To say it’s been an eventful six weeks since Creighton bowed out of the 2025 NCAA Tournament would be an understatement. They entered the offseason knowing they’d be losing 61.7% of their points, 73.3% of their assists and 49.5% of their rebounds from a year ago, plus their top assistant coach (Ryan Miller), who accepted the head coach job at Murray State. They didn’t know they’d also be putting a succession plan in place for the head Bluejay, Greg McDermott.
But in the span of six weeks, all of that has happened. Ryan Kalkbrenner, Steven Ashworth, Jamiya Neal are out (plus Mason Miller, Fredrick King, Pop Isaacs and Sami Osmani). In are Owen Freeman, Nik Graves, Josh Dix, Austin Swartz and Blake Harper from the transfer portal, plus freshmen Aleksa Dimitrijevic and Hudson Greer. And former assistant coach and player Alan Huss is back as an assistant — and the official Coach in Waiting whenever McDermott hangs it up.
Whew.
Through all of that, we haven’t heard much from McDermott. That changed on Thursday when he sat down for a half-hour interview with John Bishop and Josh Peterson on 1620AM’s ‘Unsportsmanlike Conduct’, covering all of those topics and more.
The breaking news of the segment came when McDermott confirmed on the record what social media accounts have rumored for a couple of weeks — Fedor Zugic’s eligibility has again been brought into question by the NCAA. McDermott noted that last year they got burned by the one-two punch of Zugic’s absence and the loss of Pop Isaacs to an injury. It left them without much experience on the wing, and it’s something they aren’t eager to replicate.
“We recruited with the mindset that he’s not going to be back, and then if he comes back, we’ll figure it out,” McDermott said. “It’s kind of an ongoing process with the NCAA. There’s maybe only one more step that can be taken before we really run out of bullets in that regard. We may still add somebody in the summer if we find out that he’s not eligible. Or we may take a developmental guy if the right guy comes along.”
That philosophy has been the driving force behind the way they’ve constructed the roster heading into 2025-26. McDermott said as he dissected the loss to Auburn and watched the teams who advanced to the Final Four, what jumped out to him was their depth. While acknowledging the challenges of building depth in the NIL era, where you have to balance the availability of scholarships versus the availability of money for them, he said he was determined to make it work.
“I made the conscious decision that we were going to get some depth. We’re not going to have a problem where we don’t have enough guys,” McDermott said. “I think we can get back to playing more people like some of my teams have in the past.”
What does that look like? McDermott noted that he had a team at Wayne State early in his career where he had nine players who averaged 14 minutes or more per game, and that’s where he’d like to get back to. Though he’s gotten a reputation of late for having a short bench, it hasn’t always been that way — his CU teams routinely got double-digit minutes for nine or sometimes even 10 of the 13 scholarship players prior to the Kalkbrenner era. They even had a stretch from 2014-2018 where their bench usage ranked in the top 75 three of four years. No, really: here’s a year-by-year breakdown of bench usage:
- 2024-25: 26.3% of minutes played by bench players (295th)
- Nine players averaging 11.8 or more minutes, though still top-heavy with four between 31 and 36
- 2023-24: 19.4% of minutes (355th)
- Six players averaging 10 or more minutes, with four between 31 and 37
- 2022-23: 19.7% of minutes (351st)
- Six players averaging 10 or more minutes, with four between 32 and 34
- 2021-22: 23.7% of minutes (312th)
- Nine players averaging 9.7 or more minutes, none more than 35 (Ryan Hawkins)
- 2020-21: 23.4% of minutes (317th)
- Nine players averaging 9.7 or more minutes, none more than 33.6 (Mitch Ballock and Marcus Zegarowski)
- 2019-20: 19.4% of minutes (343rd)
- Eight players averaging 11 or more minutes, none more than 36 (Mitch Ballock)
- 2018-19: 26.5% of minutes (269th)
- Eight players averaging 11 or more minutes, none more than 33 (Mitch Ballock)
- 2017-18: 35.5% of minutes (71st)
- Nine players averaging 14 or more minutes, none more than 31.7 (Khyri Thomas)
- 2016-17: 34.2% of minutes (113th)
- Nine players averaging 10 or more minutes, none more than 31.2 (Khyri Thomas)
- 2015-16: 35.4% of minutes (91st)
- Nine players averaging 10 or more minutes, none more than 31.2 (Mo Watson)
- 2014-15: 38.8% of minutes (39th)
- Ten players averaging 11.5 or more minutes, none more than 33 (Austin Chatman)
- 2013-14: 27.0% of minutes (251st)
- Nine players averaging 10.9 or more minutes, none more than 33.7 (Doug McDermott)
- 2012-13: 25.6% of minutes (273rd)
- Eight players averaging 13.8 or more minutes, none more than 32 (Austin Chatman)
- 2011-12: 29.9% of minutes (192nd)
- Eight players averaging 11.8 or more minutes, none more than 32 (Doug McDermott)
- 2010-11: 32.0% of minutes (136th)
- Ten players averaging 11.3 or more minutes, none more than 35 (Antoine Young)
On paper, the 2025-26 team seems like a roster that can see nine or 10 players carve out 10+ minutes per game. But with some schematic changes coming to their gameplan, especially on the defensive end, the players who adapt quickest will be the ones who grasp those minutes.
