In one of the more bizarre scheduling quirks in recent Creighton basketball history, the Jays step out of Big East play on Saturday to play D2 Truman State. It’s fairly common for D1 teams to schedule D2 schools early in the season, or as exhibition games before the season starts, but in the middle of conference play? That’s something out of the ordinary.
It’s a regular season game, per se — stats count, and the result is reflected in the Jays’ won/loss record. However, the result doesn’t count in the NCAA’s official RPI, and the NCAA Tournament selection committee generally disregards the game entirely. The NCAA isn’t the only one disregarding the outcome; it’s an exhibition game for Truman State, meaning they’re essentially playing for pride. Any stats they accumulate won’t count towards their season totals, and the result won’t go on their record.
So what’s up?
The Big East moved their day-long marathon from New Years Eve to Martin Luther King Day this year, which is on Monday, so all ten teams are in action that day. Everyone but Georgetown and Creighton play a conference game on Saturday, and Georgetown plays a non-conference game against UCONN, meaning the Jays would be the only team in the conference with the weekend off.
“The league called us,” Coach Greg McDermott explained Wednesday night on his postgame radio show. “Our building was available, and the league said we’re still going to give you an off-week but you have to play a game on Saturday. We can’t have you having five days off and Xavier having one day to prep. That’s not fair.”
There’s a line of thinking among those who put schedules together (and those who analyze them) that you’re better off scheduling a D2 team than doing a buy game against a team ranked 300+ in the RPI. The level of competition isn’t all that different, but your NCSOS doesn’t take the body blow it does for playing a team ranked 300+. Plans for the MLK day-long marathon weren’t finalized until late summer, far too late for Creighton to find a high-level D1 opponent to play them on a Saturday in January as many of them already had conference schedules set in stone — schedules that almost certainly included weekend games on either Saturday or Sunday.
And so with the program mandated by their league to play someone — anyone — to find a game for that day, the Jays turned to the D2 ranks. McDermott’s first call was to Wayne State.
“I called Wayne State first to see if they could move some stuff around, because their coach is a friend of mine, but they couldn’t do it,” McDermott said. “Truman State was originally supposed to be our exhibition game, so next I called them to see if we could move the game. We paid them a little bit more money, and they were able to do it.”
And with that, the November exhibition game with Truman State became a January game in the middle of Big East play, and an exhibition with Wayne State took it’s place on the November slate.
“It was sort of mandated to us,” as McDermott made clear. “We weren’t going to be able to have an off-day. This was a way to play a game without hurting our strength of schedule numbers.”
Which brings us to the Truman State Bulldogs out of Kirksville, Missouri. They come into Saturday afternoon’s game 12-4, and 4-2 in the Great Lakes Valley Conference (as of Friday morning). As a result of moving things around to play the Jays, this will be their third game in as many days. They lost 111-89 to #10 (in the D2 rankings) Southern Indiana Thursday night, and play #9 Bellarmine on Friday night. That’s right: they’ll have faced three teams in a span of a little more than 41 hours with a combined 42-3 record — including playing a game roughly 14 hours prior to the one in Omaha, before traveling 250 miles overnight. Ouch.
They’re not terribly big — Connor Erickson, a 6’8” 200-pound senior is their biggest post player — but they have multiple guards that can shoot the three-pointer exceedingly well, which is a big reason they average 88.1 points per game. They like to get out and run, the faster the better, and that’s served them well.
Jake Velky averages 18.4 points per game, and has made 51.6% of his shots from three-point range (48-93). Nathan Messer averages 13.7 points a game, and shoots 42.6% (58-136) from outside. Cory Myers averages 14.3 points a game, and shoots 40.3% (29-72) from outside. Even the lesser-used guys can fill it up; Kyle Kanaskie, the son of former Drake coach Kurt Kanaskie, is 16-32 from outside this year and Taurin Hughes is 8-12 (though he’s played in only four games, and went 7-9 from outside in a ridiculous 122-35 win over Central Christian to skew his stats).
If there’s a path to a Truman State miracle, that’s it: spreading the floor with shooters everywhere and draining threes. The far more likely scenario is Creighton blasting out to a big early lead and treating the second half like the exhibition game it is, with guys like Martin Krampelj, Kobe Paras, and Davion Mintz getting tons of minutes. If that’s how it goes, CU will have still played a game like the rest of the Big East, but their starters will be far more rested than Xavier’s after what will certainly be a physical brawl against Butler.
Quick Notes on the Bulldogs:
- Chris Foster owns a 53-23 record (prior to Friday’s game) in his third season as head coach at Truman State. Foster went 20-10 in his first season before a 21-9 mark a year ago. He played for Greg McDermott at Northern Iowa from 2001-05, scoring 1,027 career points, and ranked in the top-10 in UNI history in games played, assists and three-pointers. Foster then served as a graduate manager for McDermott during the 2005-06 campaign.
