Head coach Jim Flanery believes his team may need two wins in the Big East tournament for another at-large bid (Williams / WBR)
It’s that time of the year for the Creighton women’s basketball team. After posting a 17-11 record and a fourth-place finish in the Big East regular season standings, the Jays head to Chicago where the Big East Women’s Basketball Tournament will get underway with a pair of play-in games on Saturday at Wintrust Arena. With an RPI hovering slightly above 50, a strong strength of schedule, and several quality wins on their resume, Creighton finds itself in contention for a second consecutive NCAA Tournament at-large bid, so of course the team that once again will provide the first hurdle for them to clear in the Windy City is postseason rival St. John’s.
On Sunday at 2:30 p.m., the Bluejays and Red Storm will tip-off in an elimination game for the fifth time in the last six seasons. Each of the previous four meetings have resulted in stumbling blocks for the Jays as opposed to a hurdle they’ve cleared. In the 2011-12 NCAA Tournament — when the Bluejays were still members of the Missouri Valley Conference, St. John’s bounced them in the first round on a last-second basket to win by two. A couple years later, the Red Storm won 68-63 in double overtime of the Big East Tournament semifinals. The following season it was 57-54, Johnnies, in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament, and in 2015-16 they played for the conference tournament championship in a game that was tied heading into fourth quarter before St. John’s pulled away to win by 13.
“It does seem weird that we’ve played them so much in the conference tournament,” Creighton head coach Jim Flanery said. “The one year when we met in the finals it wasn’t set up that way — the 4-seed and the 7-seed aren’t supposed to meet in the finals, but pretty much every other time it’s been either a first round or second round collision.”
“The fact is all three games were close. The one in the finals was tied going into the fourth quarter and the other two could have gone either way … they are a tough matchup in the conference tournament because they always defend well and you always feel like it’s a little more physical in the conference tournament — the officials will let you play a little bit more, and that doesn’t always help us. But it is strange how we seem to find them and they find us.”
Jays’ NCAA Resume Needs A Boost
Making the stakes even higher on Sunday are Creighton’s chances at securing an at-large bid for the second season in a row. At this time last year, the Jays were 22-6 and co-regular season champions of the Big East. Going into their quarterfinal matchup with the Red Storm, they have a 17-11 record with an unofficial RPI of 47. Quality wins over Drake, Marquette, and Nebraska on the road, and South Dakota State, Villanova, and St. John’s at home provide some pop to their resume. As does their 11th-ranked non-conference strength of schedule. All of that will earn them points on Selection Monday, but after dropping their last two regular season games — at Georgetown and at Villanova — they have some work to do this weekend in Chicago.
“I hate to admit that I do, but of course I pay attention to it,” Flanery said of the bubble talk regarding his team and the others around them competing for those coveted final spots. “We have to obviously win on Sunday, and probably on Monday, too. You can’t look too far ahead, but we feel like we need to win two. I think if we do, the numbers say that we should get in. If we only win one, I feel like we’d have to get lucky to get in.”
Standing in Creighton’s way of the wins Flanery thinks they’ll have to put in their back pocket are the aforementioned Red Storm and current co-regular season champion Marquette. The Jays split the season series with each team. They lost in overtime to St. John’s in the first meeting before beating them at home later in the season. The Golden Eagles, however, handled the Jays in Omaha before Creighton returned the favor with a one-point win in Milwaukee. Both teams present a lot of challenges with their athleticism and physicality, especially in the post and on the glass. Although winning the whole tournament would remove any doubt and ensure a completely stress-free week of waiting, securing the rubber matches on Sunday and Monday would at least make the Jays feel more optimistic about their chances to go dancing again.
“Obviously the goal is to win three, but I think if we win two I’d be disappointed if we didn’t get in, because our resume would stack up,” Flanery said. “If there are 12 teams battling for four or five spots I think we are there if we can get another RPI Top 70 and another RPI Top 20-something win. I think it’d be hard to leave us out.”
Sydney Snubbed
Sydney Lamberty had the numbers to be part of the All-Big East teams (Williams / WBR)
Postseason awards were handed out this week and once again the Big East coaches couldn’t find any room on their All-Big East First or Second Team ballots for Jays senior Swiss army knife Sydney Lamberty. The Minnesota native had to settle for an Honorable Mention nod in the final year of a career that saw her make the All-Freshman Team in the Big East in 2014-15, then the All-Forgotten Team every year after that.
Her own coach hasn’t spoken to her about it yet and doesn’t know if she even cares about the individual accolades, but that didn’t make him any less perplexed to her name omitted from the top two five-person all-conference teams.
“I felt like at worst she would be second team. I thought she was maybe borderline first team, and at worst second team. At the positions that she’s playing, to be eighth in the league in rebounding as a point guard, she always defends the other team’s best player, and she’s efficient. She’s not a crazy scorer, but she’s an efficient scorer. This year she’s been the most efficient that she’s ever been as a scorer. I was surprised … to have as much on her plate from a ball-handling standpoint that she’s had this year, she was worthy. She is worthy.”
For some perspective on the senior season that Lamberty put together, she was the only player to average at least 12 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 assists per game in league play in both Big East men’s and women’s basketball. The only one. She finished her final 18-game league slate shooting 45.9% from the field and 40.0% from the 3-point line while averaging 12.1 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 5.2 assists per game. She also ended up fifth in assist-to-turnover ratio while averaging the second-most minutes of anyone in the league at 37.9 per game and being her team’s primary ball-handler.
As a freshman, Lamberty had the second-most assists ever in a Big East Tournament game without committing a single turnover when she had 8 assists and no turnovers in a quarterfinal loss to St. John’s in Chicago. Last season, she became the third player ever to score 25 or more points, grab 15 or more rebounds, and dish out at least three assists in a Big East Tournament game when did it against eventual tournament champion Marquette in the semifinals in Milwaukee.
Among the Big East’s active leaders, her 1,231 career points rank fifth, her 633 career rebounds rank fourth, and her 475 career assists are the most of any player anyone will see in Chicago this weekend. Yet “Honorable Mention” is the all she deserved from the coaches who have been game-planning against her for four years? That will allowed her own coach to create a bigger chip on a shoulder that already had one to begin with.
“I told her in our meeting that her approach has to be that she’s the best point guard in the league this weekend, because she is,” Flanery said. “Whatever point guard is, however you define that, I feel like she can control the game as well as anybody from the position that she plays … I sense urgency in her. Not that I haven’t all year, but I sense even greater urgency from her.”