This past season was a ride Creighton fans will not forget for a while. Watching Doug McDermott was a sight to see, the cohesiveness of the team was refreshing, and the first season in the Big East left a big impression. There’s lofty expectations moving forward, but where Creighton goes from here is anyone’s guess. 2014-15 will be the first season in four years without McDermott being a given for 25 to 30 points a game, and in total they lose almost two-thirds of the team’s total points.
That has not stopped head coach Greg McDermott from scheduling a formidable non-conference schedule. Big East conference play as a whole should provide some high quality games and leave little doubt about the overall strength of schedule, but it is better to be safe than sorry. As we head into the post-Doug McDermott era, here is what is on the slate so far for the 2014-15 non-conference season.
What we know for sure
Emerald Coast Classic: On Thursday, the full field for the Emerald Coast Classic was announced. Most of the details leaked out several months ago with the report that the Bluejays had pulled out of the Hall of Fame Tip-Off classic and conference mate Providence was taking their spot in that tourney. While the University provided details on the teams involved for the brand new Emerald Coast Classic, we had a little more information to add in.
The meat of the tournament will be in Niceville, Florida where the Bluejays will take on Ole Miss in one semifinal on November 28th and then play either Cincinnati or Middle Tennessee State the following evening. The games will be televised by the CBS Sports Network where we watched a few Big East conference games last season.
Leading up to those games in Florida, the Bluejays will have two preliminary games. According to a tweet from Creighton Sports Information Director, Rob Anderson, he is hearing that the Bluejays will play North Carolina Central and Eastern Illinois at the CenturyLink Center in the preliminary games. Cincinnati has already announced that they are playing these same two teams on November 23rd and November 25th. This tourney is organized by Global Sports, and if it is anything like their previous events the Bluejays have played in (such as the tourney with Iowa State a few seasons ago), one would assume that the Bluejays would play the opposite teams on the same days. But those dates are not set in stone yet.
Oklahoma: There had been rumors floating around earlier this year that the Bluejays were close to signing a home and home agreement with a Big 12 team. Well, Tom Shatel from the Omaha World Herald spilled the beans on that one in his column on Monday. Creighton will get the Sooners on the CenturyLink home floor this year and then head to Norman during the 2015-16 season. This is the first time Creighton’s been able to leverage their membership in a power conference to get a non-conference series with a Top 15 team — this game would not be happening if the Bluejays were still part of the MVC. Period.
At Tulsa: Sticking with the Oklahoma theme, Creighton will head to Tulsa to finish a four game series with the Golden Hurricane. An interesting thing to note is that Tulsa will have their third coach within this four game series when they get together. It is even more interesting that Frank Haith will be sitting in the head coach seat for this one, a coach whose story is similar in some respects to Greg McDermott. Haith was in a bad situation at Missouri, was on the hot seat, and he was able to parachute out of there to Tulsa, who has some history of their own and is in a conference similar to where Creighton was a few seasons ago. Tulsa found some success with Danny Manning the past couple of seasons, including the NCAA Tournament last season, and will be an interesting team to watch.
St. Mary’s: Although the Bracketbusters is no more, CU still has a return game (well two, actually, but we’ll talk about that later) to keep the memories fresh. Creighton went out to Moraga, California two seasons ago for the last Bracketbusters and came home with a tough loss. Fast forward two years later and St. Mary’s is recovering from NCAA probation, but is still a tough team. They finished 23-12 last season, making it to the second round of the NIT. Although they lost several seniors, they have some good history built up over the past several years to make this another attractive home game for the Bluejays.
@ Nebraska: Tim Miles has not been shy about saying that the series with Creighton is a necessity and that it will continue to be played on a yearly basis. Of course, they will be excited to host the Bluejays this winter in their new home, Pinnacle Bank Arena, without Doug McDermott. The rivalry–the Jayskers–whatever you want to call it–is always a fun game. I’ll be interested myself to finally see a game in what Husker fans have nicknamed “The Vault.”
