Ryan Hawkins Named to All-Big East Second Team
Ryan Hawkins led the Bluejays with 14.3 points and 7.7 rebounds per game, and led the Big East with 11 double-doubles. He was one of three men (along with Adama Sanogo and Justin Lewis) in the Big East to rank among the top 10 in both points and rebounds per game.
Being named to the All-Big East Second Team is an honor, but the more you examine his impact the clearer it becomes he should have been a First Teamer. A Marquette writer compared him head-to-head with Julian Champagnie and Jared Rhoden, and found Hawkins to have better offensive numbers across the board. CU’s defense is an unbelievable 14.7 points WORSE when Hawkins is off the floor; St. John’s and Seton Hall’s defense is better when Champagnie and Rhoden are on the bench.
Throw in that Creighton finished a game ahead of Seton Hall and four games ahead of St. John’s in the standings, in fourth place, and it’s hard to understand how you’d pick Champagnie or Rhoden over him other than because those two were expected to win First Team honors before the season.
CU wouldn’t be heading to the NCAA Tournament next week without Hawkins, period. His impact on and off the floor is almost impossible to quantify.
Transferring to Creighton for his “extra” COVID season from Northwest Missouri, it was difficult to know how his game would translate from the DII level. He played center most of the time, guarded by an opposing center which made him a matchup nightmare. He spent four years sliding a smaller teammate into the post on switches, and then taking the opposing big man away from the basket. That doesn’t work as well in major conference basketball, where length and athleticism make up for a lot. But once practice started last fall, it quickly became clear that Hawkins had plenty in his toolbox that would work in high level D1 — his feel for the game and his ability to slow the game down, his ability to use ball fakes and shot fakes to his advantage.
After the Jays’ exhibition win over Upper Iowa in November, Greg McDermott was already singing the praises of Hawkins.
“Ryan gets it. He understands what it takes to win. He’s spent time this fall trying to get the rest of the guys to understand how important communication is, and how important being a great teammate is. He’s really a godsend for our program. For what this team needed, he’s perfect.
His intangibles are like Jahenns Manigat — he’s that vocal in practice. I think some of the growth in our team over the course of the year, when we look back in April it’s going to be directly attributable to Hawk because of his leadership.”
The impressive thing about Hawkins is that he somehow looks even better when you re-watch games. His impact off the ball is unlike any Bluejay in recent memory. The number of fires he puts out defensively, where he covers for a teammate who blew an assignment and delays an opposing player for a second until his teammate can recover, are incredible and not always noticeable on first watch. His attitude and the impact he’s had on the rest of the team are what impress his coach.
“He doesn’t have a bad day. He has instilled in our young guys that it is OK to make mistakes,” McDermott said after the win at St. John’s in late February. “You learn from it, but then you gotta get past it and move on. And he lives that. You would have to search long and hard to find one time that he’s hung his head. It just doesn’t happen. He’s helped the development of our young guys so much. We’ve seen so much development from Ryan Kalkbrenner in that regard and it’s because of Ryan Hawkins. We can all speculate where we’d be without him, but I don’t want to have that conversation. He’s been that terrific.”
Hawkins said at the press conference following the win at St. John’s that his coaches at Northwest Missouri instilled in him that when you do build the habit of doing the right things from the beginning, those habits become hard to deviate from.
“I’ve tried to bring the same habits I had at Northwest with me to Creighton. I was fortunate to be coached by some great coaches down there, because if you had seen me in high school, there was no way I could even play at the D2 level. It’s been cool to see my own transformation from high school to Northwest to here. It would not be possible without my coaches at Northwest and the confidence they had in me when I didn’t even have confidence in myself.
That’s what I tried to do at Creighton with these young kids right away, because you could see they were as talented as could be. But when they’d make a mistake in practice, their head would go down. By believing in them and giving them confidence, and telling them ‘I don’t care if you make a mistake, just make it going hard,’ it’s been really cool to see them mature and their transformation in that regard. It’s amazing what you can do when you believe in people.”
