Men's Basketball

Pregame Primer: #15 Creighton Looks for Program-Record Fifth Top-25 Win As #21 Butler Visits

Four games remain in the 2019-20 regular season, and Creighton’s in an enviable spot. At 10-4 in the Big East, they sit one game back of first place Seton Hall. Three of their last four games are at home, and the lone road game is at a reeling St. John’s team who has lost seven of nine and is now without one of its best players (Mustapha Heron, out for the year with an injury). They’ve risen all the way to #11 in the NET, bracketologists have them projected as a #3 seed, and fans are dreaming big. We’re dreaming big at WBR, too, and have some tremendously exciting things to announce very soon for March.

Getting ahead of yourself in the Big East is a dangerous thing to do, though. Remember Marquette a year ago? The Golden Eagles were in first place with four games to play, and needed to go at worst 2-2 down the stretch to clinch the title. Instead they lost all four, went out in the semifinals of the Big East tourney, and were smoked in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. In the span of three weeks they went from 12-2 in the league and as close to a sure-thing regular season title as you can get, to losing six of their final seven and ending the season in disarray.

Or heck, look at the next opponent for the Jays: #21 Butler. After beating Creighton 71-57 on January 4 and winning at Providence a few days later, they were 15-1 overall and 3-0 in the league with two road wins already. They’ve only won four games since, and are now 19-8 and 7-7 in the Big East. They’re still ranked and still a virtual lock for the tourney because the wins have been big — 89-85 in OT against Marquette, 79-76 against Villanova, 66-61 against a Xavier team somehow still hanging around the periphery of the bubble discussion.

But it’s hard to look at Butler and see anything other than a scuffling team whose season has slid sideways. Winning just four times in six weeks tends to create that perception. Blowing a 10-point lead at Seton Hall and losing on a buzzer-beater (as they did Wednesday night) only fuels it.

What the heck has happened to the Bulldogs? For starters, their once-stifling, elite defense has regressed to merely “good” while their offense continues to be average. Prior to the first meeting, Butler’s opponents had an effective field goal percentage of 42.3%, 11th best in the country. Entering the rematch, that number has climbed to 45.6%, ranking 32nd. Opponents were shooting just 27.0% from three-point range before the first meeting, 33rd best in D1; that number has exploded to 32.6% now, ranking 145th.

The tempo of Butler’s games has remained constant — 65 possessions per game, ranking 337th entering the first meeting, and it’s actually a bit slower now at 64.1 possessions per game. Opponents are just making a lot more shots against them than they were in November and December. In conference games only, the Bulldogs rank ninth in three-point defense and ninth in defensive efficiency. They’ve allowed opponents to attempt the sixth-most three-pointers in the league, and their opponents have had an assist on 54.8% of their made baskets (fourth-highest in the league).

Kamar Baldwin leads the team in scoring for the season at 16.3 points per game, and has led them in scoring in 11 of the last 14 games, too. He’s their unquestioned offensive stud. He takes 34% of the team’s shots when he’s on the floor (23rd most in the country) and ends 29.9% of their offensive possessions with either a made shot, a missed shot or a turnover (55th in the country). When Baldwin is on the floor, he’s looking to score, which is usually a good thing for the Bulldogs — when he’s shooting in the paint.

Baldwin has taken 118 three-pointers on the year, third most on the team, but has made only 31%. Creighton goaded him into taking eight 3’s in the first meeeting, and he made just 1-of-8. Baldwin did score 20 points because of the damage he did in the paint, but it could have been worse. A year ago, Baldwin scored 28 points in Indianapolis against the Bluejays. He made 8-of-11 shots inside the arc, 3-of-7 from three, and had 11 rebounds. He had 23 in the rematch in Omaha, making 6-of-8 inside and 2-of-4 from three-point range, though he did have five turnovers in that game. They had no answer for him in either game. So by comparison, “just” 20 is a win.

