It’s finally here, the BracketBusters matchup that many fans — myself included — took umbrage with last month when the games were announced. While it was en vogue to take shots at ESPN for giving sub-par games to Valley schools back in January, in the case of Creighton, it’s funny how three straight losses in February changes your outlook. Suddenly, this game with Long Beach State has importance to more than just the 49ers.
At 22-5, Creighton has remained a “lock” in every mock NCAA bracket I’ve seen, even after their three losses this month. The mock process that the NCAA themselves holds for media members had them as a lock, as well, though they slotted them at #36 on the S-Curve and gave them the last #9 seed in the field. That means while they’re still in, there isn’t very much wiggle room. A win over another Top 50 RPI team would be nice, which is why playing Long Beach State — number 45 in the RPI — suddenly doesn’t look too bad.
The 49ers are coached by Dan Monson, the architect of Gonzaga’s emergence as a national power back in the late 90s. He left Spokane to take the job at Minnesota following the Bulldogs’ 1999 Elite Eight run, but Monson’s fingerprints remain all over the Zags program. His successor, Mark Few, has continued to be willing to take games against top opponents anywhere they can get them, doing what he can to balance out their weaker conference slate with brutal stretches of games in November and December. To no one’s surprise, when Monson took the job prior to the 2007-08 season, he dusted off his blueprint for making Gonzaga a household name.
His first two years at the school were spent recruiting talent into a moribund program, and he’s spent the last two ratcheting up their schedule. Two consecutive losses in the Big West Tournament championship game — both to UC-Santa Barbara — left them on the outside looking in come NCAA tourney time. That convinced Monson to go even further, and construct the Godzilla of non-conference schedules to make sure his team had a chance for an at-large berth if they lost in the conference tourney again.
They’ve played the toughest non-conference schedule in the nation this year, earning wins against Pittsburgh, Xavier and Auburn, along with losses away from home against San Diego State, Kansas, Louisville, North Carolina and Kansas State. That’s an absurd slate, and if Pitt and Xavier weren’t having down years relative to their recent successes, it would have been even more ridiculous. The schedule has buoyed their RPI and kept it afloat in the mid-40s, despite playing a series of RPI-anchor games in the Big West — six of the league’s nine teams have RPI’s higher than 200, and other than Long Beach State, no other team has an RPI in the Top 100. Only four teams in the league have a winning record. It’s an astonishingly bad league, ranked 22nd out of 31 leagues by RealTimeRPI.
Just as he did with Gonzaga in the (at the time) terrible West Coast Conference, Monson has recruited great players with the promise of big-time games out of conference. They’re led by three fifth-year seniors, all of whom play with the hunger that comes from losing the conference championship game two straight years and knowing this is their last grasp at an NCAA Tournament berth.
Casper Ware, their 5’10” guard, is a quick, athletic player that creates his own shot as well as any player Creighton has played this year. He uses that ability to create a shot to take an amazing number of them — while he averages 17.1 points a game, he’s attempted 338 field goals this season, with 186 of them from behind the arc. That’s nearly 100 more shots than Antoine Young, by comparison. Ethan Wragge has attempted the most three-pointers for Creighton this year with 117, also not close to the barrage of threes that Ware has attempted. Luckily for opponents, he shoots “just” 39% from the floor and 34% from behind the arc, or he’d be averaging 25 points a night given the number of times he shoots.
Fellow senior Larry Anderson also likes to shoot, averaging 14.9 points a game. The 6’5″ guard creates matchup problems with his size, which is probably a big reason why he’s nearly as productive as Ware with around 60% of the shot attempts Ware takes. He converts on 50.1% of his shot attempts from the field (115-226) and 44.1% from three-point range (41-93). Anderson could pose trouble for the Jays, who’ve struggled to defend athletic wing players all year long. Their two ghastliest losses, to St. Joseph’s and Wichita State, were at least partially attributable to uber-athletic wing players dominating them. They’ll need to keep him from getting hot early.
The third senior is T.J. Robinson, a 6’8″, 205 pound forward who is the biggest player in Long Beach State’s rotation. Don’t let his small(er) frame fool you, though. He averages 12.3 points and 10.3 rebounds a game, the third consecutive season he’s averaged a double-double. His numbers are inflated a little bit by the Big West schedule, but he’s proven he can more than hold his own against top competition. Robinson had 19 points and 7 rebounds against Kansas, 8 points and 13 rebounds against San Diego State, 12 and 12 against North Carolina, 8 and 8 against Kansas State, and 11 and 8 against Pitt.
They’re a high-scoring team, averaging 74.1 points a game while shooting 47% from the field and 36% from three-point range. If they have an achilles heel offensively it’s at the free throw line, where they shoot just 66.1%. Starting power forward Eugene Phelps shoots — this is not a typo — 46.2% from the line, making just 55 of 119 attempts, and he’s not even the worst of their regular rotation players. Yikes.