Or, as McDermott summed it up before Saturday’s final home game, “His fingerprints will be all over this program for a long time because of the impact he’d had on the young people that will be here long after he’s gone.”
Ryan Kalkbrenner Honored as Big East’s Defensive Player of the Year
Much like Hawkins, Ryan Kalkbrenner’s impact has been bigger than just numbers — and his numbers are mighty impressive on their own. Kalkbrenner has swatted a Big East-high 80 blocked shots, ranking 10th nationally. He also owns a conference-best 111 offensive rebounds, the most by a Creighton player since Bob Harstad in 1988-89.
Kalkbrenner had a blocked shot in 26 straight games spanning most of the season, Creighton’s longest streak since 1984-85, and his 80 blocked shots have only been surpassed by Benoit Benjamin (three times) in Bluejay history.
CU’s entire defensive strategy morphed over the first six weeks of the season once it became apparent how much Kalkbrenner had improved from his freshman campaign. Creighton’s guards began funneling drivers toward the rim, knowing they had an elite shotblocker behind them to clean things up. Largely as a result, CU led the Big East in field goal percentage defense (40.0%) and gave up the second-fewest points (67.5 per game). Their adjusted defensive efficiency of 94.1 ranks 25th according to KenPom, the best mark in Greg McDermott’s 12 years at CU and tied for Creighton’s best in the 20-year history of KenPom’s data with the 2005-06 Jays. That squad also had an adjusted defensive efficiency of 94.1, which ranked 30th that year.
More impressive: the 13 men listed on the All-Conference teams that faced Creighton this season averaged 13.3 points per game while shooting 37.2% against the Bluejays, compared to 15.8 points per game on 45.7% shooting in all other games.
After the win over Brown in the Paradise Jam, Greg McDermott noted that while everyone was gushing over Kalkbrenner’s blocked shots, they were missing the bigger picture. “That doesn’t do justice to what he does defensively. He changes so many things for the other team. I feel like he gets credit for about a third of the blocks that he actually has. It’s been fun to see his development.”
The most stunning transformation came off the floor. A quiet, reserved player as a freshman, Kalkbrenner’s confidence soared as a sophomore. Both McDermott and Kalkbrenner credit Ryan Hawkins for bringing that out of him — and after beating UConn last week, the Jays’ center even got slightly boastful on the postgame radio show.
“Everyone talks about Sanogo being one of the best bigs or sometimes the best big man in the Big East. Tonight I got a chance to prove that I’m just as good if not better than him. I held him to 13 points on defense and scored 22 points on him. It was a big time battle and I feel like I came out on top.”
He’s not wrong. Against Sanogo and Ike Obiagu last week, Kalkbrenner had 39 points on 13-of-19 shooting inside the arc, 2-of-4 on three-pointers, with 18 rebounds and just one foul. Those two opposing big men combined? 15 points on 7-of-18 shooting with nine fouls. Those two games probably cemented his status as the league’s Defensive Player of the Year.
Kalkbrenner becomes the fourth Bluejay to win his league’s DPOY award, joining Gregory Echenique in the MVC in 2012, and Khyri Thomas in 2017 and 2018 in the Big East. As WBR’s Matt DeMarinis points out, if you throw in Ty-Shon Alexander who was robbed of winning the award in 2020, CU’s won five DPOY awards in 12 seasons from three different positions.
Ryan Nembhard Named Big East Freshman of the Year; Nembhard, Trey Alexander, and Arthur Kaluma Named to All-Freshman Team
To no one’s surprise, Ryan Nembhard was named the Big East Freshman of the Year. He won the Freshman of the Week award six times, most of any player in the league, after all.
Nembhard led the Jays in assists (4.4), steals (1.3) and minutes (34.8) while also averaging 11.3 points per game before a season-ending wrist injury in late February. Twice he won the game for the Jays in the final minute with a bucket — on February 8 his layup with 32 seconds left put them ahead of Butler for good 53-52, and a buzzer-beater against SIU in the Paradise Jam back in November.
