Creighton and Oregon battled on Saturday night in a classic. Creighton battled back down four in regulation with under a minute left. Baylor Scheierman hit the shot in the paint to send it to overtime. Oregon battled back with the Jays up in the first overtime hitting a contested three to tie it, while Trey Alexander almost hit the last second shot to win it. Finally in the second overtime session, the Jays exploded for 15 points coming from all directions including a wide open three from Ryan Kalkbrenner and an offensive rebound and put back by Jasen Green. A total team contribution to send the Jays to the Sweet 16 in Detroit

Additionally, the Creighton Women barraged UNLV with 3-point shots and advanced on their side of the NCAA Tournament. Several questions for discussion were posed from that game as well.

Matt DeMarinis and Jacob Padilla react, recap, answer your questions and more.

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We are back with coverage of Creighton’s run in the NCAA Tournament. Matt DeMarinis has made it to Pittsburgh where the Creighton men will take on Akron on Thursday afternoon. Jacob Padilla joins Matt from Omaha and they talk on several topics in this one including:

• Previewing the Creighton-Akron MBB matchup
• Laying out the Bluejay men’s potential path to Phoenix
• Previewing the Creighton-UNLV WBB matchup
• How do the Creighton women deal with No. 2 seed UCLA if they advance?
• Reaction to the Big East getting three bids in the men’s and women’s tournament
• Did Providence, Seton Hall, and/or St. John’s get snubbed?

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Molly Mogensen found herself in a precarious situation that all playmakers get into at some point throughout a 40-minute game. As the third quarter was winding to a close, she deflected an exchange between Maddie Burke and Lucy Olsen and slid to the other side of mid-court to beat Olsen to the loose ball. There she laid, flat on her back, waiting. Those milliseconds of time slow down for the savviest of decision-makers, and they did once again in that instance as Mogensen found her window to flip a pass over a Villanova defender and into the hands of her teammate of four years, Emma Ronsiek, to initiate a fast break that resulted in an uncontested layup.

“I knew my teammates were going to swarm when I was on the floor,” Mogensen said. “It happened to be Emma, and then Kennedy [Townsend] got the layup.”

That play gave Creighton its largest lead of the game at the time. It was a microcosm of the type of plays Mogensen made all day in crunch time at the end of quarters. She crossed up Olsen in the lane and beat the first quarter buzzer with a layup. Right before halftime, she hit a pull-up jumper in the lane, then stole the ball from Maddie Weber and flipped it to Lauren Jensen for…

Butler second-year head coach Austin Parkinson told Jim Flanery that he’s thinking about compiling Emma Ronsiek’s highlight reel against his team and sending it to WNBA organizations. The fourth-year forward was averaging 19.3 points per game on 61.5% shooting against Parkinson’s Bulldogs the last two seasons entering Sunday afternoon’s contest at Hinkle Fieldhouse. Those numbers only went further north after the game as Ronsiek put up a game-high 26 points to go along with nine rebounds, two assists, and two blocked shots on 10-of-15 shooting in 75-65 win for Creighton.

Ronsiek carved up Butler’s defense out of the mid-post to the tune of a game-high 25 points in an 89-53 win back on January 10. At Hinkle Fieldhouse on Sunday, the Bulldogs made it difficult for the South Dakota native to establish herself in that area of the floor, but she adjusted to the defensive coverage and found a way to score six points in each of the first three quarters along with eight in the fourth to finish off her eighth 20-point performance of the season.

“They definitely played us differently than they did the last game,” Ronsiek said. “We knew that they were going to do that because they were kind of…

Basketball season is officially underway in Omaha as Jim Flanery’s squad had its first official practice of the 2023-2024 season on Monday, while Greg McDermott’s got started on Tuesday. Each team returns their top three scorers and several more key contributors from a season that saw them both finish third in the Big East and earn a No. 6 seed in the 2023 NCAA Tournament.