Some Creighton followers have compared LBSU to Wichita State, but that’s not really an apt description. While LBSU certainly has the athletic wing players that the Shockers do, they don’t have anyone as big as Garrett Stutz to patrol the paint. However, it’s not the paint that Jays fans are concerned about; Gregory Echenique is as good or better than any post player on their schedule and can dominate that area. It’s the wings, particularly defensively, that are a concern. If Casper Ware and Larry Anderson are allowed to slash to the rim and create shots for themselves, the Jays are going to need to shoot like they did in Carbondale on Tuesday night to compete. If they can hold those two down to around their averages, while shooting around their season average themselves, Creighton will be fine and should win in a close, hard-fought shootout.
Your guess is as good as mine as to which of those scenarios plays out.
About the 49ers: Since the start of the 2004-05 season, Long Beach State has lost all 12 games it has played before 10,000 or more fans … Tonight’s BracketBusters game is the third in four years where the 49ers have been paired with another team for a nationally televised game. In 2009 the 49ers lost to Green Bay 86-75, while last season the 49ers handed Montana a 74-56 loss on ESPN2 … The 49ers are looking for their first back-to-back 20-win seasons since 1972-73 and 1973-74; however, they’ve never won 20 games under the same coach in back-to-back seasons. The 72-73 team was coached by Jerry Tarkanian, and the 73-74 squad was led by Lute Olson … Casper Ware dished out two assists against UC Davis on February 11 to run his career total to 509 assists, which passed Billy Walker (1984-88) for the school record … Ware has also scored the fourth most points in school history, with 1,678 career points. He needs to score 81 more to pass Ed Ratleff (1970-73) for third all-time, and leads teammate T.J. Robinson by 60 points heading into the Creighton game.
One Big Paragraph with Lots O’Dots™: Greg McDermott is 7-1 in his career in games associated with the BracketBuster series. McDermott is 4-1 in the original BracketBuster game, and is a perfect 3-0 in the return trips … On Tuesday Creighton missed its first shot and its last shot, but just seven others in between to set an MVC record by making 77.5% from the field (31-40) — beating their own school record set earlier this season against Campbell when they made 70.4% from the field … Creighton is 32-17 in its last 49 games on ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU, and is 30-9 when scoring 62 points or more, but just 2-8 when scoring 61 points or less … Both Ethan Wragge and Jahenns Manigat made five three-pointers on Tuesday, marking just the fourth time in school history that more than one player has made five or more triples in a game. It first happened on Feb. 21, 1989 when Matt Roggenburk and Todd Eisner did it vs. Montana State, and it’s also happened on Feb. 26, 2000 vs. Wichita State (Ryan Sears, Kyle Korver), and Feb. 19, 2005 vs. Chattanooga (Kellen Miliner, Nate Funk) in a BracketBusters contest.
The RUN-DMD Show: Doug McDermott’s averages of 22.7 points and 8.1 rebounds per game, combined with his shooting percentages of 61.3% overall, 50% from three-point range and 82.9% from the line make him the only player in the nation since 2000-01 to average more than 20 points per game while shooting 50 percent from three-point range, regardless of the number of attempts … This season, McDermott has 613 points, passing Rodney Buford (581 points in 1996-97) for most points in school history by a sophomore. McDermott’s 1,194 points to date are just one behind Bob Portman (1,195) for most in school history by a player in their first two seasons … He enters this weekend with 613 points, making him just the 10th different player in Bluejay history with a season of 600 points or more … He’s also just the ninth sophomore in MVC history to reach 600 points in a season, a list that includes Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird and Hersey Hawkins, among others, and currently is seventh on that list.
The Last Time They Played: #5 Long Beach State defeated Creighton 68-51 on January 20, 1973.
The Series: Creighton is 3-1 all-time against Long Beach State, including a 2-0 mark in Omaha. Greg McDermott has never faced Long Beach State or Dan Monson, while Monson has never faced Creighton. McDermott owns a 2-0 career record against teams from the Big West Conference, with wins over UC Davis and UC Riverside.
Gratuitous Linkage: Earlier this week, ESPN’s Myron Medcalf published an excellent profile of Dan Monson and the job he’s done rebuilding a downtrodden LBSU program.
This Date in Creighton Hoops History: On February 18, 1991, Chad Gallagher made 15 of 18 attempts en route to 32 points in a rout of Notre Dame, 90-67. The 23-point defeat was, at the time, the Irish’s worst defeat ever at home to a team other than UCLA.
Completely Random, Totally Rad Music Video of the Day: Since the Rocky video worked so well on Tuesday, let’s keep the good times rollin’. No, I’m not superstitious at all…
The Bottom Line: Tonight is going to be a high-scoring shootout, and I think the Jays will prevail late.
Creighton 81, Long Beach State 77