- Creighton Volleyball head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth is a 1997 Truman State alum, and former Creighton assistant SID (and occasional WBR contributor!) Rob Simms pitched four seasons for the Bulldogs. Simms still appears multiple times in the baseball program’s record book; you can do a text string search to find all the places his name appears as a Friday scavenger hunt!
Bluejay Bytes:
- Creighton’s 16-1 record matches the program’s best mark ever after 17 games. Creighton also started 16-1 in 1942-43, as well as 2012-13. Of those two teams, the 2012-13 team is the only one to start 17-1. That team started 17-1 before losing its 19th and 20th games of the season.
- Just 52 games into his Bluejay career, Maurice Watson Jr. is already tied for 10th on Creighton’s all-time assists chart (382) with the great Duan Cole. He can move into ninth with seven or more assists on Saturday vs. Truman State, passing Josh Dotzler, who finished his four-year career with 388. He’ll likely pass Vernon Moore (418), Tyler McKinney (430), and Randy Eccker (458) over the next month, and has an outside shot at the all-time record depending on how deep of a run the team makes in March.
The Series / The Last Time They Played:
Believe it or not, Creighton and Truman State have played once before in a regular-season game — a game the Bulldogs won 54-41 on December 29, 1947. Known then as Kirksville College, they did battle with the Bluejays in the “Drake University Corn Bowl”, a double-header in Des Moines that also featured Drake vs Denver.
The next day’s Omaha World-Herald described it thusly:
“The Jays were never more than lukewarm on the offensive, and the Kirksville man-to-man defense kept the Blues in check throughout.
The Jays stayed in the game throughout the first half, and trailed only 21-26 at intermission. However, the Missouri crew, taking advantage of its height advantage, roamed through the Creighton defense to post a 44-26 lead midway in the final half.”
Gratuitous Linkage:
Creighton made the pageview colossus that is Deadspin back in 2014 when they published an article called “How Creighton Created the Craziest, Deadliest Offense in the Country.” Today Deadspin featured them again, this time in a piece called “Creighton Is Good as Hell Again.”. It’s a great, in-depth piece for a national audience:
“When watching the Bluejays, there’s a lot to take in because of how uniquely gifted their stars are—this goes a little further than saying each of their starting five possesses talent; rather, each player seems to be perfectly suited for their roles in head coach Greg McDermott’s high-octane offensive and defensive systems.”
I can’t decide if the author is inferring the Big East (or Creighton specifically) is a mid-major in his final paragraph, and if he is, if that should upset me or merely amuse me. I’m also not sure what’s up with the sentence that states they’re a “quietly great” team because not all their conference games are nationally televised — last I checked FS1 and CBSSN are national cable channels just like ESPN — but maybe that’s an inside joke given Fran Fraschilla’s ongoing, good-natured Twitter “feud” with CU fans every game after making a similar comment a couple of weeks ago. It’d be really funny if that was written as an inside joke, as maybe 0.5% of Deadspin’s readers would pick up on it, so I’m going to go with that.
ANYWAY, it’s otherwise a solid piece you should totally check out! And I’m serious about that.
This Date in Creighton Hoops History:
On January 14, 2009, Creighton defeated Southern Illinois 73-72 in overtime, a game the Salukis felt they’d won twice — CU rallied in the final seconds of both regulation and overtime to topple them.
After leading by eight at halftime, CU trailed 61-57 with 1:16 to play in the game. P. Allen Stinnett made a free throw to cut the difference to three, and then Cavel Witter stripped the ball away from Kevin Dillard at half court as he attempted to run time off the clock. Witter raced downcourt for a layup to make it 61-60 with 24.9 seconds left, and then Dillard answered with a pair of free throws after being fouled to extend the game.
Trailing 63-60 with 10 seconds left, Witter took a desperation three-point attempt and was fouled by none other than Kevin Dillard. Witter sank all three free throws — each more tense than the last — as a sold-out CenturyLink Center held its collective breath. Bluejay nemesis Bryan Mullins then launched a desperation 35-footer at the buzzer that hit the front of the rim; had it gone in it would have counted and won the game.
A rough patch in OT, featuring two turnovers and four straight possessions with missed shots, led to SIU taking a 69-65 lead with 1:03 left. And when Witter was whistled for a charge on the Jays’ next possession, it seemed once again like the Salukis were headed for the win. Josh Dotzler came up with a huge steal on the inbounds pass, and fed Stinnett for a three to cut the lead to 69-68. After another SIU turnover, Booker Woodfox came off a pick and sank a three-pointer to give the Jays a 71-69 lead with 21 seconds left.
After a pair of free throws from Kenton Walker, CU led 73-69, and they’d need every last one of those points because Mullins launched a shot that was incredibly similar to the one he’d missed to end regulation (and to the game-winner he’d made at the horn in 2007) — a 40-foot heave that went in as the buzzer sounded to make the final score 73-72.
Completely Random, Totally Rad Music Video of the Day:
The Bottom Line:
The only drama in this one will be how early in the game season ticket holders get free Godfather’s Pizza.
Bluejays 105, Truman State 76
