On the heels of an amazing week that saw them take down #10 Seton Hall on the road and blow out DePaul at home, Creighton has catapulted all the way to #15 in the latest AP Top 25 poll. It’s their highest ranking since the week of January 16, 2017 when they were #7, and the highest ranking they’ve had in the month of February since 2014 when they rose to #9 the week of February 24.
Their strength of schedule is 11th. Their NET is 13. They’re 15th in both the AP and the Coaches’ Poll. KenPom ranks them 18th. KPI has them at 14. Vegas oddsmakers now have them at 40-1 odds to win the national championship, 16th best in the nation. In other words, by pretty much any ranking — human, computer, oddsmaker — the Jays are a Top 20 team. Their standing in BracketMatrix reflects as much. They’re the third 4-seed, with an average seed of 4.05 in the 78 brackets they track.
Owning the nation’s best offense since January 1, according to Bart Torvik’s data, the Jays have won seven of their last eight games. During that span, they’ve scored 1.11 points per possession or more in all seven wins. They’ve made 10 or more three-pointers in five of them. In the last three, they scored 94 points vs. St. John’s, 87 points at Seton Hall and 93 vs. DePaul — in each case, that was at least seven more points than the previous high allowed by that opponent this season. They’ve scored 90 or more points three times in Big East play this season, and no other team has done it even once.
And now they take their show on the road to Milwaukee to face the Big East’s second-hottest team, #19 Marquette. Creighton scored 92 points in the first meeting vs. Marquette, the most points allowed all season by the Golden Eagles.
“We’re in a league that takes no prisoners. Marquette’s place will be jumping on Tuesday,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio interview after Saturday’s win. “We beat them handily here on New Years Day and it’s been a long time since we played them. With some of these preps, you’re kind of familiar but Marquette seems like years ago. So we’re going to have to get our guys locked in.”
The Golden Eagles have won six of their last eight games to move into the Top 20 themselves. Markus Howard continues to be a scoring machine, leading the nation in scoring with 27.3 points per game and ranking fourth in D1 with 94 three-pointers made. He hung 39 on Providence, 35 on Xavier, 42 on Georgetown, and 31 on DePaul. The outlier on his game log in Big East play is the first meeting with the Bluejays, as Howard had “only” 18 points. He’s had just one game with fewer made threes than the two he had in Omaha; Howard was 1-of-5 from three-point range in a win at Xavier two weeks ago. He’s had just one game with fewer than the four made free throws he had in Omaha, too; he was 3-of-6 in their loss at Villanova last week. For that matter, the four free throw attempts he had in that game are the second-fewest in any game this year, conference or non-conference, and he only had three games all of last season with fewer than four free throw attempts, too.
Not only did Creighton do a superb job defending him, they did it without fouling. Not everyone agreed with that assessment, though, as you might recall.
That will be hard to repeat, for lots of reasons. Howard likes to use his legs to initiate contact with defenders and draw offensive fouls, which short-circuits the kind of defense CU played on him in Omaha if it’s being called. Howard has attempted an average of 7.9 free throws in 13 home games and 6.5 in road games — not a huge discrepancy, but it is indicative of a larger trend in that the games where he attempts double-digit free throws are almost always at Fiserv Forum. He was 10-of-11 against DePaul at home, 12-of-13 against St. John’s at home, and 12-of-12 against Villanova at home, for example. PaintTouches wonders:
Beyond his ability to draw fouls — he draws 6.9 fouls per 40 minutes — Howard simply takes an awful lot of shots, which means he has an awful lot of chances to score, and anyone defending him is going to be exhausted when the game ends. When he’s on the floor, 41.7% of Marquette’s total shots are taken by Howard. That’s the most of any player in Division 1 — no one else is north of 40%. And when he’s on the floor, 37.9% of Marquette’s possessions end with Howard doing *something* (making a shot, missing a shot that isn’t rebounded by the offense, or committing a turnover). That’s the 2nd highest usage rate in D1.
