Creighton enters the 2021-22 with eight newcomers (five freshmen, one first-year walk-on and two grad transfers) and two redshirt freshmen. They’re faced with replacing 84.2% of their points scored and 81.9% of the total minutes played a year ago. Oh yeah, and they have two new assistant coaches, too.
How will that young team measure up to the rest of the Big East? They’ll find out right away because the Jays open up with perennial favorite Villanova on Dec. 17, in a rare Friday night game at CHI Health Center. Jay Wright’s team seems like an automatic pick to win the league based on what they return from a club who won the conference a year ago. Headlining that group is Co-Big East Player of the Year Collin Gillespie, who opted to use his COVID fifth year of eligibility to return after his season ending injury in the final week last year.
Forwards Jermaine Samuels Jr. and Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree are back, as well as guards Justin Moore and Caleb Daniels. Those five alone would make them favorites, but they’re joined by a top 20 recruiting class and returning role players that round out one of the deepest rosters in the country. This should be a top-5 team nationally and one with a shot at getting back to the national title game. You want a measuring stick for yourself? It doesn’t get any better than Villanova.
The full conference slate was announced on Thursday morning, and in spite of the tough opener, the first stretch of games before a bye the weekend of Jan. 8 isn’t terrible. After Villanova, they head to DePaul on Monday, Dec. 20 in their first meeting with new head coach Tony Stubblefield’s Blue Demons. As you’d expect with a new regime, the roster has turned over pretty significantly; gone are Romeo Weems and Charlie Moore, in are transfers Brandon Johnson, Jalen Terry, Markese Jacobs and Tyon Grant-Foster.
After a full week off for Christmas, the Jays host Georgetown on Tuesday, Dec. 28. The Hoyas were 9-12 entering the Big East Tourney last March and then ripped off four wins in four days, knocking off both Villanova and Creighton in the process. But they lose all four of their top scorers (seniors Jahvon Blair and Jamorko Pickett, along with starting center Qudus Wahab, who transferred to Maryland). In their place is a top-20 incoming recruiting class, led by five-star shooting guard Aminu Mohammed and four-star center Ryan Mutombo.
A two-game road trip to Marquette (Jan. 1) and Villanova (Jan. 5 at the Pavilion) follows. The Golden Eagles fired Steve Wojciechowski after a disappointing season last year, and hired Shaka Smart to replace him. Can his famed “havoc” defense succeed in the Big East after mostly not in the Big XII? The first year of the Shaka Era probably won’t be a good indication. Their top guards from a year ago, DJ Carton and Koby McEwen, are gone. So too is leading scorer and rebounder Dawson Garcia. It’s a team whose strength will lay in the frontcourt until their young guards get comfortable, so catching them on the road early in the season could be a break. The rematch with Villanova is next, meaning CU is done with the Wildcats the first week of January. How’s that for a scheduling quirk?
After a bye, they play Providence at home on Jan. 11. Ed Cooley’s team loses star David Duke, but got a big break when Nate Watson opted to return for a fifth season. A pair of transfers in Aljami Durham (Indiana) and Justin Minaya (South Carolina) will try to get the Friars back in postseason contention. The Jays then travel to Xavier on Jan. 15 for a battle with the team many expect to challenge Villanova for the title. Xavier started last year as a top-25 team with an 8-0 record, but multiple COVID pauses wrecked their momentum and they wound up not even making the NCAA Tournament. With the exception of forward Jason Carter, everyone of note from that team is back. Paul Scruggs and Nate Johnson both opted to take fifth seasons to return for another go, and Zach Freemantle now has quality backups in transfers Jack Nunge from Iowa and Jerome Hunter from Indiana.
A two-game homestand follows, with games against St. John’s (Jan. 19) and DePaul (Jan. 22). Posh Alexander returns for the Red Storm, but the rest of the roster has almost entirely turned over. Vince Cole, Greg Williams, Isaih Moore, Marcellus Earlington, and Rasheem Dunn all transferred out. Julian Champagne was widely expected to head to the NBA early, but instead decided to come back, and that’s a huge thing for the Red Storm: Champagne was named All-Big East and the conference’s Most Improved Player after a breakout season in which he averaged 19.9 points, 7.4 rebounds, 1.4 steals, 1.3 assists and 1 block a year ago. On the downside, the same day the schedule was released, this report from SI.com detailed a situation that at best is a distraction and at worst could derail the program’s momentum.
From there, the Jays first look at Butler comes on Jan. 26. The Bulldogs return the most production of any team in the Big East, thanks to the extra COVID year given by the NCAA. Seniors Jair Bolden (10.5 ppg), Bryce Nze (11.4 ppg and 7.7 rpg), Bo Hodges (8.2 ppg), and Aaron Thompson (10.4 ppg and 4.7 apg) all elected to come back for another year. Two other double-digit scorers are back as well, including senior forward Bryce Golden and Chuck Harris, the team’s leading scorer from last season. Thankfully, it’s a midweek game at Hinkle Fieldhouse, so the chances of it tipping at 11:00am are slim. The Jays haven’t played midweek in Indy since 2018 and those morning tips have been nightmarish.
