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Creighton avoided what could have been a second costly blot on its résumé with Tuesday night's 93-92 overtime victory over Evansville.

The Purple Aces, with an NCAA RPI ranking of 152, came oh-so-close to posting their second win in a two-week span over the Bluejays. While that probably wouldn't keep Creighton out of the NCAA tournament, it's not the type of thing that the basketball committee would kindly on when seeding the event.

"I think every one (wins) helps this time of year," Creighton coach Greg McDermott said.

"You just have to try to survive and you're going to get everyone's best shot. Obviously, Evansville is playing for a better seed and avoid that Thursday night game in St. Louis. They had a lot to play for.

"But we've won 24 games and we've beaten a lot of good teams. We've beaten a lot of teams away from home. At the end of the day, when you look across the country, there aren't many teams that have done what we've done. And I feel that when the time is right, we'll be rewarded for that."

Creighton has already clinched the No. 2 seed for next week's Missouri Valley tournament in St. Louis. Evansville came into Tuesday's game tied for fourth place with Illinois State and Drake, but dropped to 8-9 and 14-14.

"I'm awfully proud of my team," Evansville coach Marty Simmons said. "They showed a lot of heart and determination, and really did a lot of really good things against a really good basketball team for a long time tonight.

"It's tough, but it came down to Creighton making one more play than we did."

Aces put CU in a hole

Evansville scored the last seven points before halftime to take a 40-39 lead. The Purple Aces opened the second half with a 10-2 spurt and gradually built their lead to 60-46 on Colt Ryan's 3-point basket with 14:08 to play.

Creighton twice got back within nine points before another spurt put Evansville up by 14 with 8:42 to play.

Creighton guard Antoine Young admitted that things looked bleak for the Bluejays at that point.

"You think that, but you don't want it to turn out that way," he said. "We were busting it to try to not have it turn out that way. We buckled down and fought a little bit toward the end.

"We were flat the first half and at the beginning of the second half. We just fought through it the whole game and came out with a win."

Jones regains touch

Josh Jones scored five of his 11 points in the extra period, finishing with his first double-figure scoring game since Feb. 1.

Jones made his first game-winning shot in three seasons as a Bluejay when he buried a jumper with 22.8 seconds to play.

"That means a lot because Josh hasn't played his best basketball the last two weeks," McDermott said. "When we had that tough stretch, it was when we had lost the (scoring) punch of guys that had given it to us all year."

Jones scored a total of six points in the losses to Northern Iowa, Evansville and Wichita State. Creighton's other wing players — Jahenns Manigat, Grant Gibbs and Avery Dingman — have also struggled offensively during the losing skid.

Dingman, who had scored a total of 14 points in Creighton's last nine games, had 14 against the Purple Aces. He made 5 of 6 shots from the field, 4 of 5 of which came from 3-point range. In the last nine games, Dingman was 4 of 12 from beyond the arc.

"Tonight, Avery gets 14, Jahenns get 12 and Josh gets 11," McDermott said. "All of a sudden, we're getting 30-plus points from that group. You have to make teams pay if they're going to try to keep it out of Doug's hands and Greg's hands."

Doug McDermott scored 21 points but missed half of his 14 shots and went 6 of 13 from the free-throw line. Gregory Echenique finished with nine points, six coming in the final six minutes of the game.

"Evansville does as good a job of keeping it out of the paint and making the touches difficult for Doug and Gregory," McDermott said. "They really had to fight for everything they got tonight."

Bits and pieces

• Colt Ryan's 43 points were four more than his previous high and broke the arena of 42 set by Creighton's Cavel Witter in a March 1, 2008, double-overtime win over Bradley.

• Creighton's 24 wins are tied for fourth-most in program history.

• The Bluejays finished 14-2 at home and averaged a Valley-record 16,664 per home game.

• Evansville hasn't won in Omaha since 1999 and was denied its first sweep of the season series since the 1994-95 season.

• McDermott now has 670 points this season, the sixth-best in a single season by a Bluejay.

• Creighton overcame its fourth double-digit deficit of the season. The Bluejays previously posted wins against San Diego State, Wichita State and Northern Iowa after trailing by more than 10 points.

Contact the writer:

402-679-2298, steve.pivovar@owh.com

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