In just a 12-minute span on Wednesday, UConn's season-long grip on the Big East vanished.

Creighton outscored the No. 5 Huskies 30-21 over the final 11:50 to down No. 5 UConn 91-84 at Gampel Pavilion in Storrs, Conn. The Huskies fell to second place in the conference for the first time this season when St. John’s defeated Marquette 76-70 in a late game Wednesday.

That was the most points UConn surrendered in a regulation game since 2019.

Braylon Mullins gave the Huskies a 63-59 lead when he drained a 3-pointer with 12:05 left. But they finished the half just 7-of-24 from the field from that point, and Creighton built an 11-point lead with 38 seconds to go.

On Jan. 31, the Huskies defeated Creighton 85-58 in Omaha, Neb. They shot 54.1% from the field and 51.6% from 3-point range in that one.

But things were different this time around for UConn (24-3, 14-2 Big East) against Creighton (14-13, 8-8).

Mullins led the Huskies with 25 points but hit just 9 of his 22 shots. Solo Ball, coming off back-to-back 20-point games, scored only 8 points on 3-of-10 shooting. Alex Karaban contributed 2 points on 1-of-6 shooting.

Overall, UConn shot 43.7% from the field and 36.7% from long distance. The Huskies were outrebounded 41-35 and struggled with their defense. Mightily – especially in the second half.

And it’s what head coach Dan Hurley wanted to address to begin his postgame media session.

“Our defense has just been so, so bad these last four games,” Hurley said. “I think we've been around the 165th best defense in the country so we've been playing with fire with this overall defense – dreadful.

“This has been brewing for us just based on what the defense has looked like. The defense has been a joke, and you know you're in trouble to start the game when you summon people within the first minute, minute and a half of the game on blown assignments. I could have just done that the whole game because it was a game of just really bad individual defense.”

Creighton moved to 10-4 against UConn under Hurley as head coach of the Huskies.

Bluejays head coach Greg McDermott obviously spotted something in watching film of their last game.

“Creighton just went at us from a one-on-one standpoint for a team that really shares the ball. Obviously, their game plan was just to go at individuals that they identified that can't guard the ball. … Coaches are smart. They're targeting our guys that can't guard and if we can't fix that, we’re obviously going to have issues moving forward.”

For Creighton, Josh Dix led the scoring with 21 points and added eight rebounds. Nik Graves contributed 18 points, Fedor Zugic had 14 and Blake Harper put in 12. Combined, they had a 20-of-34 shooting performance (58.9%).

Jasen Green pulled down 11 rebounds.

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