Creighton’s list of newcomers for the 2021-22 season got a bit bigger, in a couple different ways, on Wednesday night when McNeese State graduate transfer KeyShawn Feazell announced that he would joining the Jays for his final season of college basketball.
The 6-foot-9, 235-pound forward from New Hebron, Mississippi just completed his lone season at McNeese State this past spring. He led the Cowboys in scoring (13.1 points per game), rebounding (9.9), and blocked shots (1.2), and started 20 of the 21 games he played in — he missed the first three games after Christmas break due to a positive COVID-19 test. He was effective when he was available. Feazell posted three 20-point games and eight double-doubles in his 21 appearances. Although he was just 1-for-6 from the field, he did finish with six points, 11 rebounds, three assists, and two blocked shots in just 24 minutes against Nebraska in the team’s season-opener.
Feazell, a 3-star prospect out of Lawrence County High School, started his college career at Mississippi State. He had originally chose to play at Iowa State, but decommitted after a couple months and signed with Mississippi State instead over the Cyclones, Alabama, Pittsburgh, and Baylor. He played three seasons with the Bulldogs where he backed up SEC Co-Player of the Year and eventual second-round NBA Draft Pick Reggie Perry before transferring to McNeese State last year for his senior season. New Creighton assistant coach Jalen Courtney-Williams was actually a video coordinator for Mississippi State during Feazell’s freshman season and coached the big man last season with the Cowboys, so this upcoming season in Omaha will be their third stop together.
Creighton currently sits at six newcomers for next year with Feazell joining fellow grad transfer Ryan Hawkins alongside incoming freshmen Arthur Kaluma, John Christofilis, Mason Miller, and Ryan Nembhard. The Bluejays have a lot of playing time up for grabs when practice starts in the fall as they will likely be replacing all five starters from a team fresh off the program’s first Sweet 16 run in nearly 50 years.
Senior wings Mitch Ballock and Denzel Mahoney have already signed with agents, junior point guard Marcus Zegarowski and senior forward Damien Jefferson have declared for the NBA Draft, and junior five-man Christian Bishop transferred to Texas. Together they accounted for 86.3% of the made 3-pointers, 78.7% of the scoring, 76.1% of the assists, 74.0% of the minutes played, and 62.5% of the rebounds for the Bluejays over the course of 31 games last season.
Where might KeyShawn Feazell be able to fill in some of that missing production? The first two ways are what you might expect: interior scoring and rebounding. Last season, Feazell shot 58.6% from 0-10 feet on 174 shot attempts. While that was not as efficient as Christian Bishop’s 68.0% mark on 200 attempts, his volume was actually greater. Bishop averaged 4.4 makes per game from that range, while Feazell averaged 4.9.
As for the rebounding, despite playing in 10 fewer games, Feazell’s 149 defensive boards would have tied him with Bishop for the team lead at Creighton, and his 58 offensive rebounds were 10 more than any Bluejay had last season. Not only was he great at securing extra possessions for his team, but he was also one of the best in all of Division 1 men’s hoops at cashing in on those second-chance opportunities. According to Synergy, he was the fifth-most efficient put back artist in the country (minimum 45 possessions):
- David Roddy, Colorado State, 1.522 points per possession, 79.3% field-goal percentage
- Hunter Dickinson, Michigan, 1.489 PPP, 66.7% FG%
- Carlos Rosario, McNeese State, 1.478 PPP, 66.7% FG%
- Moses Moody, Arkansas, 1.458 PPP, 70.3% FG%
- KeyShawn Feazell, McNeese State, 1.422 PPP, 68.4% FG%
- Armando Bacot, North Carolina, 1.419 PPP, 69.6% FG%
- Enrique Freeman, Akron, 1.400 PPP, 71.4% FG%
- Luka Garza, Iowa, 1.400 PPP, 67.7% FG%
- Darius Days, LSU, 1.383 PPP, 74.4% FG%
- Evan Mobley, USC, 1.370 PPP, 72.5% FG%
The third area where Feazell might fill the void left by Creighton’s starting five actually runs counter to his stat sheet, but it’s there on film: assists.
Yeah, yeah, he’s got a career average of 0.6 dimes per contest in 95 career games. Not exactly eye-popping production. However, he averaged 2.2 assists per game last season with McNeese State, including seven games with at least three. With the Cowboys, he displayed impressive feel for the action around him, especially with his back to the basket. Whether opponents were in single coverage with guards digging down at him in the post or if they were sending double and sometimes triple teams at him, he showed off the ability to feel out the defense and keep his dribble alive until it was time to get rid of ball. He proved that he could find open shooters on the opposite wing, hit cutters in traffic, and whip passes by lengthy defenders along the baseline. He even had a couple nifty touch passes on post entries before the help defender could trap him.
His competition will obviously be longer, stronger, and quicker in the Big East next season, but there is some intriguing offensive versatility to the soon-to-be 23-year-old big man’s game beyond just the rebounding and scoring around the basket. Ball movement and spacing are staples of Creighton’s offense, and KeyShawn Feazell appears to check a lot of the same boxes that Christian Bishop did for the Jays on that end of the floor the last two seasons.