Sacar Anim has been a pretty solid second banana offensively, averaging 13.1 points per game while shooting 41.7% from three-point range (which is better than Howard’s 39.7%) and 43.4% overall (also better than Howard’s 41.2%). His effective field goal percentage (51.2%) is nearly identical to Howard (51.7%). They’re a pretty damn good one-two punch, and they’ve combined to take 50.2% of Marquette’s total shot attempts. He scored 18 in the first meeting, but is mired in a bit of a slump at the moment; since scoring 28 in a win over Xavier on January 29, Anim has scored a total of 26 in the next three games combined. CU knows first-hand what he can do, though. He made 7-of-12 shots in the first meeting and scored 18 points.
Koby McEwen has been their third scoring option, averaging 10.7 points per game largely on his ability to draw fouls and make nearly every single free throw he takes. McEwen is 89-of-106 at the line (84.0%) this year. After a slow start, he’s come on strong in the last month, scoring in double-figures in each of the last six games. He was coming off a thumb injury when these teams first met, and he was held scoreless in Omaha on just two shots. He was in foul trouble most of the night and played only 18 minutes. That probably won’t happen again.
6’8″ sophomore Brendan Bailey has shown flashes of really good play, and has brought his scoring average up to 7.8 points per game. He’s made 40 three-pointers (40-for-101, 39.6%), tied for second most on the team with Anim. But he’s almost exclusively a jump-shooter, with 87% of his total shot attempts coming away from the rim. As such he’s been streaky (four games with five or fewer points in Big East play; four games with 14 or more points), and his free throw attempts have been almost non-existent (16 attempts in 24 games). One of the “hot” games came in Omaha, as Bailey scored 18 on 4-of-10 shooting from three-point range.
One of the big storylines after the first meeting was CU’s gameplan of making 6’9″ Theo John run in transition with them and defend the perimeter in the halfcourt. He averages just over two blocks per game and is one of their most important defensive pieces, and yet played only eight minutes in Omaha because he could not keep up with their style of play. At the time, it seemed pretty surprising that an opposing coach would essentially bench his starting center. In the six weeks since then, we’ve seen it happen time after time, as opposing Big East teams discover that whatever advantage they gain in the paint from their height is negated by those players’ inability to run fast enough to keep up with the Bluejays relentlessness in transition. Sometimes, as DePaul saw on Saturday night, being the bigger team is actually a disadvantage. John has started all 24 games so far, but one of the big questions for Tuesday night is whether Marquette will go small from the start in the rematch — or whether they’ll be able to come up with a scheme to keep his rim protection on the floor. They don’t really play zone, at least not well. They don’t run their offense through their big men, which makes it difficult to really exploit Creighton’s size. So can they figure out a way to keep John on the floor?
There’s a lot of reasons to think Marquette will win Tuesday night: Holding Markus Howard down twice seems like a big ask, and winning anywhere on the road is tough and even moreso at a Top 20 team with a true homecourt advantage. The fact that Marquette is just as hot as the Jays over the last month only adds to the anxiety level for Jays fans.
On the other hand, the mismatches that Creighton exploited in their win in Omaha have only become more pronounced and more lethal in the six weeks since. If they’re able to get out in transition, and if they hit shots at the rate they have during their current hot streak, I wouldn’t bet against them.
For those reasons, if they hold Howard to under 30 points, the Jays probably win.
- Tip: 7:30pm
- Venue: Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, WI
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Brandon Gaudin and Stephen Bardo
- 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 Ross Ferrarini
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters:
- Markus Howard became the all-time leading scorer in league games in the 40-year history of the Big East last week against Villanova. Howard’s 3-pointer as time expired allowed him to pass Lawrence Moten (Syracuse, 1991-95), who finished his standout career with 1,405 points. Howard, who entered the game in third place, also passed Troy Bell (Boston College, 1999-2003) in the first half of the same game.
- Howard has been named Big East Player of the Week 12 times in his career, besting the previous record of 11 career honors by both Troy Murphy (Notre Dame) and Kerry Kittles (Villanova).
- Forward Jamal Cain made a big impact off the bench in last week’s game at Villanova, finishing with 13 points and eight rebounds in 23 minutes of action and shot 4-of-8 from the floor overall and 3-of-4 from behind the 3-point line.
