Two weeks ago, Providence began a stretch of five straight games against the top-ranked teams in the Big East. At Creighton. At Seton Hall. Villanova at home. At Butler. And then Creighton again. Sitting at 4-1 in the league and in second place, the Friars welcomed the opportunity to prove that start was no fluke — they stumbled through a 7-6 non-conference schedule that left them with the worst resume in the league, and looked forward to showing they were closer to the team picked fourth in the preseason poll than the team that struggled in November and December.
Things did not go so well. They lost the first three games of that stretch. Preseason All-Big East forward Alpha Diallo, who leads the team in points (12.8), rebounds (7.9), steals (1.7) and blocks (1.0) per game, went scoreless in the loss to Villanova and was benched for most the second half after jacking up two really poor shots. He lost his starting job in favor of Kalif Young against Butler, the first game he played in but did not start in over two years. Though he played 25 minutes off the bench, he scored just three points and took just five shots. He grabbed just four rebounds.
What’s going on with Diallo? Is it simply a slump, or something more? It’s a mystery, but anytime your preseason all-league player gets benched in February, it’s not good news.
“If we’re going to be the team we want to be, Alpha has to become a better player, better leader,” Ed Cooley said this week when asked about Diallo. “I have to become a better coach, better leader. And the seniors have to do their job.”
Diallo has posed problems for CU in the past. He scored 31 points with 22 rebounds, and had 23 free throw attempts in two games against the Jays a year ago. But the first meeting was the start of his current slide — he scored eight points on 3-of-13 shooting in Omaha with just four rebounds in 35 minutes.
6’7″ senior Emmitt Holt (5.9 points, 4.5 rebounds per game) played just four minutes in the first meeting while nursing an ankle injury; he sat out the next game against Seton Hall, was ineffective against Villanova and played just three minutes against Butler. Even if Diallo continues his strangely enigmatic ways of late and Holt plays sparingly (if at all), the Friars still have plenty of size to throw at the Jays. 6’9″ Kalif Young, who started in place of Diallo against Butler, had six offensive rebounds in the game in Omaha (and 10 boards overall). 6’10”, 250-pound behemoth Nate Watson had three offensive rebounds and scored seven points. 6’8″ freshman Greg Gantt played 28 minutes of the game in Omaha and had two rebounds and three steals.
Oddly, it wasn’t the Friars’ size that bothered Creighton in the first meeting. It was their guards — and specifically 6’5″ sophomore David Duke. He scored 36 of their 74 points, made 6-of-10 shots inside the arc, 6-of-8 from three-point range and 6-of-7 from the line. He sliced his way to the rim at will. He rained in threes from everywhere. He had four rebounds (two offensive), two assists and three steals in 38 minutes. And he scored 13 straight in the final minutes — and 16 of their final 22 — as he single-handedly tried to win the game for them.
It’s worth noting that when Duke was guarded by a healthy Ty-Shon Alexander in the first half, he scored just eight points and was relatively quiet. His explosion came with other players — and with a hobbled Alexander, playing through an injury — guarding him. CU will almost certainly have to revisit its gameplan to defend Duke, but it will help to have one of the country’s best defenders guarding him all night at full strength.
5’11” senior Luwane Pipkins had a solid game, too, making three 3-pointers and dishing out three assists. He enters Wednesday’s rematch coming off of a big game against Butler — he made four 3’s and was 10-of-10 from the line. All of the threes were huge shots.
He’s a grad transfer that sees the end of his college career approaching and the window for getting into the NCAA Tournament closing, and that makes him doubly important to watch.
In that first game, the Friars turned 19 offensive rebounds into 25 second-chance points. They earned a second chance opportunity on 49% of their missed shots, which is unacceptable. It’s a big reason why the Friars were able to dictate tempo — you can’t run in transition when you don’t clear the glass. But despite Providence forcing the Jays to match their bullish style of play, and despite the Friars leading 74-69 with 1:41 to play, Creighton continued to fight. They’ll have to do that again, for 40 minutes, to win on Wednesday night.
- Tip: 6:00pm Central
- Venue: Dunkin’ Donuts Center, Providence, R.I.
- TV: Fox Sports Midwest (in Nebraska only) and YurView (in New England)
- Also airing on these Fox Sports networks:
- Announcers: Dave Sims and Andy Katz
- In Omaha: Cox channel 47 (SD), 1047 (HD); CenturyLink Prism 748 (SD), 1748 (HD); DirecTV channel 671-1; Dish Network channel 418
- Streaming on FoxSportsGO, with regional restrictions
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Ross Ferrarini
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters:
- Senior guard Maliek White scored 16 points in a win at DePaul on January 4 and he had a team-high 19 points in a win at Marquette on January 7. He ranks fifth on the team in scoring in Big East play, averaging 9.2 points per game, and has started the last three games for the Friars.
