College basketball officially begins Friday, October 12. In the days leading up to Creighton’s Bluejay Madness event, we’ll try to pose (and answer) some of the most pressing questions surrounding the 2012-2013 Creighton men’s basketball team.
#10: How well will Austin Chatman replace Antoine Young?
#9: Can Creighton handle being the hunted?
When the Missouri Valley Conference Men’s Basketball preseason poll comes out in late October, Creighton will likely earn the nod as the team to beat in 2012-2013. It is a distinction that hasn’t been great to the Bluejays in recent turns.
They were preseason favorites in 2011, 2008, and 2006, and failed to win outright titles those seasons. They split the league championship with Northern Iowa in 2008-2009 but missed an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, and they finished second to Southern Illinois in 2006-2007 but beat the Salukis in St. Louis to earn the league’s automatic berth in the Big Dance.
But the Bluejays are not alone in their recent struggles to translate preseason expectations into cutting down the nets a few days before Arch Madness. Only once in the last six seasons (UNI in 2009-2010) has the preseason favorite in the Valley won a regular season championship outright.
The Bluejays are the no-brainer pick for the upcoming season. Greg McDermott returns everyone except for point guard Antoine Young from last year’s squad that went 29-6 and won a game in the NCAA Tournament. McDermott’s son, Doug, is a preseason first-team All-American after earning the same honors after a stellar sophomore season in 2011-2012. He will be the preseason MVC player of the year after winning the award last year. And he is surrounded by plenty of talented and experienced players, guys who can feast on opportunities if opponents spend all their energy trying to stop McDermott from scoring.
Doug McDermott and the Bluejays ended up with a trophy last season, but it wasn’t the regular season MVC championship they were projected to win (Adam Streur/WBR)
And forget the Valley pundits for a second. NATIONAL writers are jumping on the White and Blue Bandwagon by the droves. Scrolling through early season rankings, you’ll see Creighton mentioned anywhere between 10 and 20. Sure, some of that can be Record Review Syndrome; the writer hasn’t seen CU play, but he or she read about them from someone who has and thus wants to jump in line as being in the know about that team. But experience is increasingly valuable in college basketball, as rosters see more and more Blue Chip players leaving after a year or two of school and other players transfer in search of greener pastures offering more playing time. And you’d be hard pressed to find many teams among the top 50 in the country that have as much quality experience as Creighton returns this season.
Still, great expectations often succumb to higher levels of pressure. Ask the 2006-2007 Creighton team that was nationally ranked early in the season. That attention lasted one game; after a drubbing of Mississippi Valley State in Omaha, the Jays lost to Doc Sadler’s first Nebraska team. It was one of five non-conference losses for Nate Funk and Anthony Tolliver’s squad; they would travel to Dayton and Fresno State and lose, too, and drop the championship game of a tournament in Hawaii to the host Rainbow Warriors over Christmas break. They even dropped a home BracketBuster game to Drexel. Without a mad dash through Arch Madness, during which they beat nationally ranked SIU in the championship game, that CU squad would have punched another ticket to the NIT.
There are plenty of similar potential potholes for this year’s Bluejays, if for whatever reason their focus strays or the injuries they avoided last season somehow pop up. Lazy local and national writers might dismiss Creighton’s non-conference schedule. Whatever. North Texas has a few future pros in their lineup, including a front-court star in Tony Mitchell. The Mean Green won’t be a pushover in CU’s season opener. Saint Joseph’s comes to Omaha one year after owning the Jays in Philadelphia; the Hawks handed the Bluejays one of their six losses in 2011-2012 and return everyone from last season. Tulsa and UAB were disappointments last season but have enough talent to push the Jays this year. And road games at Cal and Nebraska won’t be easy.
And you know who isn’t scared if Creighton is nationally ranked or rolls an All-American out on the court? Missouri Valley Conference opponents. CU’s conference brethren will market their games against the Jays as the season’s biggest in their respective arenas. Players will look at stopping McDermott or getting Gregory Echenique in foul trouble as their personal mission, something that will help their teams upset the Jays. We’ve already established that anything goes once league play starts.
All that aside, I think Coach Mac will keep his team focused. This team played with a target all last season, a mark that only grew larger after a November road win at San Diego State. And it isn’t as though Doug McDermott became an overnight sensation. He has two years of being the best player on most any court he steps on to under his belt; he knows (and so do his teammates) that he’s on the receiving end of primary defensive game planning by almost every opponent Creighton will see this season.
Proving the preseason poll correct has been difficult for Valley teams in recent seasons. But I think the Bluejays can handle being the hunted in 2012-2013.