This time, Boise State finished the job.
After nearly winning on the road at Michigan State last week, the Broncos pulled the biggest upset in program history Wednesday night with their 83-70 victory over No. 11 Creighton in Omaha, Neb.
Derrick Marks scored 28 of his career-high 35 points in the second half, bettering the 24 he had in the 74-70 loss to the 13th-ranked Spartans.
“We came in here knowing we’d have to play our ‘A’ game to be with them,” Boise State coach Leon Rice said. “Where the Michigan State game helped us is we played really good for 36 minutes and put ourselves in position and didn’t finish. We went back and spent some time watching that film in the last two days before we came out here and kind of analyzed our mistakes.”
The Broncos (5-1) beat a ranked opponent for the first time in four seasons and on the road for the first time since March 2005.
Marks scored 18 straight points for his team during a 10-minute stretch, allowing the Broncos to hold leads of eight to 12 points most of the second half.
“My teammates just kept on telling me to drive, so I listened to them, and I was getting layups,” Marks said.
Rice, sitting next to Marks, laughed. “I don’t think they were exactly layups,” he said.
Marks scored eight straight field goals using a mix of penetrating moves to the basket, pull-up jumpers and runners.
The sophomore guard was 13 of 19 shooting for the game – 10 of 15 in the second half.
Creighton (6-1) hadn’t lost a regular-season November home game since 1989.
Doug McDermott led Creighton with 21 points and Grant Gibbs added a season-high 17.
At Miami 67, No. 13 Michigan State 59: Senior Trey McKinney Jones scored a career-high 18 points, and the Hurricanes (4-1) held the Spartans (5-2) without a field goal for a 51/2-minute stretch in the second half.
At No. 2 Duke 73, No. 4 Ohio State 68: Mason Plumlee had 21 points and a career-high-tying 17 rebounds, and the Blue Devils (7-0) rallied late to beat the Buckeyes (4-1) – Duke’s third win over a top-five team this month.
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