@ North Texas: The Bluejays start a home and home series with the Mean Green. Desperate to find a formidable opponent to open the season at the CenturyLink Center instead of a Division II team two years ago, this series was built into that contract. In what looked to be challenging game at the time, the Bluejays rolled. The Mean Green struggled last season, going 16-16 before finishing their season by losing in the 2nd round of the Conference USA tourney. The benefit of this game will be the ties to recruiting the state of Texas for the Jays since Greg McDermott’s arrival with assistant coach, Steve Lutz. It also gives an opportunity for senior Austin Chatman play close to home in front of family and friends, along with fellow Texan Geoffrey Groselle. North Texas will come back to Omaha during the 2015-16 season.
Pretty Confident, but not 100% sure
@ St. Joseph’s: The Bluejays and the Hawks are in the middle of a four game series that was established after Father Timothy Lannon left St. Joseph’s to become the President at Creighton. The matchup of the two teams has been nothing short of exciting. However, after the move to the Big East, there have been rumors going around that the last two games of the series will not happen for various reasons. At this point we have no confirmation of this, one way or the other, so for now we’ll assume these games will continue. Although the Bluejays went to St. Joseph’s last season, these four game series usually go in a 1-2-1 pattern, meaning if the series continues the Jays will probably head back to Philly again this season for this game.
Central Arkansas: An observant Bluejay fan reported on the Bluejay Underground that one of the incoming players for Central Arkansas tweeted that the first game of their college career will be at Creighton. Based on that, it’s a safe assumption that this will be Creighton’s opener in early November. Although the Bluejays will be adjusting to new players on the court, that will be nothing compared to what Central Arkansas will be experiencing. Thanks to head coach Corliss Williamson leaving the program last August for the NBA, 11 players have transferred out of the program this past season as part of a cleaning house by new head coach Russ Pennell. On that same transfer list are two players from Grand Canyon (which is currently transitioning to D-1 hoops), the school where Pennell came from.
2 Games Left: By our count, that leaves two games in the non-conference to schedule yet this season, with the caveat that they may have already been filled, but not announced or leaked anywhere as of yet. We will keep our ears to the ground and continually update our schedule page, along with the rest of the Big East non-conference schedules as they become known.
What you won’t see
@ Loyola: Remember how we mentioned earlier that there were two Bracketbusters return games that Creighton needed to fulfill? That second one is against Loyola Chicago. Creighton played the Ramblers back in Dana Altman’s final season in 2010, and the return game was to be played the following season. After that season, the return game agreement was extended to give teams 18 months to return it, and the Bluejays were originally slated to head to Chicago to play the Ramblers in December 2011.
However, due to some remodeling that was being done by Loyola to their basketball arena and Creighton not able to accommodate a different date, the game was pushed back another year to the 2012-13 season.
Then there was a coaching change at Loyola before the 2012-13 season, as former Bluejay Porter Moser took over the program. Not prepared to face his alma-mater after just taking over the program, the game was again pushed back.
At last report, this game was not going to be played this upcoming season due to the number of road games already on the schedule and was tentatively on the 2015-16 schedule. There were also reports that this game could be bought out. But, that is probably not the case since Loyola was, ironically, the team that replaced Creighton in the MVC last season. Knowing MVC commish Doug Elgin like we do, it’s certain he’ll do everything in his power to make sure this game is played at some point — not because of any animosity to the Bluejays, but because it is a high profile game for the conference and the new member, offering a potential RPI boost to the MVC.
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As of right now, the slate of games looks pretty solid from top to bottom, especially as the Bluejays go into next season with more questions than answers. Hearing the news that Isaiah Zierden doesn’t need surgery is good news, as a healthy Zierden will be a key component to the Bluejays’ success next season.
Which teams would you like to see on Creighton’s non-conference schedule in 2014-15? Who would you add? Feel free to leave comments below or head on over to the Bluejay Underground to weigh in.
Coming up next: a look at the rest of the Big East exempt tournaments for 2014-15.