He’s the sixth Bluejay to win a Freshman of the Year award, joining Justin Patton in 2016-17 from the Big East, and Doug McDermott (2010-11), P’Allen Stinnett (2007-08), Ryan Sears (1997-98) and Rodney Buford (1995-96) from the MVC.
Meanwhile, the Jays had half of the Big East All-Freshman Team, as Nembhard was joined by Trey Alexander and Arthur Kaluma. Those three combined to win 11 of the 16 Big East Freshman of the Week awards this season. In so doing, Creighton is the first team to land three members of the Big East’s All-Freshman Team in the same season since Georgetown placed Mac McClung, James Akinjo and Josh LeBlanc on the squad in 2018-19.
Alexander is averaging 6.4 points, 3.7 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game while starting the final eight games (first in place of the injured Kaluma, and then in place of Nembhard). He’s scored in double-figures seven times and took over starting point guard duties after Nembhard got injured on February 23.
Kaluma is averaging 9.5 points and 5.0 rebounds per game while starting 25 of the 26 games he’s played in. He’s scored in double-figures 10 times this season, including last week’s 15-point first half outburst against UConn.
Seniors are Not Done Yet
Ryan Hawkins’ contributions have been huge and obvious. His two fellow seniors’ have been just as important, if not quite as eye-popping on the stat sheet.
Alex O’Connell had a reserve role on last year’s Sweet 16 team, and is in the midst of a career year as a senior with averages of 11.7 points and 5.3 rebounds per game. He’s provided memorable moments, including this buzzer beater to force a second overtime period at Marquette.
“He’s just grown in so many ways,” Greg McDermott said before Saturday’s home finale. “His leadership over the course of the year and the example that he’s set for these freshmen has been really impressive. The game (last Wednesday against UConn) sums up just how much progress he’s made. He impacted the game, and he made winning plays on a night where he only took three shots. My guess is, if you’d have asked Alex a couple of years ago if that would have been possible, he’d have told you no way. But doing his job defensively, rebounding the ball, even his assist-to-turnover numbers have gotten better. His improvement and development is so impressive.”
O’Connell gushed about his Creighton experience in an emotional Senior Day speech that saw him fight back tears on several occasions. He missed two 3-pointers in the final minute that could have tied the game — one with 14 seconds left, the other with six seconds to play — and left the court with his head buried in his jersey. He spent most of the time before Senior Day festivities nearly breaking down as he sat on the bench; once he had the mic and started talking he couldn’t hold it back.
“A couple of weeks ago, Coach Huss asked me if Creighton had stood up to the expectations that I had when I came here,” O’Connell said in his speech. “From the bottom of my heart, I can honestly say that everybody connected to the program has greatly exceeded my expectations. I’ve loved every single second that I’ve been here. I don’t want to say that Coach Mac changed my life, but he gave me the opportunity to change my life and change the path of my career. I wasn’t in the best spot (at Duke) and coming to Creighton completely changed who I was as a person. I started to love the game again. I was happy to come to the gym everyday again. I can’t thank Coach Mac and the staff enough for what they’ve done for me.”
KeyShawn Feazell had 93 points, 69 rebounds and nine blocked shots in his lone season as a Bluejay. A transfer from McNeese State after starting his career at Mississippi State, Feazell’s role isn’t quite what they envisioned when they recruited him, through no fault of his own.
“Key is an everyday guy. His attitude has been terrific,” McDermott said of him. “His role is not what I thought it was going to be when we recruited him, because I didn’t see the development of Ryan Kalkbrenner going quite this rapidly to where we’d need to have him on the floor as much as possible. Key’s minutes have been a little bit spotty. But there’s no question we aren’t where we are today without him. While he’s impacting the game on the floor, his attitude and approach on a daily basis in practice — when he’s not playing the role he thought he would be — is an example for everybody in the program to follow. It’s something that even I can learn from, how he handles that, how positive he remains. It’s always about the other guys and about the team.”
