Fresh off of an impressive three days in the Cayman Islands where they beat two NCAA Tournament-caliber opponents — including then-16th ranked Clemson — Creighton returns home for a big week. They’ll play host to the Montana Grizzlies, a team who won the Big Sky regular season and conference titles a year ago, returns four senior starters from a team who put a scare into eventual national runner up Michigan in the first round of the NCAA Tournament (they led 10-0 at the under-16 timeout before bowing out 61-47), and is picked to win that league again. And then they host #1 Gonzaga on Saturday, with Mark Few’s team claiming the top spot in the polls after knocking off previously-top ranked Duke in Maui.
The temptation to look ahead to Gonzaga is a strong one. It can’t happen or Montana could spoil Saturday’s party by upsetting CU first.
6’1″, 175-pound senior guard Ahmaad Rorie led the Grizzlies in scoring a year ago at 17.2 points per game, and is doing it again this year (averaging an identical 17.2 points through five games). Rorie has been far less diversified with his shot selection this year. Specifically, he’s taken far more threes this year than he did previously, with half of his shot attempts coming behind the arc (up from 34% a year ago), though it’s too soon to tell if that’s a product of a small sample size or something else. Regardless, he is a capable shooter both in the paint and from behind the arc, hitting over 50% on shots at the rim, over 40% on two-point jumpers, and hovering around 34% from three-point range. Those are solid numbers for a guy who takes as many shots as Rorie does (63 through five games).
Joining him in the backcourt is 6’2″ senior Michael Oguine, who averages 15.26 points and five assists a game. He’s also their leading rebounder so far this year, grabbing 5.4 boards (and nearly two offensive boards) per game. That’s consistent with his career at Montana, as Oguine has a nose for the basketball and plays with aggression. A whopping 77% of his 41 shot attempts this year have come at or near the rim, with the majority of them the result of him creating a shot off the dribble. Again, it’s a small sample size, but in 384 shot attempts a year ago nearly half of them were at the rim (47%) so the trend is consistent. The synopsis: of their two leading scorers, Rorie is primarily a jump shooter and Oguine is primarily a player who breaks teams down off the dribble.
6’5″ junior Sayeed Pridgett, who came off the bench in all 34 games a year ago, has taken a big leap forward this year upon joining the starting five. He’s averaging 12.8 points and 4.2 rebounds a game, taking the second-most shot attempts on the team and converting at a much more efficient pace than a year ago. Overall, he’s making 62% of his shots (27-43), with an effective field goal percentage of 64.0%. Though the small sample size caveat applies here, too, he’s made an insane 96.0% of his shots at or near the rim — which is a problem for defenses because nearly six of every 10 shots he takes come from that range.
Also averaging in double figures is Kendal Manuel, a 6’4″ junior. He’s scored 11.2 points per game, and is their best three-point shooter both in terms of volume (11-of-21) and percentage (52.4%). He’s been consistent, too, with two or more made 3’s in all five games.
Manuel is a native of Missoula, Montana who began his career at Oregon State, and found out two hours before tipoff of the season opener that the NCAA had granted him a hardship waiver allowing him to play immediately without sitting out the customary redshirt year after a transfer. The Grizzlies weren’t counting on his contributions this year, but the addition of an upperclassman scorer to their backcourt is a welcome surprise.
Jamar Akoh, a 6’8″, 250-pound senior forward, started all 34 games a year ago and averaged 12.8 points, 6.6 rebounds, and around one block and one steal per game. He scored 22 points with eight boards in their season opener this year, but has missed their remaining games with a wrist injury. He sat out their exhibition game with the injury, attempted to play through it in the opener (and with a line of 22/8, he did more than “attempt”, if we’re being honest, even if the opponent was Montana Tech), and is questionable for this one.
Akoh’s injury has opened the door for 6’7″ senior Donaven Dorsey to take a bigger role. Dorsey is a transfer from Washington, where he played sporadically in two seasons; so far this year he’s scoring 7.4 points a game (13-of-25 shooting, 7-of-18 from three-point range) in nearly 20 minutes a game. Fellow 6’7″ senior Bobby Moorehead started every game a year ago, and has done the same this year; he was a decent secondary scorer a year ago (38% from the field, 35% from three-point range) but has struggled so far this year (including just 4-of-20 from three-point range). Shooting slump or not, he’s still a solid rebounder, averaging nearly five boards a game.
Montana’s effective field goal percentage of 59.8% as a team ranks eighth-best in D1 hoops. And as you’d expect from a veteran team who’s won a ton of games together — 67 games the last three years plus the start of this year — they don’t turn it over very often, they’re fairly consistent from one game to the next, and they’ll be coming to Omaha looking to pull the upset. #1 Gonzaga looms, but Creighton needs to be ready for Montana first.
- Tip: 7:30pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Kevin Kugler and Nick Bahe
- In Omaha: Cox channel 78 (SD), 1078 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 620 (SD), 1620 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: FS1 Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 219, Dish Network channel 150
- Streaming on FoxSportsGO
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Brody Deren
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters:
- Montana has made 50% or better from the floor in four straight games.
