. We made shots today. It looks a lot different when you’re making shots.”

Making shots was an understatement Saturday night. UConn (21-1, 11-0 Big East) shot 54 percent from the floor against a Creighton team still smarting from a 24-point loss at Marquette on Tuesday, and connected on 16 of its 31 three-point attempts to close the month of January on an emphatic note.

“We knew when we came into the game that the ball pressure wasn’t going to be the biggest point of emphasis for us on offense,” Braylon Mullins said after his 16 points led all Huskies in the victory. “We were coming off screens and we were just getting whatever was available, and we shot the hell out of it.”

“If you play elite-level offense, you shoot 54 percent from the field, make 16 threes, you’re plus-13 on the glass, you hold a really good offensive team to 40 percent from the field, and the three-point line defense we played, that’s bulletproof basketball,” Hurley proclaimed.

The beginning of the first half was anything but bulletproof for UConn, as Creighton scored the first points of the evening before Mullins, making his return after missing Tuesday’s game against Providence to rehab a concussion, splashed home the first of the Huskies’ 16 threes. Mullins and Solo Ball accounted for all of UConn’s first 12 points, all from deep, as the Bluejays stayed within earshot for the first 16 minutes of the contest. But a jumper by Silas Demary, Jr. with 4:17 remaining in the opening stanza put the visitors ahead for good, and ignited the aforementioned 14-3 spurt that built much-needed momentum for the final 20 minutes.

“It’s just us keeping our foot on the gas,” said Demary, who ended his night with 15 points, six rebounds and five assists. “I think Coach has been preaching just having that killer instinct, and I think today, we were just able to build on that. We were saying at halftime, those first four minutes (of the second half) are the most important of the half. I think that gets us going. We had to come out and start with a stop, and I think that’s what we did. We just kept building on that and did what we needed to do to kind of expand that lead, and do what we did in the second half.”

Creighton would briefly pull within single digits out of the intermission, but a Mullins three 30 seconds removed from the interlude brought the UConn advantage back into double digits to stay. The Huskies ballooned that cushion as high as 30 points on a night where Bluejays head coach Greg McDermott had no other recourse but to tip his hat in concession.

“It’s just one of those nights where they were all making shots,” McDermott lamented. “I didn’t have Jayden Ross flying off pin-downs, shooting threes and knocking them down on my bingo card tonight, and he was able to do that. There’s a reason they’re ranked No. 2 in the country. They’re a heck of a basketball team.”

UConn was able to further its best start to league play since its first championship season of 1998-99, and will look to sustain its hot streak when it opens February at home on Tuesday against Xavier. And while the job is not finished, the main objective is to bottle more results like Saturday’s up to cultivate the final piece of the puzzle.

“Obviously, the record, winning that many in a row and winning 21 is cool,” Demary reflected. “But I think we’ve gotta continue to just play a full 40, try to play as mistake-free as we can and just play together. I think we did a good job (of that), and I think we’re gonna start being able to do that consistently.”