Men's Basketball

Polyfro Primer: Creighton (17-10, 8-6) vs Marquette (17-10, 6-8)

Just four games remain in the regular season, with the Creighton Bluejays holding a 17-10 record (and an 8-6 mark in the Big East). For a team picked by the media and the league’s coaches to finish ninth in the ten-team league, the Jays need just one more win to ensure a .500 record and a top-half finish, and that’s an impressive feat which shouldn’t be overlooked.

There’s a much bigger fish to be reeled in, though, and that’s an NCAA Tournament bid. The win over Xavier two weeks ago ratcheted up the possibilities of that happening, and as losses for other bubble teams have piled up, Creighton’s chances — despite their horrible non-conference schedule and results — have increased. Several prominent bracketologists, including both ESPN’s Joe Lunardi and Bluejay Banter’s Tim Krueger, have Creighton among their last eight teams out, which means they’re in the conversation. Message boards and social media users have lamented the Jays’ poor resume out of conference and it’s effect on their NCAA hopes now that they’ve played themselves into the conversation, but CU can’t do a damn thing about that now. It is what it is, and there’s not much point in gnashing teeth over something they can’t fix, so let’s look at what they can control — how they finish the season.

Four games remain: home games with Marquette and St. John’s, and road games with Providence and Xavier. In the Big East Tournament, the likeliest current scenario has them seeded either fourth or fifth and matched up with Providence, with Villanova awaiting them should they win.

The guess here is they need four more wins between the remaining regular season slate and the Big East tourney to go from being in the conversation to being in the tournament. Whether that’s 3-1 down the stretch and a win in NYC, or 2-2 down the stretch with two wins in NYC, four is the number they need to get in order to have serious hopes of making the field of 68. With four more wins, they’d not only have 21 overall, they’d have at least two more Top 50 wins (and a solid record over their last ten games).

They begin the quest for those wins against Marquette tonight, a team they should know very well considering they played 11 days ago. Since that game, both squads have played once. Creighton lost at Butler and then took an eight-day break, while Marquette took a seven-day break before winning at DePaul on Saturday.

How do the teams match up? Going by KenPom’s Four Factors of effective field goal percentage, turnover percentage, offensive rebound percentage, and free throws attempted/field goals attempted, it’s clear these are two diametrically opposed teams. CU generally shoots well, and Marquette generally defends well. Marquette is an average shooting team, and Creighton’s defense is solidly above average. Creighton doesn’t turn it over much but also doesn’t force a ton of turnovers, while Marquette forces their opponents to turn it over but also turns it over a ton themselves. Creighton allows opponents to rebound just 27% of their misses (54th best in the country) while Marquette is one of the worst teams in the country at preventing offensive rebounds, and both teams are only moderately OK at getting offensive rebounds themselves. And 37% of Creighton’s shot attempts come from the free throw line while holding opponents to just 32%, while Marquette takes nearly 40% of their shot attempts at the line and ranks 13th in fewest free throw attempts by their opponents.

No wonder the first game was decided in the final minute.

With that said, Creighton played a below average game in that first meeting, Marquette played relatively well, and the Jays won on the road. CU shot 2-16 from three-point range and 7-25 for the game, Mo Watson and Geoff Groselle were the only players to score in double-figures OR make more than half of their shots, and Watson had six turnovers. For MU, their big two had nice games — Henry Ellenson shot 7-13 from the floor with eight rebounds and 16 points, while Luke Fischer shot 6-9 from the floor with six boards and 12 points, putting both right at their season averages in both categories. The Golden Eagles turned it over 13 times, two fewer than their average, outrebounded the Bluejays 37-33, three better than their +0.9 season margin, and shot right at their season average both from the floor and from three-point range.

If you believe Creighton will play better than they did 11 days ago in Milwaukee and Marquette will play at about the same level or just slightly worse, KenPom and Las Vegas favoring the Jays by somewhere around 9-10 points tonight seems about right. Of course, as we’ve seen across college basketball this year, nobody has any idea what will happen on a given night or in a given game, so who’s to doubt that Marquette — desperately needing wins to climb out of the play-in round in NYC — could come out with great performances and flip that 9-10 point margin in their favor? Not me.

Ellenson is a future NBA Lottery Pick who averages 16.5 points and 10.0 rebounds a game while shooting 43.5% from the field, 73% from the line, and 27% from three-point range. Fischer has less range on his shot, but is more efficient from the field, connecting on 59.6% of his shot attempts and a respectable 66% from the line. He also grabs nearly seven rebounds a game. Duane Wilson is a capable scorer both off the dribble and from behind the arc, and averages nearly 12 a game. Haanif Cheatham has grown into one of their top scorers (11.7 per game), has scored 20+ in three of their last four games, and is their best three-point shooter.

I think this will be a lot closer than Creighton fans would like it to be, and will be a very stressful second half. I’m preparing myself accordingly.

