Saturday afternoon inside the CHIHCO, Creighton will play one of the three biggest home games in the program’s storied, 103-year history. That’s not hyperbole: in all those years, the Bluejays have played just two previous games in Omaha with the conference title on the line against an opponent with the same stakes.
The most recent came in March of 2013, against Wichita State for the MVC regular season title. They got 41 points from Doug McDermott in what wound up being the program’s final MVC home game. It’s a signature moment in the career a singular superstar.
The 2008-09 team tied for the MVC title, and clinched it on the last day of the season with a 74-71 win over Illinois State in front of 17,116 rowdy fans. Only problem: Illinois State was the third place team that year. After winning, the Jays had to watch the Northern Iowa-Evansville game on TV to see if they would win the title outright, or share it.
Even in the Civic Auditorium Era, home games with stakes this high were few and far between. The 2001-02 team who shared the title clinched it despite losing to sixth-place Drake in a senior-less final home game of the season. The 2000-01 team defeated seventh-place Missouri State 72-48 in the final game of the season to clinch the title outright.
The 1990-91 team, which also won the outright title, clinched it on the season’s final day with a road win over seventh-place Wichita State. In 1988-89, they won the outright title by beating a Drake squad who finished fifth in an eight-team MVC 69-60 in Des Moines.
You’ve got to go all the way back to 1977-78 to find the next most recent game with these kind of stakes, either at home or on the road. They won the league by one game over Larry Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores, a team they swept during the regular season, and clinched the title with a road win over the team who tied for second with ISU — Southern Illinois. Back then, the champion got a bye into the the title game, while the other eight teams played off for the right to travel to the champions home gym to play for the title. So while everybody else played, the Jays sat…for eight long days. Can you imagine the build up to that?!?
The opponent wound up being Indiana State, and though they were one year away from the team that went 16-0 in the league and 33-1 overall — the only loss coming in the national title game to Michigan State — they were plenty formidable. On March 5, 1978, in front of a national TV audience on NBC — the first such audience in the history of the building — Creighton defeated Indiana State 54-52 on a last-second shot by Rick Apke. We wrote in depth about that game in a Bluejay Rewind feature a few years back and it gives me goosebumps just reading about the tension and the drama of that game.
Which brings us to Saturday. Seton Hall has already clinched at least a share of the title regardless of the outcome. Creighton can grab their share with a win. So, too, can Villanova if they beat Georgetown. But in a three-way tie where Creighton and Villanova both win, it’s the Jays who get the #1 seed in the Big East Tournament next week.
The stakes don’t get any higher than this in a regular season game. At 1:30 on Saturday afternoon, one of the biggest games in Creighton history happens in front of their home fans. Given that both teams are ranked inside the Top 15, and this is the Big East instead of the Missouri Valley, this might very well be THE biggest home game in Creighton histopry.
Pressure? You bet.
But what an opportunity.
“We need our ‘A’ game on Saturday,” Coach Greg McDermott said after Wednesday’s win on his postgame radio show. “And not just on the floor. We need people out of their seats for 40 minutes. We have an opportunity to play for a conference title, which is pretty, pretty cool. We need to pack this place. It needs to be electric.”
It will be over capacity — standing room only tickets go on sale first-come first-serve on Saturday morning at 10:00am. It will be electric. And if it’s anything like the previous two games with these type of stakes, it will be a memory to last a lifetime.
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Seton Hall was the preseason favorite in the Big East, and has spent the entire conference season in first place. Their 13 league wins are their most since 1992-93 when they won 14, and have come with a curious footnote: the Pirates finished Big East play 6-3 at home but are 7-1 on the road. By most statistical measures, they’ve been a better team away from their homecourt.
