For the second consecutive season, Greg McDermott’s Creighton Bluejays will wear their home whites in the NCAA Tournament. The Bluejays earned a No. 7 seed for this year’s Big Dance, drawing a matchup against No. 10 Cincinnati in the Midwest Region.
The Bluejays and Bearcats will tangle in Philadelphia Friday, March 22, in the second game of the afternoon (tip approximately at 1:45 p.m. CT, on CBS). It marks a meeting between a departing member of the Big East and a school that multiple reports indicate will join that venerable league in the coming days.
WBR will have plenty of coverage of Creighton’s trip to the 2013 NCAA Tournament. But before the week gets started, let’s take a quick look at the Bearcats.
History Lesson
Creighton and Cincinnati have met twice before, with the Bearcats owning a 2-0 record all-time. The first meeting came in the 1962 NCAA Tournament. After winning their first game against Memphis, the Bluejays squared off against the defending national champion Bearcats in Manhattan, Kansas. Cincinnati drubbed CU 66-46 on the way to a repeat national title.
In December 1989, juniors Bob Harstad and Chad Gallagher led Creighton to the Rainbow Classic in Hawaii. The Bluejays’ first of three opponents that week was Cincinnati, and the Bearcats beat the Jays by two points. Tony Barone manned the bench for Creighton, and his counterpart was Cincinnati’s first-year head coach Bob Huggins, who two seasons later would take the Bearcats to their last Final Four appearance.
They might have squared off just twice in history, but the Cincinnati and Creighton basketball programs entered the 2012-2013 season with something quite interesting in common. The two schools were tied with 7 Missouri Valley Conference regular season championships. With Creighton’s regular season MVC title this season, the Jays jumped ahead of Cincinnati in the Valley record books. The Bearcats were in the MVC from 1957 to 1969, and their time in the league was highlighted by the play of one of basketball’s all time great legends Oscar Robertson.
Stat Showcase!
Alabama is one of the toughest defensive teams in the country, whereas Creighton turns heads with its offensive prowess.
Déjà vu? That’s what I wrote a year ago, but the same is true tonight. Cincinnati and Creighton offer a striking dissimilarity statistically.
The Bluejays are among the nation’s leaders in field goal shooting percentage (1st, 50.8%), three-point shooting percentage (1st, 42.1%), three-pointers made (2nd, 298), threes per game (6th, 8.8), points per possession (5th, 1.17), free throw shooting percentage (21st, 75%), assists per game (5th, 17.2), and assist-to-turnover ratio (10th, 1.4:1). Creighton is 24th nationally in points per game (75.4)
The Bearcats, meanwhile, are 196th in points per game (66.6), are 303rd in field goal shooting percentage (40.2%), 249th in three-point shooting percentage (31.7%), 296th in free throw shooting percentage (64.9%), and 181st in assist-to-turnover ratio (0.95:1). But it is the Bearcat defense that may give the Bluejays fits.
Cincinnati is 24th nationally in points allowed per game (58.8) and is among the nation’s leaders in field goal percentage defense (15th, 38.5%), three-point percentage defense (26th, 30%), and blocked shots per game (6th, 6.2). Oh, and the Bearcats can board: they are 19th nationally in rebounding margin (6.5 per game).
Overall, Cincinnati is 15th in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency, or the estimate of efficiency for a team against the average D-1 offense. Creighton is 78th in adjusted defensive efficiency.
The Bluejays, however, are 6th in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency, or the similar measure of efficiency against the average D-1 defense. The Bearcats are 117th in this measure.
How They Got Here
After winning the Missouri Valley Conference regular season title in the final game of the regular season, the Creighton Bluejays secured the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament by winning the MVC Tournament. But as Creighton fans, you all know that.
Cincinnati secured an at-large bid to the Big Dance. The Bearcats played four patsies off the bat, going 4-0 against Tennessee-Martin, Mississippi Valley State, North Carolina A&T, and Campbell before shipping off for a Thanksgiving weekend tournament in Las Vegas. Cincinnati beat Greg McDermott’s former employer, Iowa State, and then defeated former Creighton head coach Dana Altman and the Oregon Ducks to win the event at the Thomas and Mack Center.
Cincinnati was 12-0 and ranked No. 11 before losing at home to New Mexico in late December. The Bearcats bounced back on the road against Pittsburgh but then dropped home games against St. John’s and Notre Dame. Consecutive wins at Rutgers, at DePaul, and versus Marquette got things back on track a bit. But then the Bearcats lost a two-point game at Syracuse, and the roller coaster ride worsened. Cincinnati finished the season with losses in 8 of its last 14 games.
Visit WBR all week for previews and content leading up to Creighton’s second straight NCAA Tournament appearance.