Creighton will have had a full week off by the time they take the floor Sunday in Queens, a rare perk heading into March. Especially for a team riding its’ top players as hard as Creighton does, getting seven days off before the final week of the regular season could loom large. Like everyone this time of year, the Jays are a little bit bruised and battered, as the miles pile up.
Three of the top five players in minutes played in the Big East are Bluejays — Mitch Ballock is tops with 36.07 minutes per game, Ty-Shon Alexander is fourth at 34.75, and Marcus Zegarowski is fifth at 34.71.
Ballock broke his nose after the win at Marquette, had it reset, played without a mask against Butler, and promptly took a shot to the face that reinjured it. He played the second half against the Bulldogs with plugs in his nose to hold back the bleeding, and some fairly significant tape on his hand for a jammed finger.
Zegarowski sprained his ankle in the Marquette game and played the entire second half on one wheel; then he took a shot to the thigh while fighting through a screen in the Butler game and played the rest of that game despite noticeably hurting. Alexander took a shot to his neck in the Marquette game that knocked the wind out of him and robbed him of his voice for a couple of days. Just a normal February week in the rough-and-tumble Big East, to be sure.
The Jays’ ability to play their top guys such heavy minutes, and to avoid breaking down in the process, has been one of the unsung stories of the 2019-20 season. Ask the players how, and they give the same answer: Jeremy Anderson, the new Director of Performance for Men’s Basketball.
“Jeremy has made a huge difference. We were just talking about that (recently)” Zegarowski said on the postgame radio show after the first St. John’s game. “He comes on the road with us and that wasn’t the case before. The night before a game he has us come in and do any type of rehab that we need; he takes his massage table with him everywhere we go.”
Zegarowski specifically recalled a conversation at the team hotel in Providence.
“Mitch said to us, ‘I don’t think our record would be what it is without Jeremy.’ And we all nodded our heads and agreed. (Jeremy) was trying to be all humble and said, ‘No, no’ but deep down he knows it. I haven’t felt this good in awhile. I think everyone else can say the same thing.”
John Bishop and Nick Bahe asked Coach Greg McDermott on that same postgame show about it, the first time he’s really gone into much depth publicly about Anderson’s role. Noting that Anderson works in tandem with trainer Ben McNair, he said, “They work together unbelievably well to give you the temperature of where our team is at. They’ve communicated with me and said, here’s how much we think we should practice and here’s why. It’s been really really helpful. I trust them, the guys trust them, the guys are giving them accurate information and we’re adjusting our practice schedule accordingly.”
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During their time off, the Jays rose to #10 in the AP poll, and to a solid 3 seed in most bracketologists’ projections — with a pretty decent chance of moving up to the ‘2’ line. They’ll play three games in six days in an enormous final week of the regular season where three wins means a regular season Big East title. First up: the last “banana peel” game of the year, on the road at a St. John’s team that has lost six of seven and only has one win over a team not named DePaul since Christmas.
St. John’s is led in scoring by LJ Figueroa at 14.4 points per game. Figueroa can burn you from three-point range, as he’s 61-for-173 from deep this year (35.3%). But at 6’6″, 200 pounds, he’s athletic enough to put the ball on the floor and create shots inside the arc for himself too. Offensively, he’s their most versatile weapon. Defensively, he’s the catalyst for their press. He scored 12 points in the first game — but only took seven shots. Creighton would be thrilled to have a repeat of that.
Beyond Figueroa, the Red Storm look a bit different than they did when Creighton defeated them three weeks ago in Omaha, as second-leading scorer Mustapha Heron is now out for the season with an ankle injury and (although he didn’t play in Omaha) former Creighton commit Ian Steere has now been suspended indefinitely from the team.
Heron had been averaging 13.8 points per game, and in Omaha, scored 12 with four rebounds and two assists, making three 3-pointers. He totaled 35 points in two games against the Jays a year ago. CU devoted a lot of energy in their scouting report to keeping Heron from driving aggressively to the rim, and they can now spend that energy elsewhere.
6’8″ freshman Julian Champagnie had supplanted Heron in the starting lineup even before the injury, and had a solid game in the first meeting with nine points, eight rebounds and three assists. He’s scored in double figures in four straight games, and is now averaging 9.1 points and 6.4 rebounds a game for the year.
The story of the first meeting, on the St. John’s side, was Marcellus Earlington. The 6’6″ sophomore had the best game of his collegiate career by a landslide, notching career highs in points (25), made shots (10), shot attempts (17), three-pointers made (3), three-point shot attempts (4), rebounds (10) and offensive rebounds (6). He was 3-of-21 on three-pointers coming into that game, and was 3-of-4 that night. And sure enough, he’s reverted back to form after leaving Omaha; in the four games since, Earlington is just 3-for-10 on threes. Which version of Earlington shows up in the rematch could be a key, because with their best perimeter shooter in Heron out, getting three-point production from someone else will be imperative if the Red Storm hope to hang around.
St. John’s averages 10 steals a game, ripping away a steal on 13.5% of opponent’s possessions (fourth-best in D1). Most observers — including the Jays coaching staff — thought the Red Storm would press them a lot more than they did in the first game. That might have been because of the Jays’ success against the press when the Johnnies did employ it.