They average nearly five more points per game on the road than they do at home. The biggest reason: Myles Powell averages 27.1 points per game and shoots 46% on the road, while he scored just 16.1 points at home and shot 31.2% in those games. Those are massive, massive differences. What gives? Was Powell pressing at home and focused on the road? Or does he just get particular joy out of playing the role of the villain in visiting arenas across America? Regardless of the answer, if there’s a team in America less susceptible to homecourt advantage, its Seton Hall.
Powell is an All-American and First Team All Big East player for good reason, but his senior campaign has been strange. Overall in Big East play, he’s shooting just 39% and just 26% from three-point range. That’s a STEEP decline from where he was the last two years (44.7% and 36.3% a year ago, 43.3% and 37.9% two years ago). And if you take away the league’s non-NCAA Tournament teams from this year’s numbers (DePaul, St. John’s and Georgetown) he’s been even worse — 37.5% overall and 24.8% from three. Those are not Big East Player of the Year numbers if they weren’t attached to Powell’s name, but if Seton Hall wins on Saturday he’ll probably get it anyway.
With that said, the player who was so fantastic each of the last two years is still in that #13 jersey, and he’s been pretty damn good in the five games since these teams last met. Powell has averaged 20.5 points over that span, including 28 against Marquette and 27 against Providence. But his first taste of being defended by Ty-Shon Alexander did not go well — Powell scored 12 points on 3-of-16 shooting. He made just 1-of-11 from three point range. Alexander was in Powell’s face “on the catch” — meaning whether Powell caught the ball of of a screen or in transition, Alexander was already there when it happened, and Powell didn’t have even a split-second window where he was open. That’s crucial, because it doesn’t take much of an opening for Powell to consider it a good look.
Can Alexander repeat that performance? Or will Powell continue his trend through the first 17 Big East games of scoring, and shooting, much better on the road than he did at home? There’s obviously more than just Powell to lose sleep about when you think about playing Seton Hall, but if he’s in the neighborhood of his 12 point performance from the first meeting, Creighton’s odds of winning go up substantially.
One of those other Pirates to worry about? Powell’s fellow senior in the backcourt, Quincy McKnight. The Big East’s leader in assists at 6.6 per game, McKnight can dribble through ball screens as well as anyone in the league, and sets up his teammates extremely well. He can also score, as his 20 points on 7-of-14 shooting in the first meeting can attest. He’s averaged 16.7 points and 4.3 assists in his career against the Jays.
Sandro Mamukelashvili is of particular concern. The 6’11” big man played only 15 minutes in the first game, partially because of foul trouble and partially because Creighton’s so-called “Death Lineup” of five guards did to Mamu what it’s done to so many other bigs — make his size a liability against the speed, quickness and pace of the Jays’ smaller players. But when he was on the floor, Mamukelashvili was really good offensively. He made 6-of-8 in the paint and scored 13 points. He grabbed six rebounds, four of them offensive. In the last four games, Mamukelashvili has averaged 19.3 points and 68.2% shooting (30-of-44). If slowing down Powell is Job One, using their speed to make Mamukelashvili virtually unplayable is Job Two.
Remember, the “Death Lineup” scored a lethal 44 points on 32 possessions in the first meeting. The average length of possession when they were on the floor? A scalding 11.4 seconds. That lineup turned a five-point deficit into an eight-point lead with a 15-2 run in the first half, and closed out the win over the final minutes.
Seton Hall is bigger, but Creighton is faster, and making the most of that speed is critical. The Jays have to create transition attack opportunities as often as possible — diving for loose balls, rebounding missed shots, turning the Pirates over. It’s been the recipe for Bluejay wins all season long, and in the 31st, final and most important regular season game, it’s as important as it’s been all year.
- Tip: 1:30pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FOX
- Announcers: Kevin Kugler and Donny Marshall
- In Omaha: Cox channel 10 (SD), 1010 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 42 (SD), 1042 (HD); DirecTV 42; Dish Network 42 or 5203
- Outside Omaha: Nationwide on Your local FOX affiliate
- Streaming on FoxSportsGO
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Brody Deren
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters
- Romaro Gill leads the Big East, and is third in the country, with 3.2 blocks per game. He has 94 swats this year, and is one of 10 finalists for the 2020 Naismith Defensive Player of the Year award.
