OMAHA, Neb. – The Musketeers were dressed for a funeral in their all-black uniforms and after 20 minutes it looked like it was Xavier's funeral.
But apparently, it's not wise to bury a team before they're dead.
After trailing 36-19 at halftime, Xavier completely turned the game around with a 29-2 run to start the second half to beat the Bluejays 74-64.
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The win moved the Musketeers to 15-5 overall and 5-4 in the Big East Conference. It was also Xavier's first win at Creighton since the 2017-18 season.
Xavier outscored Creighton 55-28 in the second half and before his team took the floor in the second half, head coach Travis Steele said he wrote two things up on the board in the locker room at halftime.
The first thing he wrote was a reminder that the halftime score is the most overrated thing in sports. The second was the word, "swagger."
The Musketeers played with swagger in the second half.
"It's amazing what can happen when guys start believing," said Steele. "You see one go in, all of a sudden that rim feels like it's huge, right? Feels like you could make anything ... just proud of our group, to continue to fight and continue to believe. But that's what we do at Xavier, we're gonna play hard for 40 minutes regardless of the score and regardless of the circumstances."
After shooting 8-for-35 (1-for-7 from 3-point) in the first half, Jack Nunge buried back-to-back 3-pointers, then Paul Scruggs added another deep ball in the first two minutes of the second half and that 9-0 spark quickly turned into a full-blown fire that the CHI Health Center Omaha wasn't prepared for and the Bluejays weren't able to put out.
Scruggs scored 13 of his team-high 18 points in the second half. Nunge, who went 4-for-5 from 3-point range, scored all 16 of his points in the second half.
Nate Johnson, who had been stuck in a shooting slump, went 5-of-7 from beyond the arc (4-of-5 in the second half) and finished with 15 points.
Zach Freemantle posted 16 points and eight rebounds.
The Musketeers shot 66% (19-of-29) in the second half and went 9-of-12 from 3-point range after intermission.
It was Xavier's largest comeback since overcoming a 22-point deficit against East Tennessee State in the 2017-18 season.
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