After a rematch with Xavier on Jan. 29, the Jays head on a two-game road trip to Connecticut (Feb. 1) and Seton Hall (Feb. 4). It might be toughest week of the conference slate, with two road games in four days against teams projected to finish toward the top of the standings. Sandro Mamukelashvili and Shavar Reynolds are gone, but the cupboard isn’t bare. Double digit scorers Jared Rhoden and Myles Cale return, with the latter electing to take a 5th year. Forwards Tray Jackson and Tyrese Samuel are back, too, along with shot-blocking center Ike Obiagu. As for UConn, leading scorer James Bouknight departed for the NBA and Josh Carlton transferred out. Forwards Isaiah Whaley and Tyler Polley are back, and so are guards RJ Cole and wing Tyrese Martin, while top-50 freshman Rahsool Diggins is expected to contribute immediately.
The rematch with Butler comes on Feb. 8, followed by a trip to Georgetown on Feb. 12. Then the second bye week of the season — eight days off — leads into a final five-game stretch where the Jays are at home three times. A home game with Marquette (Feb. 20) is first up, followed by a two-game road trip to St. John’s (Feb. 23) and Providence (Feb. 26). The season ends with two home games against UConn (Mar. 2) and Seton Hall (Mar. 5).
Given that slate of games and the youth of the Jays roster, it would be understandable if they pumped the brakes on the non-conference schedule. That’s precisely what they’ve done. The 2021-22 non-con slate appears designed to allow a team full of new faces to rack up wins before that Big East gauntlet begins, with November featuring winnable games and December featuring an escalating group of games to test themselves before that conference gauntlet.
There’s four buy games (Arkansas Pine-Bluff on Nov. 9, Kennesaw State on Nov. 11, SIU Edwardsville on Nov. 27 and North Dakota State on Dec. 4). There’s only one true road game (at Nebraska on Nov. 16). There’s a tournament without brand-name teams (the Paradise Jam in the U.S. Virgin Islands beginning Nov. 19) but opportunities for wins over teams that should be in postseason contention. There’s a pair of home games against power conference foes (Iowa State on Dec. 4 and Arizona State on Dec. 14). And sandwiched in between, there’s a neutral court game in Sioux Falls on Dec. 11 against a BYU team with expectations of returning to the NCAA Tournament after earning a No. 6 seed a year ago.
The Paradise Jam opens up with a game against Brown, back after sitting out the entire 2020-21 season when the Ivy League opted to shut down sports during the COVID pandemic. From there, they get either Bradley or Colorado State in the second game. The Braves offer a matchup with an old MVC foe the Jays haven’t seen since departing in 2014, but little else; they finished 10-16 in games against D1 opponents in 2020-21 and are likely to be picked near the bottom of the league this year. Colorado State, on the other hand, returns just about everyone from a team who narrowly missed the NCAA Tournament a year ago and then advanced to the third round of the NIT as a #1 seed. They’re a trendy pick to win the Mountain West.
The third game will be against one of Duquesne, Southern Illinois, Northeastern or Colorado. Of those, Duquesne and Northeastern had winning records a year ago, and while SIU has fallen off significantly from the days when the Salukis were Creighton’s biggest competition in the MVC, they remain a team CU fans would enjoy playing again. Then there’s Colorado. The Buffaloes were 23-9 a year ago and a darling of advanced metrics (they had a NET ranking of #9, and KenPom of #8); they add the nation’s #11 recruiting class to that team and should once again contend for the Pac-12 title. If things break right, CU could have opportunities for two Top 50 wins over teams from the state of Colorado — not bad for a tourney that’s so bereft of brand names that it’s relegated to streaming on ESPN-Plus.
The three power-conference opponents are all at various levels of rebuilding. Nebraska won just three times after Christmas and just seven games total a year ago; they add five-star prospect Bryce McGowens to the mix but could double their win total and still be sitting at home when postseason invites go out. Iowa State won just twice all season and was a historically-inept 0-18 in Big XII play; they come to Omaha under new head coach (and former Greg McDermot assistant) T. J. Otzelberger. And Arizona State, who took a step back last year with an 11-14 record that saw them fail to qualify for postseason play for the first time since 2016-17 under Bobby Hurley, added a good incoming class that has them back in the hunt.
The BYU game, assumed to be a one-off in Sioux Falls at the Pentagon, is actually a two-game series of games according to an interview with one of the Cougars’ assistant coaches last week. The schools will meet next year in Las Vegas for another neutral court matchup.
BYU was 19-7 a year ago and was upset by UCLA in the first round of the NCAA Tourney; they lose their top three players off that team but bring in a solid class and should again be in the second-tier of teams chasing Gonzaga in the WCC.
But about those buy games: they’re really, really bad. Out of 347 teams in the NET ranking a year ago, Pine-Bluff ranked 342. Kennesaw State was 334. SIUE was 320. I’d rather see buy games against teams in the 200-250 range, and filling half of the home slate with teams in the 325-347 range had a lot of season ticket holders grumbling.
20 Big East games does a lot to soothe those grumbles. And it begins at home on a Friday night, Dec. 17 against Villanova.