- Seton Hall is 9-7 this season when trailing at the half. They average 33.4 points and 40.3% shooting in the first halves of games, and 41.8 points and 48.8% shooting in the second halves. Between playing better on the road than at home, and better in the second half the the first, and coming from behind to win nine times, it’s fair to say Seton Hall performs better when their backs are against the wall.
- The Pirates are the only team in the league who controls their own destiny at this point. With a win, they clinch the Big East title outright and the #1 seed in the Big East tourney regardless of what anyone else does.
- Creighton has done a terrific job throughout conference play of defending without fouling…until the last week. St. John’s took 20 free throws last Sunday, the most of any opponent in Big East play. Then Georgetown topped it by taking 23 free throws on Wednesday. Seton Hall has the league’s highest free throw rate, and far more likely to make the Jays pay for fouling them than the Hoyas were able to.
- Creighton has won 21 regular-season conference titles in program history dating back to 1916-17 when the Jays were champs of both the Nebraska Collegiate Conference and the Western Athletic Conference (a fact that not even Rob Anderson, the man who’s forgotten more about Creighton hoops than anyone else in the world knows, can explain.) CU won four North Central Conference titles in a span of five seasons in the 1920s. And they won 15 MVC titles.
- If Creighton wins, they will be the ‘1’ seed in NYC and play the winner of a play-in game in the quarterfinals. If they lose and Georgetown beats Villanova (somehow), Creighton is the ‘2’ seed and plays the winner of the other play-in game. And if they lose and Villanova beats Georgetown (far more likely), the Jays fall to the ‘3’ seed and will play either Marquette or Butler in the quarters.
- Not-so-fun fact: in the five games played so far between Seton Hall, Villanova and Creighton, the road team has won all five.
Seton Hall leads the all-time series 14-7, and is 3-3 in Omaha. They beat the Jays 81-75 in Omaha a year ago. The most recent game was won by the Bluejays, 87-82, in New Jersey on February 12.
If you missed it, take a listen to WBR’s Bluejay Beat podcast recorded after Wednesday’s win — the Terrific Trio of Matt DeMarinis, Ravi Lulla and Jacob Padilla preview Saturday’s showdown.
On March 7, 2005, Creighton defeated Southwest Missouri State 75-57 to win the MVC Tournament — their fifth title in seven seasons — and clinch an auto-bid to the NCAA Tournament. In classic Dana Altman fashion, he had the team peaking as they entered St. Louis, and the win was the Jays’ eighth straight victory. Tournament MVP Johnny Mathies and freshman Dane Watts both scored 14 points in the game for the winning Bluejays.
Creighton jumped out to a 38-32 lead at halftime, and while SMS never took the lead, they did tie it 40-40 early in the second half. Nate Funk’s three-pointer gave the Jays back the lead, but they were unable to pull away until late, when they unleashed a game-ending 23-7 run. That run was sparked by a lay-up from Watts and three-pointers from Tyler McKinney and Jimmy Motz to give the Jays a 60-50 lead with 3:59 remaining. Motz made four treys in the game, and along with Funk, joined Mathies on the All-Tournament Team.
Here’s the thing. When you need a win, you get pumped up listening to Archie. It’s science.
A decade and a half before ESPN started using a remix of it on their pregame NFL coverage, Creighton Basketball was using the original to get crowds psyched prior to tipoff.
Who’s ready? WE READY.
The Bottom Line:
ESPN’s BPI says Creighton wins. KenPom says Creighton wins. Jon Nyatawa in the Omaha World-Herald says Creighton wins 84-80. The initial Vegas line says Creighton wins. So what the hell, WBR says Creighton wins too!
#11 Creighton 83, #8 Seton Hall 79