McDermott noted that the Jays’ new players, especially the ones from the portal, scored a lot of points at their previous schools.
“We might need to score a lot of points next year until we can build a defensive identity,” he said. “Our identity has been built around Kalkbrenner for four years. And that’s going to have to change because Owen (Freeman’s) skill set defensively is not the same as Ryan’s was. We might have to win some games 92-90 games once again until we figure it out.”
Does that mean abandoning the drop coverages they employed when Kalkbrenner was the gravitational field everything else revolved around? Will they go back to the more aggressive style they employed when Christian Bishop and Martin Krampelj were in the middle, because that’s what Freeman seems best suited for? Or will they go small at times and put Jackson McAndrew or Isaac Traudt in the middle for short bursts?
McDermott says he’s not the kind of coach to force round pegs into square holes — he’s always adapted his style to fit the players he has, and this year will be no different. With that said, they hope Dimitrijevic will eventually be able to excel in drop coverage. And the quicker he can pick up the college game, the more flexibility they’ll have.
“Owen’s experienced in a little bit of both (defensive styles), but more of what they did at Iowa with him was probably the more aggressive stuff that we did with Christian Bishop,” McDermott noted. “But I think we’ll have the flexibility to change a little bit. We can also go small and switch everything as well — I think Owen has the ability to move his feet to switch the ball screen. So, I think you’ll see multiple coverages. The last three or four years, anything besides drop was kind of a one-off deal out of a timeout and then we’d go back to what we were good at.”
Offensively, McDermott believes they’ve done more than enough to replace the scoring load that Kalkbrenner, Ashworth and Neal provided. He also believes they’ve recruited Creighton-type players — skilled basketball players, good shooters, and unselfish. He noted that Graves, Dix and Swartz have all proven to be good at the D1 level at getting teammates involved.
“We’ve always tried to identify skill and guys that really understand how to play, and part of that is an ability to shoot the basketball,” McDermott said. “But trying to recruit a selfish person with the idea you can make him an unselfish basketball player? That ship has sailed for me. I’m not doing that anymore.”
He said they now have the luxury of picking-and-choosing players who appreciate the way they play and want to be a part of it.
“Jamiya (Neal) was a great example. He had to make a monumental change in his game to fit the way that we play, and it worked for him,” McDermott said. “The new guys understand how we play and that’s why they’re here. They appreciate the unselfish brand we play with, and they want to be part of that. I think inherently all these guys are unselfish, and that’s why we that’s why we recruited them.”
McDermott believes that because of that, the transition will be relatively smooth. He noted that Iowa played a fast pace, did a good job of moving the ball, and shot a lot of threes, so the adjustment for Freeman and Dix will be quicker than it might have been otherwise.
“Getting someone on the wing that can do a lot of different things was a huge priority for us, and Josh is a three level score who guarded the other team’s best player,” McDermott said. “He brings a lot of good things. We also needed to shore up the center position, and Owen showed the ability to score both years he played in the Big Ten. Both of them were able to enter the portal early because Fran McCaffery was let go, which allowed us to do some due diligence on them ahead of the portal date, and then get them to campus.”
As for the guys returning, McDermott said all of them have had healthy, productive springs. And while the roster was in flux, he made a point of reassuring walk-on Josh Townley-Thomas that there would still be a place for him. McDermott feels strongly that the proposed 15-player roster limit, which would include walk-ons for the first time, is unfair to players like Townley-Thomas during the transition period. The judge in the NCAA’s settlement case shares that sentiment, and it’s one of the big holdups in approving the case.
“Josh chose to come to Creighton, he’s from Omaha, he wanted to get a Creighton degree. He loves wearing that name on the front of his jersey, and I think he deserves the right and the opportunity to graduate from Creighton and be part of our team,” McDermott said. “I went to him before he came to me and said, you know, you will have one of these 15 spots. I’m not doing that to you. He’s given a lot more to this program than he’s taken from us.”
That’s the culture McDermott has built and nurtured, and it’s one of the reasons he’s excited to know it will continue when he’s done with Huss at the helm. He’s also grateful that CU’s roster — and potentially the program — won’t be decimated when he does step aside.
