When Creighton added the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles to the non-conference slate, they probably figured they were getting a solid, if unspectacular, opponent to round out the schedule. ORU has consistently been a Top 150 team in the NCAA’s RPI rankings over the last five years, after all, and with a NCSOS that ranks among the best in the country (16th as of Thursday, according to KenPom, 31st according to the NCAA’s RPI), it was a good bet ORU would be able to maintain an RPI in the top-half of D1 again this year if they could manage to keep their head above water.
Alas, Scott Sutton’s club hasn’t been up to the challenge of that rough slate of games. They enter Saturday night’s game 0-9 against Division 1 opponents — yes, you read that correctly, zero wins. They’re unofficially 2-9, with wins over DII school Rogers State and an NAIA team named John Brown that don’t count towards their RPI, but if we’re being honest there’s no real difference between 0-9 or 2-9 with both wins coming against non-DI opponents.
Give them this: they’re not getting blown out night after night, like you might expect a winless team to have done. It’s damning praise, perhaps, but it’s worth noting. They lost 95-88 in OT to Ole Miss at the Paradise Jam two nights before Creighton dispatched with them and 80-76 to Michigan State in a true road game in East Lansing. They hung around until late in losses at Baylor (76-61), to Tulsa at home (79-65) and at Missouri State (86-76). Of course, they’ve also been flat-out smoked by teams of varying levels of greatness like Oklahoma (92-66), Loyola-Chicago (78-53), Oakland (92-64) and Montana (68-47).
In fact, the top end of their rotation is pretty solid. Kris Martin, a 6’6” sophomore forward, leads a group of four starters who average double-figures in scoring at 15.0 points per game. He went off Wednesday night in Springfield, scoring 35 points against Missouri State on 13-22 shooting — including 7-14 from three-point range, and is now shooting 49% for the season from long range (31-63).
6’9”, 260-pound center Albert Owens is second on the team in both scoring (13.7 points per game) and rebounding (5.1). The junior is their leading returning scorer, rebounder, free throw shooter and shot blocker from 2015-16, and has picked up where he left off. Impressively, especially given their schedule, Owens has defended the post relatively well without fouling — he averages just over two fouls per game.
Norfolk, Nebraska native Jalen Bradley averages 12.7 points and 4.7 assists per game, and has a nearly 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio while playing almost 34 minutes per game (and almost 87% of the team’s total minutes so far this year, making him among the most-heavily used players in the country). The 6’1” senior does a nice job of getting into the lane, with nearly 70% of his shot attempts coming inside the arc, where he shoots 38%. Bradley also contributes 2.9 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game. He doesn’t get to the line a ton, but when he does it’s automatic — Bradley is 25-28 (89%) for the year.
Their fourth player scoring in double figures is 6’8”, 230-pound freshman Emmanuel Nzekwesi, who averages 11.5 points and a team-best 8.5 boards a game. He had a double-double at Michigan State, scoring 21 points with 13 rebounds and was a big reason Oral Roberts out-rebounded the Spartans in East Lansing (and damn near pulled the massive upset).
Trouble is, they don’t have much consistency beyond those four, and they ride them all hard — Martin, Owens, Bradley and Nzekwesi all play over 30 minutes per game. In fact, their bench plays just 26.1% of their total minutes, ranking 315th in D1. That could very well be why they seem to fade late in games; Wednesday night against Missouri State, it was a one-point game with 6:23 to play before the Bears put together a 12-2 run to close the game and win by 10. In the Paradise Jam, ORU led by five with a minute left against Ole Miss, but the Rebels came back to tie it and force OT, where they scored the first five points to grab control. Against Tulsa, ORU had a 53-50 lead midway through the second half, but were on the wrong side of a 16-0 run that was the difference in the game.
Among the players on their extremely short bench is Darian Harris, a 6’6” junior whose name might sound familiar — he began his career at Creighton, where he was part of the “Triple H” freshman class along with Zach Hanson and Toby Hegner. Harris redshirted during the 2013-14 season at CU, and was 0-1 from the field with one rebound in three minutes of action in his only game as a Bluejay, their 89-61 exhibition win over Northern State. Harris has had a solid, if unspectacular, career with Oral Roberts, logging 124 points and 110 rebounds in 64 career games. He’s averaged 1.6 points, 1.4 rebounds, and 1.3 assists per game in 12.7 minutes of action so far this year.
Oral Roberts has forced quality opponents to play a full 40 minutes to beat them several times this year — Michigan State, Baylor, and Ole Miss to name three — so don’t be surprised if this is a closer game than the records indicate it should be. Barring something crazy, Creighton will almost certainly win, but I doubt it will be the kind of win where the end of the bench gets a ton of playing time.
Quick Notes on the Golden Eagles:
- Sophomore Kris Martin has been on a tear the past four games, averaging better than 21 points per game over that span. After a career high 35 points against Missouri State which included seven 3-pointers, Martin is now 16th nationally in 3-pointers made, despite missing the first two games of the year.