- Ty-Shon Alexander has scored in double-figures in each of the past 10 games, and made multiple three-pointers in nine of those 10 contests. Since CU’s Jan. 11 win at Xavier, Alexander has averaged 18.1 points per game while shooting 28-of-69 from three-point range (40.6%). He also owns an 28/8 assist/turnover ratio and has 15 steals in that time while playing an average of 36.0 minutes per game. Creighton is 8-2 in this stretch.
- Denzel Mahoney went 7-for-8 at the charity stripe vs. Providence on Jan. 18, missing his seventh attempt of the game. He’s missed just once since. Mahoney’s streak of 21 straight made free throws was snapped on Saturday vs. DePaul when he missed his first try. It was Creighton’s longest streak since Isaiah Zierden made 26 in a row in the spring of 2017, but not even halfway to Doug McDermott’s record of 45 in a row from 2013-14. For the season, Mahoney is 57-of-69 (82.6%) from the charity stripe overall.
- In Big East play this season, Creighton leads the league in points (1,009), points per game (77.62), three-point percentage (.383), scoring margin (+6.23), field goals made (352), field goal percentage (.469), assists (206) and assists per game (15.85). Meanwhile, Marquette tops the league with 122 three-pointers and 10.17 three-pointers per game and also boasts the nation’s leading scorer in all games, Markus Howard (27.3 ppg.).
Marquette leads the series with Creighton by a 55-34 margin, and are 32-13 at home against the Jays. Marquette leads the series 7-6 since the teams became Big East rivals, but the Bluejays have won each of the past two encounters. A win on Tuesday would give Creighton three straight wins over Marquette for the first time since 1934-36.
This will be the first meeting where both teams are ranked since March of 1975, when #13 Creighton lost at home to #5 Marquette 64-60.
Ty-Shon Alexander talked to the media on Monday, and in a story WOWT ran, he called Shereef Mitchell “like that one fly in the house that you really can’t kill.” An amazing quote.
Later in that same media session, Alexander was asked if he gets as much of a kick out of locking down an opponent as he does from a breakaway dunk. His answer is below.
USA Today ran a feature on Markus Howard’s lack of buzz for National Player of the Year, with a lot of quotes from the Marquette staff annoyed (rightfully so) about that fact. The final line in the piece is very true.
“Take a good look at Howard, and don’t take players like him for granted. He’s going to live on in the record books for a long, long time.”
On February 18, 2012, Creighton beat Long Beach State 81-79 in a late-night BracketBuster game. Relive highlights from the entire crazy game below; here’s an excerpt from our postgame recap:
Saturday night, Antoine Young got his chance for a signature moment, and he turned it into one of the most memorable shots in the history of Creighton basketball. In front a rowdy, rambunctious crowd and a national television audience, against an incredibly talented opponent who had led virtually the entire game and turned away Bluejay rallies time after time, Young drove the lane as he’s done hundreds of times before, making the same slightly-off-balance shot he’s made hundreds of times before, to finally give his team a lead just as the game clock read all zeroes. Creighton students rushed the court, lifting Young up on their shoulders as the conquering hero, and who could blame them?
In his second-to-last home game, the player who’s been a Bluejay since his 16th birthday when he became the youngest commit in school history finally had his moment.
Long after the records for assists and games played that he’s setting at the twilight of his collegiate career are broken by a new generation of great Bluejays, his shot just after 11PM on a Saturday in February of 2012 will be remembered.
“It’s just something that I was taught growing up. You live for moments like that,” Young said on the AM590 postgame show. “There’s players that either want to take that shot or don’t want to take that shot, and I want to take the shot. I feel like I’m confident enough that if I can get the last shot of a game, I can make it at anytime on anyone. So I just went out there relaxed, and knew I was going to make a play.”
The Bottom Line:
Someone on the Bluejay Underground wrote, “My heart tells me Creighton finds a way, but my head tells me yet another road win against a top opponent with an elite offense is a bridge too far.”
It’s so true, too. Winning at Villanova and at Seton Hall is improbable; making it a trifecta by winning at Marquette seems impossible. But if there’s one thing this Creighton team has taught me, it’s that nothing is impossible.
#15 Creighton 82, #19 Marquette 78
