Damien Jefferson almost had a triple-double on Thursday night (Juszyk / WBR)
Contrary to popular belief, the question of who is Creighton’s best player might have a complicated answer. That might be overthinking things considering that Marcus Zegarowski is the sure-fire answer to the question of who can they least afford to lose given how they operate. But it’s hard to overlook how good Creighton has been with Damien Jefferson on the floor.
In Thursday night’s 94-76 win at St. John’s, the ninth-ranked Bluejays were 23 points better than the Red Storm in the 28 minutes that the senior was on the floor. Jefferson finished with 10 points, 10 rebounds, and a career-high eight assists, falling two dimes short of becoming the first player in Creighton history to record a points/rebounds/assists triple-double. Oh yeah, and of his team’s 14 turnovers on the night he was responsible for none of them.
“The guy plays the right way,” CU head coach Greg McDermott said. “He doesn’t care who gets the credit. He just wants to win. We talked about trying to get in the paint, be patient, scour the floor, and we feel like somebody’s going to be open. He did a good job finding bigs under the basket. He found some shooters, and obviously he gets 10 points and 10 rebounds to go with it. In that run in the second half I thought he had his fingerprints all over it.”
During a critical 22-4 run that Creighton used to decouple a two-point lead over a span of close to eight minutes, the 6-foot-5 wing accounted for four points, four rebounds, and three assists to help put the game on ice. In three career games against St. John’s, Jefferson is now shooting 82.6% overall and averaging 15.3 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 3.0 assists per contest. He wasn’t wanting for reminders of that fact after the game either.
“You’re probably the third person to just tell me that right now,” Jefferson said when asked what comes over him when he matches up with the Johnnies. “I just read the way they play, how they play off of me and focus on Marcus and Mitch and Denzel. I just try to read off those guys and try to make the right plays. It’s not only with them because I try to do that every game, but it’s more noticeable with them because of the numbers I’ve had.”
Jefferson is having an inside and outside game as part of his arsenal (Spomer / WBR)
Jefferson’s game is starting to become more noticeable in general instead of just for the stats he’s compiled against St. John’s, which are certainly impressive in their own right. In seven games this season, he is second on the team in plus/minus at +106, fourth in scoring (11.6 ppg), second in rebounding (5.5 rpg), second in assists (3.3 apg), second in field-goal percentage (64.0%), and first in 3-point field goal percentage (44.4%) among players who have taken 10 or more shots from distance.
He impacts that game in a number ways at a high level, and it’s a recipe for success that he has a deeper understanding of now than he did coming out of high school in East Chicago, Indiana.
“A lot of talks with Coach Mac, man. He told me I can impact the game in so many ways,” Jefferson said. “In some ways I didn’t ever think I could impact the game, because in high school I was ‘the guy.’ I never really paid too much attention to getting defensive stops and stuff like that. In college it’s different. You have realize that if you want to play you have to do what the coach tells you to do. Coach Mac told me I can impact the game other than scoring the ball and I can be the leader that I am, and it’s carried over to today. I just want to thank him for that, because I never would have realized how important I am to this team.”
Denzel Mahoney is the reigning Sixth Man of the Year in the Big East. Mitch Ballock is a preseason All-Big East selection and a 2021 Jerry West Award watch list nominee. Marcus Zegarowski is the Big East Preseason Player of the Year and an All-American point guard, who is on a handful of watch lists for the most prestigious awards in college basketball. In the eyes of too many at times, including this writer, it has been easy to consider Damien Jefferson just another guy on Creighton’s roster. It’s probably time to stop doing that.
“DJ’s a very mature young man,” McDermott said. “And he is a star; he’s a star in his role. The role that he plays for us is really, really important. He knows he has the green light and there’s going to be nights where there’s a bunch of shots, and tonight it was about getting into the paint and if they cut him off he made a nice pass fake or a shot fake and was able to dish it to people. His activity on the glass, what he was doing defensively, his leadership in the huddle, we aren’t going to realize how good he is and how valuable and important he is to our program until he’s no longer there.
“I think people in the media with some of the success that Marcus has, or Mitch makes 11 threes and gets a lot of attention, you don’t pay enough attention to the things that DJ does for our team. We as a coaching staff fully recognize what he does for our team. We are not where we are a year ago, and we are not where we are today without him. He’s a very important leadership component to this engine, and he makes it run in a lot of ways because he’s a senior and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to win … he impacts the game in many ways and puts his fingerprints all over the game. That’s a sign of a really special player.”