In the same game as its best start of the year, Marquette men’s basketball also had its worst deficit.
The Golden Eagles’ Big East road opener at Creighton on Saturday began with a 7-0 run. They held the Bluejays scoreless for the first four-plus minutes and achieved a highly-prized skunk — six-straight defensive stops.
It ended with an 84-63 loss, and a new low in a dreadful season in which the bar seemingly drops with every game, this time coming in the form of a 31-point shortfall. That is because, like in almost all of Marquette’s appearances this year, a poor spell wiped away any progress the Golden Eagles (5-8, 0-2 Big East) made and put them in too deep a hole to climb out of.
“That’s two games in a row where we’ve started the game well. We have to get better at sustaining it,” Marquette head coach Shaka Smart said in his postgame radio interview. “They made a heck of a run there in the first half. We did not respond well.”
“Heck” might be an understatement from Smart, considering, in not even four minutes, the Bluejays’ run was 25-2 and turned the Golden Eagles’ six-point profit into a 17-point debt.
Creighton (7-5, 2-0) began the game-changing scoring burst with a fast-break 3-pointer from Josh Dix before the under-12 media timeout. In the subsequent minutes, after both sides had a chance to draw Xs and Os on whiteboards, the Bluejays rifled off two jumpers and a 3-pointer, taking a 21-15 lead and forcing Smart to call his first timeout.
Then, Creighton senior guard Nik Graves scored 10 points in a row by himself — back-to-back-to-back threes, the last of which also brought him to the line for an and-one — which put his team ahead 34-17, a 23-point swing.
“We just got too loose and allowed shooters to have their way,” Smart said. “Particularly No. 5 Nick Graves.”
The deficit meant Nigel James Jr.’s 15 first half and career-best 23 total points, the dominant four-and-a-half minute opening stint, the different rotations featuring young bench players early and Creighton’s multiple scoreless streaks — all were for naught. Lacking 34% shooting was not enough. Neither was only one double-digit scorer in James Jr. Nor a mere 20 points from non-starters, 8 makes from 24 3-pointers and, what’s been a confounding issue all year long, 9 converted layups on 27 attempts.
“Offensively, the story of the game for us was just missing layups. Forget, even the contested ones, we had plenty of uncontested shots around the rim that we just didn’t finish,” Smart said.
“Right now, that’s the lowest hanging fruit for us on the offensive end. And, obviously, guys are not trying to miss. We work on finishing ad nauseam in practice.”
Going into the locker room trailing 46-32, Smart burned a timeout only 1:14 into the second half after Creighton scored two easy baskets to extend its advantage to 18 points, a beginning opposite to the first half. An 11-0 run shortly after put the Bluejays ahead by 31 with over 14 minutes remaining, the Golden Eagles’ foray into the ninth circle of Dante’s hell.
Three Creighton players scored double-digits, spearheaded by Graves (17) and followed by Isaac Traudt (14) and Dix (10). The Bluejays shot 26-for-62 from the floor as a team.
Chase Ross, Marquette’s leading scorer this season, continued struggling for the second-straight game, with nine points on 3-for-13 shooting, including multiple missed layups. The Golden Eagles’ front-court of Ben Gold (0), Caedin Hamilton (4) and Royce Parham (3) combined for seven points.
Junior guard Zaide Lowery, who began the year starting, before coming off the bench for two games and then not playing at all in Marquette’s game against Georgetown on Wednesday, did not make the trip to Omaha for personal reasons.
Asked Shaka Smart about Zaide Lowery not making trip with #mubb to Omaha:
“Just wasn’t here for personal reasons.”
Not suspended?
“Nope”
Not leaving the team?
“Nope”
— Ben Steele (@BenSteeleMJS) December 21, 2025
Marquette now has a 10-day break until its next match against Seton Hall (11-1, 1-0) on Dec. 30 at Fiserv Forum.
“The first thing is you have to take a growth mindset, even when you know everyone on the exterior is taking a fixed mindset,” Smart said about approaching the rest of the season after a dismal start.
“The second thing, and this is my job as a leader of this organization, is to strike the balance between the accountability for what goes into losing, strike the balance between accountability of where we need to be better. But then also a stubborn optimism and positivity that we can do it, and guys that we have on our team can do it. We can grow.”
This story was written by Jack Albright. He can be reached at jack.albright@marquette.edu or on Twitter/X @JackAlbrightMU.