Thursday night in Indianapolis, two teams coming off frustrating losses collide at historic Hinkle Fieldhouse. Creighton, of course, has spent three days licking the wounds of a 70-65 loss at MSG to St. John’s in which their star, Doug McDermott, didn’t attempt a shot for the last eight minutes of the game. Butler, on the other hand, got their butts kicked at home two nights ago — the 64-50 final score in their loss to Xavier is not indicative of how the game went. The visiting Musketeers opened the second half on a 17-2 run and at one point had a 24-point lead, while Butler looked lost and without answers for the vast majority of the night.
Sunday night was certainly frustrating for the Jays, but it’s been a frustrating couple of months for Butler, a team that has won just twice in 2014. They got off to a 10-2 start in non-conference play, picking up a couple of nice wins against Vanderbilt and Purdue; they’re the exact opposite, 2-10, in conference play, leaving them at .500 for the year. Their two wins were an overtime victory over Marquette and a road win at Seton Hall. Sandwiched around those victories are ten losses, most of them not as ugly as the 88-60 loss in Omaha, but ten losses is ten losses. It’s a lot.
Through all of the defeats, the one constant for Butler this year has been that Kellen Dunham has contributed a ton of points to their offense (and taken a METRIC ton of shots). He’s one of the top scorers in the league, and while my initial reaction to seeing him earlier this year was to compare him to Colt Ryan of Evansville, I’m no longer in that camp. As CU fans know first hand, when Ryan gets hot, he’ll shoot with no remorse and make 50 or 60% of those shots, scoring 30 or 40 points. Upon further examination, Dunham is not that type of player, or at least, he hasn’t been in Big East play.
He’s attempted 330 shots, third most in the Big East, with only Doug McDermott and Bryce Cotton taking more. However, unlike McDermott or Cotton, who shoot a lot because they’re great scorers, Dunham is a player that scores a lot because he shoots a lot. Maybe that’s a terrible thing to infer, but his shooting percentage is very pedestrian — 38% on all shots, 36% on three pointers — so yes, he averages a team-high 16.8 points a game, but based on the huge number of shots he takes, he should arguably average even more, maybe a lot more. There’s only been two games all season where he’s attempted less than ten shots, and two where he had more than 20 attempts, yet he’s scored more than 30 points just twice (32 against Washington State, 30 against DePaul).
Starting with the first Creighton game in mid-January, Dunham has averaged 12.7 points in eight contests, going 33-96 from the floor (34.3%) and 15-50 from three-point range (30%), a prolonged slump that has seen him struggle to make shots against Big East defenses. The capper was the Xavier game on Tuesday, where Dunham was 1-10 from the field and scored two points. Being a good scorer and being a good shooter are two different things, and Dunham is the former.
Senior Khyle Marshall is their second offensive option, and has been a consistently efficient scorer, particularly in Big East play. The 6’6″ forward plays primarily in the paint, with 263 of his 270 field goal attempts coming inside the arc, and for good reason — he converts 54.4% of his shot attempts from two-point range, second best in the Big East. He averages 14.9 points and 4.9 rebounds a game, both steady increases over his previous output as the senior has embraced a larger role this year.
In the paint, 6’9″ forward/center Kameron Woods leads the Big East in both total rebounds (215) and rebounds per game (9.0), and combined with his average of 8.2 points per game, he’s a threat to put up a double-double every night. He grabbed ten rebounds in the first meeting with Creighton, but went 0-9 from the floor and was shut out in the scoring column. That’s indicative of his style — he’s a beast on the glass, and he scores his share of points, but he isn’t as aggressive at taking the ball to the rack as you’d expect for a 6’9″ player — too often he settles for jump shots rather than higher-percentage shots at the rim.
Erik Fromm (17-63), Elijah Brown (24-79) and Alex Barlow (24-65) are all capable of making shots from outside, with each presenting different problems. Fromm causes headaches because of his size — he’s 6’8″ and when a smaller defender switches onto him, he can hurt you. Brown, a 6’4″ freshman guard from Los Angeles, has started coming into his own the last two weeks, scoring in double figures in three of the last four games, including a team-high 14 points against Xavier.
It’s tempting to say that Butler is a team in a death spiral, sitting as they are in last place at 2-10 in the league and 48 hours removed from an embarrassing home loss. But Hinkle Fieldhouse is still a tough place for visitors to emerge victorious from, as the Bulldogs have won at least 10 home games in each of the past 18 seasons. They’ve had a winning home record for 23 straight years, and even with this year’s struggles, can clinch a 24th straight winning record at home with a win tonight. Since 2000-01, the first year that current head coach Brandon Miller played for Butler, the Bulldogs have won 85% (173-31) of their home contests. As good as Villanova is, they needed overtime to escape Hinkle with a win. So did Georgetown, and DePaul needed two overtimes to get out of Indy with a win.
Still, I think this game is more about what Creighton does (or doesn’t do) than about anything Butler does, because in virtually every respect, CU is just a much, much better team. Creighton beat Butler by 28 points in January and didn’t shoot all that well from three-point range — it tends to be overlooked because of the rout, but they were 7-19 from deep in that game.