He noted that when Darian DeVries took the Indiana job, as blue of a blue blood as there is, his roster had zero players within four days of starting.
“That’s what happens now when a coach leaves or retires. The program gets decimated and you have to start over from scratch, and I don’t want that to happen to this program when I decide that it’s time,” McDermott said. “If there wasn’t a plan in place if I were to walk away, I’d get scared of what would happen. Certainly, University leadership would hire a good person…but it just, it changes. And, you know, having been here 15 years, I understand why Dana (Altman) stayed here so long. He was here 16 years, next year is going to be my 16th year and my goal is that 16 or 17 years from now, people are gonna be saying that Creighton’s had three coaches in 50 years.”
McDermott said his hope has been that one of his former assistants would take over when he ultimately moved on, but with Steve Lutz (Oklahoma State) and DeVries (Indiana) already at good power-conference jobs, the window might be shrinking somewhat. Huss’ success at High Point — he went 56-15, won back-to-back Big South Conference regular season titles, and earned an NCAA Tournament berth this past season — was already leading to interest from bigger names. He reportedly interviewed for multiple high-major jobs. McDermott surmised correctly that if Huss didn’t land one this spring, he certainly would next year. So he put a plan into place.
“I called (Al) two months ago and just broached the subject with him when we were talking about something else,” McDermott recalled. “If the stars aligned, you know, would it be something that he would have an interest in? He said yes, and that was obviously very preliminary at that point.”
Then the stars aligned when Miller accepted the job at Murray State, and with McDermott’s informal conversation with Huss still fresh in his mind, he started putting plans into place.
“I had a meeting with Father (Hendrickson) six or seven weeks ago and broached the subject with him,” McDermott said. “Then we brought it to Marcus (Blossom), I think, right before the Big East Tournament, and they were supportive of it. Without them both it doesn’t get done. I think I was able to lay out why it’s a great idea. Number one, it allows for smooth transition when the time comes. But number two, you’re also hiring a really, really good basketball coach that’s going to be hopefully coaching at a place like Creighton at some point anyway, so why not bring him home now? I’m really excited about it.”
Huss is bringing along a former assistant at High Point, Mike Nesbitt, with him to Creighton. The NCAA recently changed their rules regarding assistant coaches, and they now allow five coaches to recruit off campus instead of three, as it had been for decades. McDermott said Creighton offered Huss the flexibility to bring someone with him, and Huss spoke glowingly of Nesbitt after coaching him in high school and working with him on his staff.
From Creighton’s side, bringing Huss back as an assistant and Coach in Waiting is a home run. But does it feel that way to Huss?
“Look at it from Coach Huss’s perspective. When you take any job, you know some things going in, but there’s so many things that you don’t know until you get there,” McDermott noted. “I mean, for example, look at West Virginia (where DeVries went for one season before departing for Indiana). You think you know the job, and then you get there and you realize, alright, this is a challenge, this is a struggle. At Creighton, Al knows all the positives and he understands the challenges. And fortunately, there aren’t a lot of challenges right now, because I think everything’s in place and where it needs to be from a support staff and staff perspective. We have the support of the university and support of the community.”
Much has been made of Huss’ acumen as an offensive X’s and O’s prodigy, and he’s proven his recruiting bonafides. Less has been made of his role in making sure Creighton was ahead of curve on NIL. But it should not be overlooked. Huss saw what was coming around the corner, and put a plan in place for CU to be able to succeed — while others in the Big East were scrambling to figure out a plan (and some, like Seton Hall, still are) Creighton hit the ground running and parlayed it into deep tourney runs. McDermott gave the credit for that to Huss, and said he was grateful for Huss’ foresight about a monumental shift in the college sports landscape.
There’s no timeframe for when McDermott will retire. He noted that he still has a lot of other things he wants to do when he’s done coaching, and wants to make sure he walks away while he’s healthy enough to do them — but not quite yet.
“I’m not there yet, so I haven’t really thought about how we’ll handle the actual transition that much,” he said. “Obviously, communicating with the team when that time comes is priority number one. I’ll know when it doesn’t feel right anymore, when I don’t have the energy or the drive anymore. That time’s not here yet, and until it is, I’m 100% committed to making sure we put another good product on the floor.”
Of all the moves Creighton made over the past six weeks, ensuring the program McDermott has built on the foundation Altman laid doesn’t crumble after he leaves is unquestionably the biggest.
“This is a special place. The community is what makes it that, the people are what make it special, the support has been incredible,” he said. “This takes some weight off my shoulders, because I know this program’s gonna be in good hands for many years.”
You can listen to the entire interview here; it starts at around the one-hour mark.