With a #3 seed in this year’s NCAA Tournament, the Creighton men tied the highest mark program history (the 2013-14 squad also earned a #3 seed). Their pod in Pittsburgh, feeding into the Midwest Region in Detroit, features first-round opponent Akron as well as South Carolina and Oregon.
“We’re excited to be able to secure a three seed, tied for the best in the history of our school,” Greg McDermott said after Sunday’s selection show party on campus. “It’s a real credit to these guys and their work ethic. Obviously, Akron is a really good team. I’ve known (Akron head coach) John Groce for a long time. He’s been a terrific coach everywhere that he’s been and I’m not surprised that he’s done as well as he’s done at Akron.”
The Zips are a #14 seed as tournament champs out of the Mid-American Conference (MAC). A veteran team who starts four seniors and a junior, the Zips are led by two-time MAC Player of the Year Enrique Freeman. He had 24 points, 21 rebounds and seven blocks in 39 minutes in a semifinal win over Ohio, and a 17/7/4 line in the title game. Though he stands 6’7″, Freeman is their primary weapon inside and leads the entire country in rebounds (12.9 per game), while averaging 18.6 points per game.
Other key rotation players:
Sammy Hunter (Center, 6’9″, 225-pound senior)
At 6’9″ Hunter is the tallest player on the roster, making him the de facto center even though he plays more like a stretch-four. He has the second-most three-point attempts (146) and the most made threes (54) on the team, shooting 37.0%. He’s attempted just 94 shots inside the arc, is not a great shooter from two-point range (44.7%), and draws very little contact (just 29 attempted free throws for the season). Will Ryan Kalkbrenner draw the assignment on Freeman, with Baylor Scheierman or Mason Miller sliding over to guard Hunter?
Ali Ali (Forward, 6’8″, 205-pound senior)
A matchup nightmare in the MAC where lineups tend to be smaller, Ali is a decent enough shooter from the perimeter for defenses to respect his shot (30-of-100) while doing most of his scoring inside the arc. It’s worth noting his midrange game is fairly strong. If Creighton’s drop coverage gets torched by someone firing up 12 foot jumpers, it’s likely to be Ali. He played three years for Akron before transferring to Butler last year; he then came back to Akron for one final season. So Creighton is familiar with him — he scored 10 points on 3-of-9 shooting inside the arc and 1-of-5 outside in two games against the Jays.
Greg Tribble (Point Guard, 6’3″, 195-pound senior)
Tribble is a fifth-year senior, all at Akron, who can score from all three levels. He’s their best three-point shooter by percentage (28-of-68, 41.2%), and hit the game-winning free throws to win the MAC Tournament after Kent State made the mistake of the year in college hoops by fouling intentionally while up by one point in the final seconds. If not for that, it could very well be Kent State facing the Jays.
Though no power conference team would schedule Akron, they loaded up on good mid-majors in the non-conference — losing to Utah State, Drake and UNLV and beating Bradley. Stylistically, they look to grind games to a halt with an adjusted tempo of 65.9 (268th in D1) and an average possession length of 18 seconds (291st). Their three-point defense is 13th best in the country, holding opponents to 30.0% shooting. But it’s through a mix of good closeouts, good on-ball defense, and luck, not through preventing teams from taking the shots — their opponents have taken 36.8% of their shots from three-point range (ranking 167th). Compare that to, say, Creighton, whose opponents have shot a similar 32.2% from deep. CU runs teams off the line and stops them from taking the shot altogether, as their opponents have taken just 27.2% of their shots from three.
The Jays are going to get shots from three. If they go 6-of-26 as they did in their Big East quarterfinal loss to Providence, Akron has the pieces to pull off an upset. But if the Jays hit those shots at a reasonable clip and get this game into the 70s or above, Akron probably doesn’t have enough firepower to keep up.
CU opened as 13.5 point favorites, as you’d expect in a matchup of a 3-seed versus a 14. While Akron’s individual pieces (and even the sum of their parts, in some respects) are good, their metrics are middling — they were 108th in the NCAA NET rankings and 116th in KenPom. Of the 68 teams in the field, Akron’s overall seed is 56. But the Bluejays know better than to take anything for granted.
“We did some did some good things in the regular season this year, but when March comes around, every team is good around this time,” Trey Alexander said on Sunday after the selection show. “We’ve seen a lot of teams lose in the first round that are supposed to win in the first round. So we’re just going to take it one game at a time. This is my third time, [Ryan Kalkbrenner’s] fourth time in the NCAA Tournament; we’ve grown to know that you have to take it one game at a time and focus on the game at hand because the moment you start to look forward, then that’s when teams can lose and get upset.”
Tipoff is scheduled for 12:30pm Omaha time on Thursday, with the TV broadcast on TNT.