LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Oumar Ballo dominated inside with 30 points and 13 rebounds for No. 14 Arizona, which held off No. 10 Creighton 81-79 on Wednesday to win the Maui Invitational for the third time.
The mix of the unstoppable 7-foot, 260-pound Ballo and his speedy, talented supporting solid was simply enough for the Wildcats (6-0) to stay undefeated. Kerr Kriisa added 13 points and nine assists, Azuolas Tubelis had 12 points and Courtney Ramey scored 10. Arizona scored its final points with 2:21 to play but managed to carry on.
“I’m super happy with these guys,” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said. “These tournaments are hard. To play three games in three days against three really good teams with very distinct styles and to return out of it on top the way in which we did, it says lots about this group.”
Ryan Nembhard scored 20 points for Creighton (6-1), which was attempting to beat a ranked opponent for the third straight day. Ryan Kalkbrenner added 16 points, Trey Alexander scored 15 and Baylor Scheierman had 11 points and 11 rebounds.
Arizona gave the impression to be pulling away late, however the Bluejays kept hanging around.
Political Cartoons
Scheierman made a layup with 2:41 left to tug Creighton inside 79-72 but Kriisa made a lovely pass to Ballo for a dunk and an 81-72 lead with 2:21 left. He was fouled but missed the free throw.
Nembhard made a layup and Scheierman a 3-pointer to get Creighton inside 81-77. Kalkbrenner made one among two free throws to chop the deficit to 3. Ramey missed a 3-point attempt with 18 seconds left.
Creighton called timeout with 7.4 seconds left to establish a final play. Kalkbrenner did not have an open 3 and passed to Nembhard, who was fouled by Ramey with 2 seconds left. He made the primary shot and intentionally missed the second, with Arizona rebounding to seal the win despite Creighton closing with a 12-2 run.
“I just kept the rating and the time and our timeouts. And I believed we had enough separation to type of ride it out,” Lloyd said.
“But you’re just hoping for a miss. You hate to say that, that you must make ‘em miss. But one among those shots bounces off, you already know, and we rebound it, you already know, the sport might have been over a little bit bit earlier. But they didn’t. They went in.
“I feel we had one or two perhaps poor decisions, but we’ll learn from that. We practice situations lots. So numerous the situations got here up there and I felt comfortable not calling a timeout,” he added.
Ballo was strong from the beginning, tallying 16 points and nine rebounds in the primary half to assist the Wildcats to a 39-30 lead.
“We showed some grit in getting ourselves back in that,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said. “It felt like within the second half, each time we’d get it to 3 or 4, they’d stretch it back to nine or 10 and we just couldn’t quite crack the seal, so to talk, to get ’em where they were really, really nervous.
“After which we executed some stuff down the stretch pretty much to present ourselves a likelihood, you already know, on the free-throw line there to chop it to 2, after which ran a play where we thought we could get a superb have a look at a 3 there to tie it, and clearly didn’t work.”
Creighton: The Bluejays reached the title game by beating No. 21 Texas Tech within the opening round and stopping No. 9 Arkansas within the semifinals.
Arizona: The Wildcats also won the Maui Invitational in 2000 and 2014. Lloyd was a part of two Maui titles as a Gonzaga assistant in 2009 and 2018.
Creighton plays at No. 4 Texas on Dec. 1 as a part of the Big 12-Big East Battle.
Arizona opens Pac-12 play at Utah on Dec. 1.
AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material might not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.