- Ahmaad Rorie was named to the All-Tournament Team in the Bahamas Showcase tourney last week after averaging 17.3 points on .500 shooting, in addition to 4.67 assists over three games.
- Since the start of the 2017-18 season, Montana has trailed by double digits at halftime five times. The Grizzlies have come back to take the lead, or cut the lead to one point, in all five instances, including a 17-point win over Eastern Washington in the 2018 Big Sky Championship finals.
- Marcus Zegarowski is the first Creighton freshman to make a 3-pointer in his first 6 games since a guy named Ethan Wragge in 2009-10. The last Bluejay freshman to start their career with a 3-pointer in 7 straight games? Ryan Sears in 1997-98.
- College basketball’s new “NET” rankings were released for the first time Monday, and Creighton clocked in at #36. Just like the old metric, RPI, NET has some strange numbers early in the season before it has enough data points to accurately sort teams. But as it stands now, here’s where the Big East shakes out:
- 29 St. John’s
- 36 Creighton
- 38 Villanova
- 45 Butler
- 76 Georgetown
- 78 Depaul
- 85 Seton Hall
- 99 Marquette
- 101 Xavier
- 115 Providence
- And here’s where Creighton’s non-conference opponents rank (an average ranking of 134.5, heavily anchored down by poor starts by WIU and ETSU):
- Ohio St. 1
- Gonzaga 5
- Nebraska 14
- Oklahoma 42
- Clemson 51
- Montana 52
- Georgia St. 91
- Green Bay 163
- Boise St. 223
- Western Illinois 316
- E. Tennessee St. 321
- UMKC 335
- The Big East got off to a rough start, but what a week they had. St. John’s, Creighton, Villanova and Seton Hall all won their holiday tourney titles. In the process, Villanova took out Oklahoma State & Florida State, Creighton knocked off Clemson, Marquette outlasted Louisville, and Butler beat Florida. After being rightfully maligned for their struggles in the Gavitt Games, the league bounced back nicely.
Creighton leads the all-time series with Montana 5-1, though the teams haven’t met since the depths of the Rick Johnson Era — a 67-58 Montana win in December of 1993 marks these teams’ last matchup, and the only series win for the Grizz.
That was a pretty ugly game, as most were in Johnson’s final year on the Bluejay bench, with the next day’s recap in the World-Herald touting 16 turnovers as progress (because they were lower than their average of 21), losing by only nine points as a step in the right direction (they’d been blasted by 25 points at UMKC and 44 points at Iowa State earlier that year) and a 1-5 start to the season as deceptive.
“It’s like climbing a ladder,” Johnson told the OWH’s Steve Pivovar. “You don’t go from the bottom step of the ladder to the top with one step. We’re not ready to go from where we were two or three weeks into practice, when I thought we were one of the worst teams in college basketball, to where we’re beating unbeaten teams on the road. I think you have to be realistic.”
Fair as that might be, the Jays didn’t get any higher on the ladder, winning just six more games before the Johnson Era ended. Incidentally, in case you needed more context for how bad things had gotten by that point in his tenure, the next game on CU’s schedule was a gimmick home game away from the Civic Auditorium to try and sell tickets for a program that had seen attendance drop 46% in three years — vs Florida A&M at the old Ak-Sar-Ben Coliseum. Scheduling a game at the much smaller Ak-Sar-Ben (5,495 seats) was widely seen as a trial balloon for moving there full time. But it drew even fewer people (2,283) than games at the Civic had, and the experiment ended at one game.
On November 28, 2013, Creighton blew out Arizona State 88-60 in the Wooden Legacy. From Ott’s Thoughts:
“Creighton’s win was a vintage showing of exceptional ball movement and offensive execution, beginning with Doug McDermott. But from my couch, it didn’t seem like Doug was having one of his better games. Crazy how spoiled I’ve become, huh? He missed four of his five three-point attempts against Arizona State but made 7 of 13 attempts from within the arc. Coupled with a perfect 10 for 10 from the free throw line, McDermott led all scorers with 27 points and added 6 rebounds.
Creighton’s star might have shot below 50% from the field, but the team hit at a 53% clip for the game and made nearly half of its three-point attempts (12-25, 48%).
Newcomer Brooks buoyed some of those shooting percentages with a breakthrough performance, going 9 of 11 from the field and making all four of his three-point attempts en route to 23 points. While Austin Chatman was busy relatively locking down ASU stud guard Jahii Carson, Brooks did damage on the offensive end.”
A Google search of Montana rockers indicates that Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament attended the University of Montana, which is much cooler than the result I expected, I have to admit.
This is not a TV studio. Turn off the lights, it’s a rock concert!
The Bottom Line:
KenPom favors Creighton by nine. I think that’s about right — this one’s close for about 30 minutes, and CU pulls away late.
Bluejays 82, Grizzlies 73