- Oral Roberts head coach Scott Sutton owns a 322-235 record in his 18th year with the Golden Eagles, and is the son of former Creighton head coach Eddie Sutton. Eddie, of course, got his first Division I head coaching job at Creighton and posted an 82-50 record from 1969-74. He took Creighton to the 1974 NCAA Tournament, where it lost to #14 Kansas 55-54 before rallying to beat #16 Louisville 80-71 in a consolation contest played at — ironically enough — Oral Roberts’ Mabee Center. After leaving CU, he became the first coach to lead four schools to the NCAA Tournament (along with Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma State). Scott Sutton was born June 3, 1970 in Omaha. His brother Sean is an assistant on the Golden Eagle bench. The Sutton family will be recognized by Creighton in a pregame ceremony before Saturday’s game.
- Fun fact: Founded in 1963 by evangelist Oral Roberts, ORU is a 400-acre campus located in South Tulsa. ORU boasts a total enrollment of over 5,000 students from all 50 states and more than 30 foreign countries. “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening briefly attended ORU, and subsequently, many of the characters on the show are modeled after former ORU students and staff members. In fact, if you look closely over Ned Flanders’ replace, his college diploma reads “Oral Roberts University.”
Bluejay Bytes:
- Creighton has scored 916 points through 10 games, to rank fifth nationally with 91.6 points per contest. The 916 points are 50 more points than Creighton has EVER scored in its first 10 games of any season — the 1965-66 team is next with 866 points through 10 games, followed closely by 2011-12 (860), 1964-65 (855) and 2015-16 (855).
- In CU’s last three games, Creighton led wire-to-wire against Akron, and trailed only 2-0 against both Nebraska (before a 14-0 run) and Longwood (before an 11-0 run). On the season, Creighton has trailed for just 49:40 of 400 possible minutes of action, a figure that ranks fourth-lowest nationally among remaining unbeaten teams.
- Creighton opened up a 62-25 halftime lead over Longwood last Friday, the program’s largest lead at intermission since a 56-19 lead over IUPUI on November 25, 2002 in a game played in Kansas City. Interestingly, Longwood is one of just two schools that Creighton has had multiple halftime leads of more than 25 points against since 1990-91. The other? Nebraska.
The Series:
Creighton and Oral Roberts have played ten times previously, with the Bluejays leading the series 6-4, including a 4-1 edge in games played in Omaha.
Greg McDermott has never coached against Oral Roberts; Scott Sutton is 0-2 in two all-time meetings with Creighton. Of note, he’s 15-15 in his career against the current members of The Summit League, which includes a 4-0 mark since coming to Creighton. Ten of the losses came when he was coaching at Division II Wayne State.
The Last Time They Played:
The Bluejays and Golden Eagles met twice in nine months back in 2008, as they were matched up in the 2008 BracketBusters event, followed by the rematch the next fall.
The BracketBusters meeting is by far the more memorable of the two, and was decided in the final seconds. Booker Woodfox hit a three-pointer with 26.5 seconds left to give the Jays a one-point lead, and then CU made a defensive stand to get the win. There’s a decade-old video clip of it on YouTube in terrible (distorted) resolution, but it does have audio of T. Scott Marr’s game-winning call going for it, and, you know, Booker Woodfox:
The return game had comparably little drama. ORU had a 35-33 halftime lead, but Creighton erased it with a 20-6 run over the first four-and-a-half minutes of the second half, then ran away for an 87-65 win. Cavel Witter led the way with 25 points in 28 minutes off the bench, going 6-9 overall and 4-5 from three-point range, while Casey Harriman had 10 points and six boards, also off the bench.
Gratuitous Linkage:
Another generation of Suttons is continuing the family’s basketball lineage, as Spencer Sutton — the son of ORU assistant coach Sean Sutton, nephew of head coach Scott, and grandson of Eddie — signed with the Golden Eagles in the spring and is redshirting this year. A story in the Tulsa World following his signing has a lot of interesting stuff in it, and this story in particular:
“Spencer Sutton’s famous grandfather is credited for altering his once terrible jump shot, likely changing his basketball trajectory and led to him developing into a viable college recruit.
As the story goes, Eddie Sutton took Spencer, who was in middle school at the time, outside to the driveway one day to correct an unorthodox two-hand shot that produced far more misses than makes.
The technical change worked. Sutton’s improved shot eventually put him on the path to becoming a Division I basketball player.”
This Date in Creighton Hoops History:
On December 17, 2007, Creighton defeated Houston Baptist 110-73. The Jays’ 110 points were the CenturyLink Center record for most points scored in regulation until last Friday, when they hung 113 on Longwood. The overall arena record of 111 points, from later in the 07-08 season when they beat Bradley 111-110 in double overtime, also fell Friday. Lots of records were set in the win over HBU: margin of victory (37), points in a game (110), points in a half (61), combined points for two teams (183), most field goals made (38), and assists (25-tied).
The Bluejays made 14 three-pointers, with Kaleb Korver, Cavel Witter, and Booker Woodfox making three apiece and eight players connecting at least once. They seized control of the game early in the second half; leading 49-37 at the break, they had a 10-0 run to open the second to go up 59-37, and shortly thereafter ran off a 12-1 run to take a 77-42 edge as Kenny Lawson led the way; the freshman center had 15 points and 8 boards in the biggest game of his young career.
Completely Random, Totally Rad Music Video of the Day:
The Bottom Line:
Both teams have made a habit of being involved in games where a giant second-half run decides things, on extreme opposite ends of the spectrum. Saturday night continues that trend as Oral Roberts keeps things close through the first half before the Bluejays bury them in the second.
Bluejays 89, Golden Eagles 64