Sean McDermott is second on the team in both points (11.9) and rebounds (6.0). He’s made 40% of his threes and is their primary perimeter threat, so he seems like an obvious matchup to stick Ty-Shon Alexander on. But he’s got two inches on Alexander, making him a less obvious candidate to ask the possible Big East Defensive Player of the Year to lock down. He was hard to stop in the first meeting in Indy, logging a double-double with 18 points and 11 rebounds. McDermott was 4-of-4 on shots inside and 3-of-7 on threes. Instead, Alexander primarily defended Baldwin — and did a really solid job. The reason Baldwin only scored 20, and needed 22 shots to get there, was because of Alexander.

UW-Milwaukee transfer Bryce Nze is averaging 9.3 points and a team-best 6.5 rebounds. The 6’7”, 235-pound junior has made 62% of his shots, with all but three of them coming inside the arc; his biggest offensive weakness seems to be free throws, as Nze is shooting just 57% (37-of-62) on the year. He had nine points and seven boards in the first meeting.

6’9” Bryce Golden scores 8.5 points per game, and also chips in 3.7 rebounds on average while starting all 27 games for the Bulldogs. He’s a physical presence but struggled with the Jays’ speed in the first game, logging a season-low 15 minutes and scoring zero points with only two boards.

In his first full season at Butler after transferring from Duke and becoming eligible mid-season last year, Jordan Tucker is fourth on the team in scoring, averaging 9.0 points and 3.9 rebounds a game. He comes off the bench, but typically plays starter-type minutes (22.9 minutes per game, fourth-most on the Bulldogs). He stepped into the starting five when Aaron Thompson missed four games, but is back in his more comfortable role as sixth man now that Thompson has returned. Tucker had six points, five boards and two assists in January against the Jays. Tucker is almost exclusively a threat from 12-feet and further; two-thirds of his shots have been three-pointers on the year, and if you add in two-point jumpers, it jumps to 90% of his shots.

Starting point guard Aaron Thompson has missed four of the last eight games, but when he’s been in the lineup, he’s been really good — 21 assists to just four turnovers in the four games he’s played in. He’s a pass-first guard, sixth on the team in scoring at 6.8 points per game with just 123 shot attempts (an average of 5.3 shots per game). But he has 4.8 assists per game, and a nearly 3:1 assist to turnover ratio. Thompson had an uncharacteristic afternoon against the Jays in January, scoring 10 points on 5-of-9 shooting with just two assists.

Though they’re not playing as well as they were seven weeks ago, Butler remains among the most extreme matchups for Creighton in the Big East. In 13 games since becoming conference foes, the scores tell the tale: Creighton is 6-1 when scoring 72 or more points against the Bulldogs and 1-5 when scoring 71 points or less.

It’s not very often that one stat sums up a matchup, but against Butler, that’s it. Get the game sped up and the score into the 70s and CU wins. Slow the game down, and Butler wins. Simple as that.


  • Tip: 3:00pm
    • Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
  • TV: FS1
    • Announcers: Kevin Kugler and Nick Bahe
    • In Omaha: Cox channel 78 (SD), 1078 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 620 (SD), 1620 (HD)
    • Outside Omaha: FS1 Channel Finder
    • Satellite: DirecTV channel 219, Dish Network channel 150
    • Streaming on FoxSportsGO
  • Radio: 1620AM
    • Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
    • Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
  • For Cord Cutters

Butler is one win away from its 20th 20-win campaign over the past 24 seasons.

Butler is 21st nationally, committing only 11.1 turnovers per game (17.1% of their total possessions). But they only force opponents to turn it over on 17.6% of their possessions, ranking 258th. That’s an odd stat for a team as good defensively as Butler.

The Bulldogs grab an offensive rebound on nearly 30% of their missed shots, which is a big concern for a Bluejay team that has been burned on that this year.


With a win, Creighton would tie their longest single-season winning streak since joining the Big East (5). They’d set a school record for most Top-25 wins in a season (5) and a single month (4). They’d earn their ninth Quad 1 win of the season, third most in the nation. And they’d beat a ranked Butler team for the fourth time in the last five seasons.

