Reminiscing about great players from Creighton’s past is a popular offseason topic, especially when we get to this point of the summer where the past season is firmly in the rearview mirror — but the upcoming season still seems far off on the horizon. Joe Sobczyk, a lifelong Jays fan from Omaha living in the Kansas City area and the creator of the popular Twitter (or, I guess, X) account “Jays Classic” has taken a unique approach to ranking former greats: using hard data fed into a custom-developed algorithm to rank players objectively.
“The reason I created these rankings is that after last season, when Ryan Kalkbrenner won his third straight Big East Defensive Player of the Year award, I started to hear this ‘Doug McDermott versus Ryan Kalkbrenner Greatest of All Time’ debate among Creighton fans,” Sobczyk told us. “I thought it would be fun to standardize the process of ranking the best Creighton players, so that I could have a more informed opinion on the topic.”
The result so far is a ranking of 50 Bluejay players who’ve donned the White & Blue since 1995, culled from a full list of 88 former Jays that Sobczyk ran through his algorithm. Even though he’s only releasing the top 50 publicly, he said he ranked so many beyond that number to make sure there were no oversights. Not only is it a standardized process – it’s an exhaustive one.
“Ranking 88 players gives me confidence that there’s no player that I haven’t ranked that should be ranked in the top 50,” Sobczyk said.
OK, so why use 1995 as a cut-off?
Perhaps the biggest is simply a byproduct of the objective process used to create the ranking in the first place: the need for consistent data for all players. Some of the advanced metrics used in the formula aren’t available for seasons prior to the mid-nineties. Some counting stats like assists and steals that are considered to be pretty basic now were not charted in the 1960s and 70s. And college hoops prior to the introduction of the three-point line and shot clock in the mid-1980s was an entirely different game.
A more subjective ranking could make fair comparisons of players across those eras possible; we did that almost 15 years ago on WBR in picking the best Bluejays to wear each uniform number and it was incredibly difficult to compare players like Bob Gibson and Paul Silas to more recent stars. It’s even more difficult now.
There’s also this: 1995 roughly coincides with the start of the “modern era” of Creighton hoops, as Dana Altman took over as head coach for the 1994-95 season. It’s a significant cutoff point historically: Of their 25 all-time NCAA Tournament appearances, 16 of them have come in the last 30 years. Of their 20 all-time NCAA Tournament wins, 13 of them have come in that timeframe. The Bluejays have won 1,697 games over their 106 seasons, and 627 of them have come over the last 30 years (36.9%). 45 players all-time have scored 1,000 or more points in their career as a Bluejay, and 21 have come in the last 30 years (with 24 over the 85 years prior).
So about the ranking itself: how is the data parsed? Sobczyk uses five categories, based both on individual success and team success. Each of the categories are weighted differently in the overall formula (i.e., they don’t each have equal importance in the results). The specific formulas are his secret sauce and we won’t reveal the recipe, but the ingredients are as follows.
1. Individual accomplishments
This one is pretty self-explanatory: honors and accomplishments (All-American, All-Conference, Tournament MVP, etc.) are given a standard value and applied to each applicable player.
2. Team accomplishments
Again, exactly what it sounds like but this time it’s team accomplishments (regular season conference titles, conference tourney titles, NCAA Tournament appearances, etc.). Each team accomplishment is given a standard value and applied to each applicable team. Then, each player within that team earns a specific portion of the credit for that achievement.
3. Team Quality
This category refers to the quality of each team the player played for according to KenPom. Each player is assigned specific portions of credit for each team’s quality.
4. Career totals
This includes the player’s career statistical totals (points, rebounds, assists, etc.)
5. Peak season
And finally, this category refers to the players’ best statistical season as compared to the other players that are ranked. It’s one way to more fairly compare the contribution of someone like, say, Baylor Scheierman who only played two years as a Bluejay with Jays that were at CU for three or four years.
Sobczyk is clear that the resulting ranking is not his list of the greatest Bluejays in the traditional sense.
“By ‘Greatest’, I just mean I am trying to rank the players based on their legacy as Creighton players,” he told us. “I’m trying to capture which players had the most significant contributions to the rise and sustained success of Creighton’s men’s basketball program over the last 30 years.”
The resulting ranking is predictable in some ways; Doug McDermott comes in at #1, proving he’s the greatest regardless of whether it’s a subjective or objective ranking. And the players you’d expect to rank highly – Ryan Kalkbrenner, Kyle Korver, Marcus Zegarowski, Baylor Scheierman, Ryan Sears, Ben Walker, etc. – do.
It’s surprising in other ways; Rodney Buford, the school’s all-time leading scorer prior to McDermott, comes in just outside the top five. And (spoiler alert) Ryan Hawkins, who played just one season as a Bluejay, comes in a lot higher than you’d think — his 35 games played are the fewest of any (non-current) player in the top 75, and fifth-fewest of any player on the list. Remember that “peak season” category we mentioned? This is where someone like Hawkins gets a bump, and deservedly so – his statistical and intangible contribution to his lone Bluejay team set the stage for what was to follow.
Sobczyk is rolling out his rankings, along with player highlight reels that WBR has spent the summer compiling, over the next couple of weeks on his X account (@Jays_Classic). So far, he’s unveiled the top center and power forward, plus a sneak peek: