After losing in the Big East championship game Saturday night, many pessimistic Creighton fans on social media and the Underground insisted they had played themselves out of a #3 seed, and one overly-pessimistic fan even posted that they had played themselves all the way down to a #5.
Luckily, the NCAA Tournament committee looked at their entire body of work and wasn’t emotionally impacted by one loss. When the brackets were announced, Creighton had their #3 seed, and in a great site — San Antonio, a drivable venue in the same time zone as Omaha. It should also be a fun site, with Nebraska, Iowa State, Providence and North Carolina also there.
Arguably the lightest of the four regions, on paper it looks like a fortuitous draw for the Jays. According to the official NCAA seed rankings, the West Region has the lowest-ranked 2 seed (Wisconsin), the third-ranked 3 seed (Creighton) the lowest 4 (San Diego State), the lowest 5 (Oklahoma), and the lowest 6 (Baylor).
As a 3 seed, the other 14 seeds they could have wound up with are Western Michigan, Mercer and NC Central. While Lafayette is good, North Carolina Central would present tougher matchup problems and memories of 2003 make me shudder at the thought of seeing a double-digit seeded Michigan school in the first round.
The Ragin’ Cajuns are a high-scoring team, averaging 81.4 points per game, 14th most in the country, they grab almost 14 offensive rebounds a game, which is 17th most in the country, and they’re +3.4 on the glass for the year. They block an average of four shots per game, get seven steals a game, and force 14 turnovers a game. Those are all great marks. However, they also turn it over 13.6 times a game themselves, allow opponents to shoot 44.4% from the field, and allow opponents to score 75.4 points per game — 303rd in the country. Those aren’t so great. And they typically play a straight man-to-man defense, so it will be interesting to see how they try to combat Doug McDermott and company.
They’re led by a pair of tremendous players in junior guard Elfrid Payton and sophomore forward Shawn Long, who scored a combined 1,264 points this year. Payton, a 6’3″, 180 pound guard, averages 19.1 points per game while shooting 51% from the floor. He shoots only 26% from three-point range, though, and a hideous 61% from the free-throw line. Long is probably the tougher matchup for Creighton; a 6’9″, 245 pound forward, he averages 18.7 points, 10.5 rebounds and 2.7 blocks a game. He’s long and athletic, has decent range (32-75 from three-point range), shoots well from the floor (51% overall and 42% from three) and wreaks havoc defensively. He’s also turnover prone (almost 3 per game) and is mediocre at the line (just 67%).
This should be a fast-paced, high-scoring game, which generally plays into Creighton’s hands. It almost certainly won’t be the sort of knock-down, drag-out struggle they encountered so often in Big East play — or in last year’s first round against Cincinnati, for that matter.
Should they advance, the rest of the bracket sets up well, comparatively speaking. In their second game, they get the winner of the Baylor-Nebraska game. Baylor’s played well lately, but they’re nowhere near 2012 North Carolina or 2013 Duke in terms of a second game opponent — it’s a game Creighton can win if they play relatively well, as opposed to needing to play an A+ game to have a chance. Don’t get me wrong, they’re really good, but not national-title-contender good like each of Creighton’s last two third-round opponents. And while Nebraska’s a different, better team than the one that Creighton throttled in Omaha earlier this year, Creighton is still the far better team.
The NCAA Tournament has always been more about matchups than about seeding, and in those terms, Creighton got a tremendous draw. They can advance to the Sweet 16 without having to upset either a traditional blueblood program or an elite current-year squad, and of the three potential teams they could face this weekend in Texas, they match up well with all three. If Creighton is to make a run to the second weekend or beyond, they couldn’t have asked for a better bracket to have been placed into.
Check back with White & Blue Review all week for complete coverage of the NCAA Tournament.