Quick Notes on the Golden Eagles:

  • The Golden Eagles have stayed below their season average of 15.1 turnovers per game in each of the last three games; Since the double-overtime win against Providence on February 10, MU is averaging just 4.3 turnovers per outing in the second half. In the February 13 loss to Creighton, MU committed just a pair of turnovers in the second half.
  • Since their January 24 victory at St. John’s, Marquette’s starters are accounting for 86.3 percent of the team’s points and 75.2 percent of its rebounding production. Of the five players to see extended action in those outings off the bench, freshman Traci Carter is responsible for 63.1 percent of their reserve corps scoring and sophomore Sandy Cohen III owns 43.8 percent of the group’s contributions on the boards. In Saturday’s victory at DePaul, four of five starters finished with double figures in points and collected 66‐of‐73 points (90.4 percent) and 90.0 percent (27‐of‐30) of the squad’s boards.
  • In the last four games, freshman Haanif Cheatham is averaging 18.3 points and 4.0 rebounds per game while shooting 55.0 percent (22‐of‐40) from the field overall and 8‐of‐16 (50.0 percent) from behind the 3‐point line, while making 84.0 percent (21‐of‐25) of his free throws. He’s reached double figures in points on 17 occasions this season, including 10 of the team’s 14 Big East matchups.

Bluejay Bytes:

  • In two home games against Marquette since joining the Big East, Creighton has trailed for a grand total of 31 seconds. They led wire-to-wire in a 67-49 win in 2013, and for the aforementioned 31 seconds (a 2-0 MU lead in the first minute) in their 77-70 win a year ago.
  • In Creighton’s eight Big East victories, Bluejay opponents are shooting just 30.6 percent from three-point range and only making 5.1 treys per game. Meanwhile, in their six Big East losses, Bluejay opponents are shooting 38.2 percent from downtown while sinking 8.7 trifectas per game.
  • Maurice Watson Jr. leads Creighton in both scoring (15.2 ppg.) and assists per game (6.6 apg.), and is also grabbing 3.4 rebounds per game in his 31.4 minutes per contest. Nationally, Watson joins Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine, BYU’s Kyle Collinsworth and Providence’s Kris Dunn as the only players to average at least 15 points, six assists and three rebounds per game in less than 34 minutes per game.

The Series:

The Golden Eagles lead the all-time series 49-32, but Creighton has claimed two of the last three outings and four of five all-time meetings in Big East action. The two teams split the home-and-home series in 2014-15, with each squad winning on its respective home court.

Greg McDermott is 2-1 against Steve Wojciechowski as a head coach, and is 4-1 in his career against Marquette.

The Last Time They Played:

11 days ago, the Bluejays defeated Marquette 65-62 in Milwaukee. James Milliken drilled a three-pointer with 1:04 to play that gave them a one-point lead, and sandwiched between two excellent defensive stands, Isaiah Zierden made two free throws to clinch the three-point win.

Gratuitous Linkage:

Matt Velazquez of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writes about freshman guard Haanif Cheatham’s big game against DePaul on Saturday, and his emergence as one of the team’s biggest scoring options in league play.

Gratuitous Linkage, Part II:

Yahoo Sports’ Pat Forde writes about the OTHER matchup in the Big East tonight — #1 Villanova and #5 Xavier — and has some great things to say about the league as a whole as well.

What the Other Side is Saying:

Our friends at Anonymous Eagle go deeper into the woods on KenPom stats that we did in breaking this game down, and it’s a good preview. Check it out.

This Date in Creighton Hoops History:

On February 24, 2007, Creighton defeated Wichita State 71-54 in front of 17,110 fans on Senior Night for Nate Funk, Anthony Tolliver, Nick Porter, and Manny Gakou. They’d blown double-digit halftime leads in two straight games — losses to Drexel and Illinois State — and were determined not to do the same to the Shockers when they took an eight-point advantage into the break. The Bluejays doubled the lead to 16 in the first five minutes of the second half, then locked down defensively to close out the win.

Despite early foul trouble, Porter scored 13 of his 17 points in the second half. Funk scored 16, and also had a big second half, making 4 of 5 shots after halftime. Tolliver added 11 points, seven rebounds and three blocked shots, and even the little-used Gakou got on the board with a spin move in the first half that netted him two points.

The win moved the Jays to 19-10 overall and 13-5 in the Valley, good enough for sole possession of second place. They’d sweep three games in St. Louis a week later to take the league’s auto bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Completely Random, Totally Rad Music Video of the Day:

A tweet from one of our staff photographers following the win on February 13 made me go back and watch this clip from Wayne’s World, which now makes me want to watch this video.

The Bottom Line:

In a nailbiter, Creighton pulls away late because Marquette has no answer for Mo Watson.

Bluejays 77, Golden Eagles 72

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