No. 7 Creighton routs St. John’s 97-79 without Zegarowski

Creighton’s high-scoring offense didn’t skip a beat even without its biggest star.

Denzel Mahoney scored a season-high 24 points to lead six players in double figures with Marcus Zegarowski out of the lineup, and seventh-ranked Creighton pulled away early in a 97-79 victory over St. John’s on Saturday.

“The first 22 possessions we scored 40 points maybe with some of the most unselfish, best offensive basketball I’ve seen in a long time,” coach Greg McDermott said.

The Bluejays (10-2, 6-1) won their sixth consecutive Big East game in the same season for the first time since joining the conference in 2013 and swept the two-game season series with St. John’s. The Red Storm (6-6, 1-5) dropped to 0-4 on the road.

Zegarowski, the Big East preseason player of the year and the Bluejays’ season scoring leader, was held out because of a hamstring injury suffered in the first half of Wednesday’s game against Seton Hall. Creighton is off until next Saturday.

“We just didn’t want to push it, especially with the week off coming after this game, so we thought rest was probably the right thing to do,” McDermott said. “This is athletics and sometimes guys get hurt and someone needs to step up.”

Shereef Mitchell made his first start of the season and had 10 points, three rebounds and a steal to go with three assists against just one turnover in 22 minutes.

Mitchell said he was told a couple hours before the game that he would start.

“When your name is called,” he said, “just be ready to show out and play, and I think I did a pretty good job of that today.”

Creighton’s balance overshadowed Julian Champagnie’s career-high 33-point, 10-rebound performance for St. John’s.

Seton Hall 76, DePaul 68: At Chicago, Jared Rhoden scored 18 points as Seton Hall won despite not making a field goal for nearly nine minutes to finish the game.

The Pirates had a 64-47 lead after Myles Cale’s 3-pointer at the 8:57 mark then went 12 of 12 at the freethrow line for the remainder of their points. DePaul got within six twice in the final 2:09.

The victory gave Kevin Willard his 100th Big East win, including conference and tournament games.

Sandro Mamukelashvili had 15 points and eight rebounds for Seton Hall (9-5, 6-2 Big East Conference). Cale added 11 points. Tyrese Samuel had 10 points and seven rebounds.