My guess: Creighton shoots about average for them, Butler plays really well, and this is a two or three possession game until very late. The Hinkle factor shouldn’t be dismissed; the Bulldogs play much better at home, especially when the crowd is large and fired up, and with a ranked team in town, they likely will be both of those things. I can’t talk myself out of how this reminds me of the MVC, and not in a good way — remember how CU used to get other team’s best shot no matter how bad their season was going, how the crowd on the road would be 2-3 times what it was for other games, how if they didn’t bring their A game they’d lose an inexplicable game or two every year? Yeah. That’s what tonight feels like.
Catching Up with the Bulldogs: Butler’s last victory over a team ranked in the “Top 25” at Hinkle Fieldhouse came a year ago when the Bulldogs hosted #8 Gonzaga on ESPN’s College GameDay. Forward Roosevelt Jones (currently sidelined with injury) came up with a steal at mid-court in the closing seconds of the game and hit a short floater at the buzzer to give Butler a 64-63 win … Tuesday against Xavier, the Bulldogs hit just 18 of 53 (34%) shots in the game, including just seven of 25 (28%) attempts from beyond the three-point arc. It was Butler’s third coldest shooting night of the season, trailing the team’s 33.3% effort in an overtime loss to Georgetown and the 33.8% performance in an overtime loss to LSU … Butler’s loss to Xavier was second straight home setback for the Bulldogs and the fifth overall this season in Hinkle Fieldhouse, all to Big East foes.
One Big Paragraph with Lots O’Dots™: A win would be Creighton’s 100th in the last four years, most in school history for any four-year span. The current 99 wins in the last four years is tied with the 1999-2003 senior class headlined by Kyle Korver … Grant Gibbs had the first traditional (point-rebound) double-double of his career at St. John’s on Sunday when he had 12 points and 11 rebounds; he’d previously posted a point-assist double-double as a sophomore in 2011-12 when he had 12 points and 10 rebounds at Illinois State … With a win on Thursday, Creighton will reach 20 or more victories for the 15th time in the last 16 seasons, a feat that puts the Jays among an exclusive group, nationally as just five schools nationally entered this season with 20 or more wins each of the previous 15 years: Duke, Florida, Gonzaga, Kansas and Syracuse … Creighton has won 10 or more conference games in each of the last 17 seasons, a mark it can extend to 18 with a win on Thursday. On a national basis, the only other current school with at least 17 straight years of 10 or more league wins is Kansas (19 straight seasons, and 9-2 this year).
The RUN-DMD Show: Doug McDermott has been named Big East Player of the Week six times this season. The six honors are tied for most in one season in conference history, matching the six honors won by John Wallace from Syracuse in 1995-96 and later matched by Troy Murphy of Notre Dame in 1999-2000.
Interestingly, Sunday night against St. John’s was the first game in his career that he’s had more than one dunk in a game. The two dunks give him seven on the season and 17 in his career among his 1,011 career baskets.
Out of Context Ron Swanson Quote: “The key to burning an ex-wife effigy is to dip it in paraffin wax and then toss the flaming bottle of isopropyl alcohol from a safe distance. Do not stand too close when you light an ex-wife effigy.”
The Last Time They Played: Creighton scored on 14 straight possessions in the first half of its 88-60 rout of Butler on January 14th of this year. The 33-17 blitz turned a 12-7 game into a 45-24 rout nine minutes later. McDermott scored 13 points during the stretch, but they spread the wealth — Devin Brooks, Will Artino, Avery Dingman, Austin Chatman, Zach Hanson and Jahenns Manigat all scored during the run. Creighton relied on its bench for much of the second half, and finished the game with 36 bench points including nine from Brooks and eight each from big men Hanson and Geoffrey Groselle.
The Series: Creighton is 5-3 all-time vs. Butler in a series that dates to a 27-22 Bluejay win in 1933. Creighton has won all four meetings since 1974.
Greg McDermott is 1-2 in his career vs. Butler, with both losses coming when he was coach at UNI.
Gratuitous Linkage: ButlerHoops.com asked our own Patrick Marshall to do a Q&A with them prior to this game, and even by his lofty standards he did a tremendous job. Great answers to some fun questions.
This Date in Creighton Hoops History: On February 13, 2000, Creighton turned in an inspired defensive effort against Bradley to trip up the Braves 73-56 in front of 7,410 fans at the Civic. After three ties and 12 lead changes in a wild first half that saw CU lead 38-37 at the break, the Jays held Bradley to just six field goals in the second half (6-21), including an eleven minute scoreless streak to open the stanza. Kyle Korver led the Bluejays with 16 points and a career-high eight rebounds off the bench, nailing 4-of-7 three-pointers in a sign of things to come. Justin Haynes added 12 points on 4-of-5 shooting from the field, while Ben Walker scored 12 points and pulled down five rebounds and Ryan Sears scored 11 points and had four assists.
Completely Random, Totally Rad Music Video of the Day: Creighton ran into U2 frontman Bono at Teterboro Airport after Sunday night’s game, leading the great Rob Anderson to use a U2 theme in his media/game notes for tonight’s game. Of course, I have to put a U2 song here, right? Sadly, the great comic-book-animation video for this song isn’t on YouTube (at least, not the entire thing), so a live version will have to suffice. How is it not on YouTube? Everything’s on YouTube!
The Bottom Line: Close game for most of the night, with Creighton winning by 10.
Bluejays 76, Butler 66