The Creighton Bluejays started chirping via Twitter a few hours before their trip to the Bahamas.
- Josh Jones spent this morning “Waitin for ma flight …. B-)”
- Jahenns Manigat finished summer school classes, and was ready to hit the Bahamas.
- Will Artino’s pumped because CU’s plane to Dallas has wifi (no doubt so he can read WBR).
The players, coaches, and staff are excited. And who can blame them? A trip to the Bahamas right before school starts? Not a bad recruiting tool. But there is work to be done before and during the trip, as the Bluejays experienced during their 10 allotted practices before the four-game exhibition series.
The Louisville Cardinals will be in the Bahamas playing the same teams Creighton will face. A few of their games will be on TV back in Kentucky, and some will receive audio broadcasts via the Internet. Bluejays fans, meanwhile, won’t have any media options for following the games, aside from potential court-side tweeting and post-game recaps at GoCreighton.com.
Ahead of Creighton’s four games in five days, WBR takes a look at this year’s event and what other CU teams have done during similar tours in the past.
What will the competition offer Creighton?
In-state rival Nebraska made this same trip last season, and faced three of the four teams the Bluejays will see in the Bahamas. The Huskers beat the Commonwealth Giants, the Bahamas All-Stars, and the Mailboat Cybots by an average of 22.3 points.
(Aside: just how awesome is the team name Cybots? Some D-I school needs to make the switch. Robot mascots. Nike would have field day with the jersey design options. Amiright?!)
The Giants, Creighton’s opponent Saturday, are the reigning champions of the New Providence Basketball Association. Commonwealth beat the Real Deal Shockers in the NPBA championship series earlier this year.
What will this trip mean for the 2011-2012 season?
Teams can take a foreign exhibition trip once every four years. Dana Altman led the Bluejays north of the border in 2003 and 2007. Both seasons ended in the NIT, after NCAA Tournament appearances in the previous years.
Creighton’s trip to Canada in 2003 would become best known for a contact lens that would cost returning point guard Tyler McKinney a season of basketball — and almost his eye.
Coming off the most successful season in program history, Dana Altman took the 2003-2004 Bluejays to Canada in late October for a five-game exhibition tour. The Jays went 4-1 on the trip, with sophomore Nate Funk cementing his status as the next great guard to play for Altman and CU.
The team’s next two exhibitions, back in Omaha at the newly opened Qwest Center, gave fans some time to fret. No one probably expected the Jays to lose a game in Canada. But it took overtime to beat Nebraska-Omaha. Then, CU lost to Global Sports by one point.
Altman and crew righted the ship, though, starting the season 12-0 and entering the national polls at #24. But over their last 15 regular season games, Creighton went 8-7, seemingly running out of gas toward the end of a long season that started north of the border. The Jays would drop their first game at Arch Madness, and then a one-point loss to Nebraska in the NIT.
There were a couple newcomers on that trip to Canada, but the core of the team — Brody Deren, Mike Grimes, Michael Lindeman, McKinney, and Funk — carried over from the magical 2002-2003 season.
Creighton’s most recent exhibition trip took place in 2007, again on the heels of an NCAA Tournament appearance. The trip, to Calgary, offered most CU fans their first exposure to a team full of newcomers. Among the players donning the white and blue for the first time in a game, real or exhibition, were future MVC Player of the Year Booker Woodfox, Chad Millard, Cavel Witter, P’Allen Stinnett, Kaleb Korver, Casey Harriman, and Kenton Walker.
Kenny Lawson kicked off his redshirt freshman season with some impressive showings, and Dane Watts started his senior season on the right foot. The Bluejays were tested in their first game on the trip (87-82 win against Saskatchewan), but cruised the rest of the way en route to a 5-0 record.
After an exhibition win against EA Sports All-Stars in early November, the Jays rattled off a 9-1 start to the season in non-conference play, their only loss to nationally ranked Xavier. But the Bluejays lost their first two MVC games, then dropped three straight right at the midway point of the conference schedule. A two-game losing streak at Evansville and Bradley in mid-February doomed the Jays into an inevitable middle-of-the-pack finish in the MVC. They won a game in both the Valley and National Invitational tournaments, though, finishing 22-11 overall.
What should fans take from the results?
Considering Creighton’s starting center, Gregory Echenique, won’t be in the Bahamas with his Bluejays teammates, it is hard to say. The positive to that situation is more playing time in the post for Geoffrey Groselle and Artino. The negative, of course, is that Echenique’s teammates won’t have the benefit of gelling with him on the court in a non-practice situation.
But between freshmen Groselle, Artino, Austin Chatman, Nevin Johnson, and Avery Dingman seeing their first action as Bluejays, and transfer Grant Gibbs getting on the floor for the first time in a CU jersey, the coaching staff will have plenty of opportunities to critique a team that is half newcomers. Greg McDermott and his coaches are the real winners of this trip; the practices before and the competition during give them an early glimpse of what they have to work with come October.