“We took care of the basketball. I really feel that when teams press, if you handle it right, you can use that pressure against them,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show after that game. “You can get easy opportunities. And we were able to get out in transition against some of their pressure, hit some threes, get to the rim, set our feet and spray it.”
Creighton’s guards did a terrific job of ball security regardless of how they were defended. St. John’s had only one steal, their lowest total of the season. And the Jays had just eight turnovers overall, also the lowest total for a St. John’s opponent this season.
CU saw it first hand in that game — while St. John’s defensive metrics look good, it’s deceptive. When the Red Storm don’t force a turnover, their defense is fairly pedestrian. They commit a lot of fouls and they don’t make opponents take tough shots. Creighton’s explosive shooting in that game was no accident. And it carries over to the other end, as well; St. John’s has an effective field goal percentage of 48.4% in transition (usually by running after a turnover) and just 43.8% in the half court.
On the downside, the Red Storm turned 18 offensive rebounds into 18 second-chance points, and scored 1.2 points per possession. CU won in Omaha largely because they were absurdly good offensively — 1.4 points per possession, 21 assists on 35 made baskets, their highest shooting percentage (60.3%) against a Big East school in three years. Assuming they shoot a bit worse on the road and turn it over a bit more, Creighton will need to rebound better to feel comfortable about coming out with a win.
- Tip: 11:00am
- Venue: Carnesecca Arena, Queens, NY
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Brian Custer, Len Elmore
- In Omaha: Cox channel 78 (SD), 1078 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 620 (SD), 1620 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: FS1 Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 219, Dish Network channel 150
- Streaming on FoxSportsGO
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters:
- 6’9″ sophomore Josh Roberts averages 5.2 points and 6.0 rebounds per game, and is fourth in the league with 1.6 blocks per game. His playing time was almost entirely erased because of Earlington’s huge game in Omaha — despite starting, Roberts played only seven minutes, scoring two points with two rebounds.
- Cleveland State transfer Rasheem Dunn scored six points with six assists and five rebounds (three offensive) in Omaha. He averages 12.6 points and 3.4 assists per game.
- St. John’s is looking to defeat a Top 10 team on campus (read: not in a home game at Madison Square Garden) for the first time since 1975.
- Sunday’s game is part of a single-admission doubleheader with the St. John’s women, who take on Xavier at 3:00pm central following the men’s game. It’s also a whiteout, and Mike Anderson Bobblehead Day.
- With a win, Creighton would have a six-game winning streak — their longest single-season streak since joining the Big East. It would also be their sixth road win in conference play, their most ever in the Big East and most overall since 2011-12 when they were 7-2 on the road in the MVC.
- Creighton returned to the top 10 of the Associated Press poll this week. It marks Creighton’s highest ranking since the week of January 16, 2017, when the Bluejays were a program-record seventh. Creighton has now been ranked in the top-10 on 11 different occasions — once each in 2003, 2014 and 2020, as well as eight consecutive weeks in the 2016-17 campaign.
- Creighton leads the Big East with 78.2 points per game, 47.1 percent shooting from the field and 38.5 percent from three-point range. In KenPom.com ratings through Wednesday night, Creighton had the nation’s fifth-best offense. If Creighton can remain in the top-10, it would be the fourth time in the last nine seasons that Creighton has had a top-10 offense per KenPom.
Creighton is 11-9 all-time against St. John’s, and 9-4 in the rivalry since joining the Big East.
In the last meeting, Creighton prevailed 94-82.
In case you missed it, WBR’s Matt DeMarinis wrote a tremendous feature on Marcus Zegarowski’s competitive edge. It’s full of great insights into his psyche, including this from Greg McDermott:
“He was always a winner,” McDermott said. “You can just tell by his demeanor that he hates to lose. That’s the way he’s wired, and that’s why he’s worked so hard to get where he is today.”
But I loved this portion at the end.
He is the reigning national player of the week. He’s playing the best basketball of his young career. His team is ranked in the top 10 and currently in prime position to earn a favorable seed in next month’s NCAA Tournament, and the local and national media has been fawning all over him and his teammates this week. Yet he’s still showing up to practice with that same look in his eye. That same edge. So when will he be satisfied?
“When we win everything,” he said.
What is everything?
“[When we] win it all. Everything.”
On March 1, 1991, Creighton beat Drake 70-59 in their first-ever MVC Tournament game in St. Louis. MVC Player of the Year Chad Gallagher was limited by the flu to just 14 points, and Bob Harstad scored just seven points after spraining his toe in the first half, the only time all season he failed to score in double-figures.
Duan Cole and Latrell Wrightsell were a more-than-capable Substitute Dynamic Duo. Cole scored 21 points, 17 of them in the first half when the outcome was still in doubt, and Wrightsell had a remarkable eight — yes, eight — steals to go along with eight points. Those steals keyed a 17-0 run to end the first half that effectively won the game for the Jays; they led 46-26 at the break and coasted to a 77-58 win.
The Bottom Line:
As long as Creighton doesn’t fold under St. John’s pressure — leading to easy transition buckets and riling up the home crowd — the Jays ought to come away with a win on Sunday. And if they do, it sets up an epic two-game homestand to close out the regular season.
Let’s go.
#10 Creighton 83, St. John’s 74