Seton Hall rallies to top Creighton

NO. 23 SETON HALL 90, NO. 25 CREIGHTON 84

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Khadeen Carrington, Desi Rodriguez and Angel Delgado came back for their senior seasons at Seton Hall looking to make a run at the Big East title, and they are not letting anything get in their way.

Down 13 points early in the second half to No. 25 Creighton, no sweat. Down a point late with Delgado heading to the bench with five fouls, no problem.

All they had to do was find a way to win, and that’s exactly what the No. 23 Pirates (12-2, 1-0) did.

Carrington hit a go-ahead layup with 2:05 to play and Seton Hall held Creighton scoreless for the final 3:32 in posting a 90-84 victory in the Big East Conference opener for both schools on Thursday night.

“We know how good this league is,” said Rodriguez, who scored 14 of 23 points in the second half. “It is arguably the No. 1 conference in the country. This was a statement win. I think we needed this win to get back to playing good basketball. I saw a lot of good basketball in the second half and I was proud of my guys.”

Carrington finished with 18 points, Delgado added 18 points and 14 rebounds, and Myles Powell had 17.

“This is a great win,” said Delgado, who walked off the court after fouling out and told his teammates they were not going to lose. “It’s one of the best wins of the whole year because Creighton is a heck of a team. They play hard. They have great players. I think that team is going to go far but, wins like this are the wins that we need. We have to protect our home.”

Martin Krampelj had a career-high 23 points and 10 rebounds for Creighton (10-3, 0-1), which had a five-game winning streak snapped. Marcus Foster, who hurt his right knee early, finished with 14, but only two in the second half. Khyri Thomas had 13 for the Bluejays.

Foster said his knee bothered him at halftime but he kept playing. The senior was more frustrated that the Bluejays lost to another ranked team after leading at the half. They led No. 18 Baylor and No. 20 Gonzaga in their other two losses.

“We always talk about wanting to be a great team,” said Foster, who will have his knee looked at again today. “In order to be a great team we are going to have to get over these little humps. We are going to have to figure out how to beat these teams. We have to learn from it. We’ve been saying this all year. We can’t keep learning from it. We have to figure it out and get it done.”

Foster gave Creighton its final lead at 84-83 with a jumper with 3:32 to play.

Carrington hit his layup off a baseline drive more than a minute later to put the Pirates ahead.