By SEAN BRENNAN
Special to BIGEAST.com
 
All Ryan Hawkins knows how to do is win.
 
Just consider his superlative resume from his days at Northwest Missouri State, the Division II power he led before arriving at Creighton last summer.
 
Oh, where to start.
 
Well, he ranked third in the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) in scoring last season at 22.6 points a game. He averaged 27.7 points per outing in Northwest’s postseason ride to the Division II National Championship in 2020-21, culminating with a 31-point, 18-rebound effort in the title game victory over West Texas A&M. He is the all-time leading rebounder in Northwest history, also the top board man in MIAA tournament annals and became just the second player in Northwest history to surpass 2,000 career points with his final tally of 2,098.
 
Oh, and he helped capture three, three national titles during his time with the Bearcats. And here’s another fun fact: if you combine his won-loss records at Northwest and this year at Creighton, he is 172-15 overall in his career, including 97-10 in conference play. 
 
And through it all the 6-7 Hawkins maintains a very simple philosophy.
 
“Winning is a lot more fun than losing so I try not to do too much of that,” he said.
 
So when a chance to end his college basketball career on the Division I level at a premium school in a premier conference came knocking, it was the sales pitch of Creighton head coach Greg McDermott that swayed Hawkins.
 
“He said I had the green light on offense to shoot,” Hawkins said with a laugh. “And we just kind of talked about the way that my role on the team would make the team better as well as the personal challenges that it would offer me. That was really enticing, just hearing coach talk about the way his offense would work as well as how there could be personal growth for me, too, that was really cool to hear.”
 
But did McDermott have you at “green light?”
 
“A little bit,” Hawkins said, again with a laugh. “But I made him work for it.”
 
It’s been a perfect marriage for Hawkins and Creighton this season as the senior’s winning background and veteran presence on a very young Bluejays team has gone a long way towards making Creighton a contender in the BIG EAST and beyond.
 
“I think being able to show consistency, doing the same thing each and every day and building upon what you’ve done the previous day, I think that’s the biggest thing I can give to this group,” said Hawkins, who is coming off a 23-point, 11-rebound effort in the Bluejays’ victory at No. 17 UConn Tuesday night. “And now you’re starting to see success on the court with this group.  We’re starting two freshmen (Ryan Nembhard and Arthur Kaluma) and they’re kind of just getting thrown into the fire and they’re doing a great job of learning on the go.”
  
Creighton’s roster is dotted with a lot of youth. A lot. The Bluejays feature eight freshmen and a trio of sophomores this season with just three seniors - Hawkins, Alex O’Connell and Keyshawn Feazell. So with all that youth, Hawkins was pretty sure none of Creighton’s newbies knew anything of his past exploits.
 
“I don’t know that they necessarily knew about it going into the summer workouts,” Hawkins said. “But as we kind of got to know each other and got to talk about it more, I think it earned their respect because respect is something that’s earned. You can’t just show up and say, ‘Hey I’m a senior, give me your respect.’ So that was kind of a big relief for me, gaining that trust especially with how many new faces were on the team. So, I don’t know if they were necessarily aware of my records of anything. But there were a couple of times I let them know about it. You know, the glory days.”
 
The Bluejays experienced an up and down January when they posted a 3-4 record, including back-to-back losses to Butler and Xavier to close out the month. Which is what made their road win at UConn such a key victory for the young Jays.
 
“It was a great way to start February,” said Hawkins, who is averaging 13.1 points a game (18th in the BIG EAST) and 7.5 rebounds (8th in the conference). I think this team has been so close to it all year. Even in the first half of that Xavier game (a 74-64 loss) you look at it and we were playing really well. We were playing with confidence offensively and we were guarding the ball defensively. But you have to give a lot of credit to Xavier for that second half they put together. They’re a great basketball team but every team in the BIG EAST is a phenomenal team. It’s so deep this year. But we just haven’t put together a full 40 minutes of effort yet. But we’re close and we’re getting it figured out.
 
Exhibit A for Creighton came in that win at UConn.
 
“I think it shows the resilience of this team,” Hawkins said. “We had a long stretch over Christmas where we didn’t play games (games against DePaul and Georgetown were postponed due to Covid) and I think that caused some of the slippage in January that we had. We did have a couple of games where we weren’t (playing) a full 40 minutes. We’d play 20 minutes of good basketball and 20 minutes of so-so basketball. So, I think not having too many games over the break kind of hurt us a little bit. Teams have a lot of room to grow and we didn’t have that opportunity because we had games (postponed), which was out of our control. But now I think we’re starting to hit our stride and get comfortable with each other and I think it’s going to be a fun February.”
 
Hawkins, who has six double-doubles on the year, has helped lead the Bluejays to three victories over Top 25 teams this season as well as post four Quad 1 wins, all the while playing in a conference that features five Top 25 teams and a challenge night in and night out. Not an easy road for such a young team but Hawkins is making the difficult look a lot easier than it should be. And why not? All he knows how to do is win.
 
“I’m trying not to look at it as you’re going into a game against another ranked team,” Hawkins said. “It’s just another opportunity to compete with a really resilient, young group. Part of being young is they don’t have that fear because they don’t know what to be afraid of. So it’s really cool to see that they don’t care that we’re going into another ranked-team’s gym. We’re going in there to play our best basketball and hopefully come out with a win. So it’s really cool to have that, I don’t know if it’s an edge or what, but to have that lack of fear because they’re young and don’t know any better. And that’s a really good thing for this group.”