The Bluejay women bring back four starters in forwards Emma Ronsiek (13.2 ppg) and Morgan Maly (14.6 ppg) as well as guards Molly Mogensen (7.0 ppg) and Lauren Jensen (16.1 ppg) from a team that went 22-9 overall and 15-5 in Big East play against the 17th-toughest schedule in the country. The Creighton men returns three starters from last season’s historic run to the Elite Eight in leading scorer and two-time reigning Big East Defensive Player of the Year senior center Ryan Kalkbrenner (15.9 ppg, 2.1 bpg), junior combo guard Trey Alexander (13.6 ppg), and fifth-year senior sharpshooter Baylor Scheierman (12.8 ppg).

Creighton Women’s Basketball Practice Notes: 

• Practice was designed to begin with a 5-on-0 refresher course on specific offensive sets, but senior guard Molly Mogensen led the blue squad out onto the floor and…

The piece de resistance of a non-conference gauntlet is on deck for Jim Flanery’s Creighton Bluejays.

2nd-ranked Stanford.

Maples Pavilion.

Tuesday night.

The Cardinal are off to an 11-1 start to the season. They won a national championship in 2021, went to the Final Four in 2022, and are heavily favored to be one of the last teams standing on the final weekend of the NCAA Tournament for a third consecutive season. Their place in college basketball’s pecking order is earned and unquestioned.

All Creighton wants for Christmas is to get some respect of their own and to prove that last year’s run to the Elite Eight wasn’t a flash in a pan from a plucky underdog that got hot at the right time. Proving that wasn’t a fluke has been a major motivating factor for the nine returning players ever seen the clock hit 0.0 against eventual national champion South Carolina. It’s the reason they got right back in the gym when they returned to Omaha. It’s the reason they organized their own workout at The Ruth instead of going home this summer. It’s the reason they got shots up in the dark instead of turning around and going back to the dorm when no one was around to turn on the lights.

To a…

Over her previous five games spanning the NCAA Tournament matchups with Iowa State and South Carolina, and the first three this season against South Dakota State, South Dakota, and Nebraska, Emma Ronsiek scored a total of 19 points and shot 21.1% from the floor. On Sunday afternoon in Cedar Falls, the third-year forward powered her way out of that funk by going 7-of-13 from the floor and knocking down all but one of her eight free throw attempts en route to a game-high 23 points in just 27 minutes to help Creighton stay undefeated with an impressive 85-66 road victory over Northern Iowa.

“I’ve been trying to change the mentality that I’ve had over the past years of my life,” Ronsiek said. “The staff have been trying to get me out of my little rut and they’ve done a great job. I think it’s a little hard when you’ve got an athlete — especially when there are multiple athletes out there, it’s not just me — that takes a lot of pride in scoring and is trying to get over that hump. Doing what I needed to do to get there today felt really great.”

The Panthers (2-2) were coming off of a narrow 88-85 loss to 7th-ranked Iowa State in which they led at several junctures late and had a…

Those who enjoy a good wager every now and then probably could have listed off eight or nine players they thought would come away as the points leader in Tuesday night’s Top 25 showdown between 20th-ranked Creighton and 22nd-ranked Nebraska. Jays junior point guard Molly Mogensen probably would have been eighth or ninth name listed during that exercise, but that didn’t stop her from picking apart the Huskers’ ball screen defense over and over again on her to way to a career-high 22 points on 9-of-14 shooting in a 77-51 rout to help CU improve to 3-0 on the season and earn their second win over a ranked team.

The Bluejays drew 2,306 fans for their home-opener against the Huskers — a D.J. Sokol Arena record for a women’s basketball game — and put on a show for the roughly 80/20 blue split to earn their sixth win over their in-state rivals in the last seven seasons. Mogensen scored 19 of 22 points in the first half as the Bluejays never trailed the entire night and led by 20 or more for over 13 minutes of game time.

“I’m thinking we should break out the blue uniforms every home game,” Creighton head coach Jim Flanery said. “I’m really proud of our team. I thought we defended pretty…