This game features teams ranked No. 15 (Creighton) and No. 21 (Butler) in this week’s Associated Press poll, but the league’s coaches were apparently caught blindsided by that. Creighton was picked to finish seventh in the Big East’s preseason poll, while Butler was tabbed to finish eighth.

Creighton has led at halftime in each of its last 12 games. The last time Creighton didn’t lead at home came on January 4 at Butler, when the Bluejays trailed 34-24. The Jays are 19-4 this season when leading at the half, compared to a 2-2 mark when trailing.


Creighton is 11-9 all-time vs. Butler. The last time they met, Butler won 71-57 in Indianpolis. The story of the game was Creighton’s defense, which played well enough to win if only they’d shot the ball better. From our postgame notebook:

“Defensively, often times you’re going to play 20-25 seconds or more and as soon as you have any breakdown they’re going to make you pay,” Greg McDermott said of Butler’s methodical offensive philosophy. “Sean McDermott got us in the first half, and we did a good job on (Kamar) Baldwin. We did a better job on McDermott in the second, and then Baldwin got us.”

Indeed, Baldwin was held without a point in the first half, as Ty-Shon Alexander shut him down. Baldwin was 0-for-9 from the floor, 0-3 on three-pointers, and had zero assists and zero rebounds, in 18 minutes of box score invisibility. But Sean McDermott burned them for 12 points and 6 rebounds, making a very efficient 5-of-7 from the field.

In the second, the Jays adjusted a bit to slow down McDermott, and Baldwin got hot — he scored 20 second-half points thanks to 7-of-13 shooting. He also got to the line, making 5-of-8 from the charity stripe.

“If you’d told me Baldwin was going to get 20 points on 22 shots I’d have probably thought we’d win this game,” Greg McDermott noted. “If you’d also told me it was going to be a 70-possession game I would have guessed we could win it. They barely got one point per possession. Our offense just wasn’t where it normally is today.”

Defensively, Creighton was good enough to win. Their perimeter defense held the Bulldogs to just 6-of-19 shooting on three-pointers (31%) in their home gym. They’ve made 35% on the season, and only had two games worse than Saturday. And CU got the game to be played at a faster pace than Butler wanted; this was the first time all season that the Bulldogs played a game with more than 68 possessions (there were 70 in this one). But continuing a trend at Hinkle Fieldhouse, the Jays simply couldn’t make shots. They made 25% of their threes in 2019 (7-of-27) and 30% in 2018 (8-of-26); it’s no coincidence that the last time CU won at Hinkle, in 2017, they were scorching from the perimeter (13-of-21).


 

Greg McDermott was named a finalist for the Naismith national Coach of the Year award on Friday, a worthy recognition for a coach guiding his team to second place in the nation’s toughest conference after being picked seventh.

And on the latest Nick Bahe podcast, he talked to assistant coach/defensive coordinator Paul Lusk about the Bluejays’ improvements defensively, and Ty-Shon Alexander’s emergence as a defensive stopper.


 

Last February 23, Creighton hit 14 3-pointers, shot 51.8 percent and recorded 20 assists on 29 makes in a 82-69 win over Georgetown played during a blizzard outside the CHI Health Center at the same time as the game.


 

A growing number of bracketologists are predicting CU will be sent to a NCAA pod in St. Louis. Can you imagine how many thousands of Bluejay fans would jump at the chance to relive Arch Madness in the NCAA Tournament? It got me thinking about one of the last MVC Tourneys that CU played in, when a group of Jays fans (myself included) found our way to a casino to see Eddie Money in concert. Two tickets to paradise!

The Bottom Line:

Creighton’s not going to shoot as poorly as they did at Hinkle. As with recent years, the game in Omaha will be played at the Jays’ pace, and go the Jays’ way.

Creighton 76, Butler 70

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