- The Friars rank first in the Big East in offensive rebounds (13.9), second in the Big East in steals (8.8 spg) and second in the Big East in turnover margin (+2.5).
- Wednesday’s game will mark the Friars’ fifth consecutive game versus a ranked team and sixth game in the last seven (1-4) against a ranked opponent. That ties the second longest streak in Friar basketball history as the 1972-73 team closed the season with five games versus ranked teams.
- Creighton is ranked 21st in this week’s Associated Press Top 25 poll, joining the poll for the second time this season (also 25th on Jan. 13th). This year marks the seventh time in Greg McDermott’s 10 seasons on The Hilltop that Creighton has cracked the top-25 at least once, after doing it just five different seasons in program history before his 2010 arrival.
- Creighton is 3-2 on the road in Big East play, with all three victories coming by 10 or more points (by 12 at Xavier, by 15 at DePaul, by 15 at Villanova). This season marks the first time Creighton owns three conference road wins of 10 or more points since 2016-17 — and CU hasn’t had four such wins in the same campaign since 2013-14.
- Denzel Mahoney has scored 10 or more points in each of Creighton’s last six games, averaging 15.8 points per game in that span. He’s scored in double-figures in each of the five games he’s come off the bench during that span, something that no Bluejay had done since Ethan Wragge from Nov. 14-24, 2012. The last Bluejay with to score in double-digits in six straight games when playing off the bench was an incredible 14-game streak by Booker Woodfox from Jan. 26-March 18, 2008.
Providence owns a 15-11 lead in a series that dates back to 1961, but Creighton has won the past three meetings. Last season Creighton swept the Friars for the first time since the programs became Big East rivals, and a win Wednesday would secure a second straight regular season sweep.
In the first meeting, Providence led 74-69 with 1:41 to play. But from that point forward, Creighton found another gear. In an instant classic, CU hit one clutch shot after another, got big defensive stops when they needed to, and ended the game on a 9-0 run to steal the win. Marcus Zegarowski’s three-pointer with 3.2 seconds to play proved to be the game-winner.
In between games at Villanova and Providence, the Jays opted to stay out east rather than fly back and forth. At practice on Monday, the Jays surprised walk-on Jett Canfield by awarding the scout team leader with a scholarship.
Then Monday night, the Zegarowski family hosted the team at their Hamilton, MA home.
Speaking of Zegarowski, the Boston Globe ran a feature on Zegarowski this week. They asked him about his brother, NBA player Michael Carter-Williams, and Zegarowski recalled a memory from childhood.
“I remember one time we were in the backyard, it was kind of getting dark out. We were playing, a couple other guys were playing, working out with us. I think I won. He got really mad at me. He thought I cheated or whatever, but I didn’t cheat. I was just so young . . . I remember that distinctly.”
And finally, the Big East’s website ran a feature on Mitch Ballock on Tuesday. It has a lot of great anecdotes but this quote is probably most of interest to Jays fans:
Creighton hasn’t played on February 5 since 2011, when they beat the Evansville Purple Aces 75-69 in Omaha. It was a struggle, though. From the Morning After:
The score was 23-15 Evansville as the under-eight media timeout approached, with the visitors making ten of their first 14 attempts from the floor.
With 8:37 to play in the half, his team struggling to find a rhythm and his fans struggling for anything to cheer about, Gregory Echenique swatted a Colt Ryan jump shot into the second row behind the Creighton bench, at once signaling that the paint was no longer open for business to the Purple Aces and that the Jays intended to play.
Coming out of the media timeout that followed, the Jays rattled off an 8-0 run to tie the game in the span of just over two minutes. Or rather, to be more specific, Kenny Lawson rattled off an 8-0 run; the MVC’s much-maligned Preseason Player of the Year began the run by scrapping for a rebound under the rim, missing the tip in, fighting for his own rebound, then making a layup. He then made three pointers on each of the next two possessions, and both the Jays and the home crowd were alive.
Moments later, Lawson picked up his second foul; he joined Doug McDermott on the bench, both players having picked up a pair of first half fouls. Evansville immediately took the lead back, and at the final media timeout of the half, it was 32-28 Aces. They would not score again in the first stanza, as the Jays, minus Lawson and McDermott, ran off a 9-0 run to close the half. Improbably, impossibly, given the way the game had begun, it was 37-32 Creighton at the intermission.
…
Would another halftime lead be blown? When Colt Ryan made a jumper with 17:24 to play cutting the lead to 42-38, the prevailing feeling in the arena — seriously, it was palpable — was one of “Here we go again.” The Purple Aces would not score another point for over six minutes, as the Bluejays scored 13 unanswered points. The crowd appreciated the effort, as Jays players went diving all over the court for loose balls, played stifling defense, got looks for each other on offense, and put the game out of reach. When Evansville called timeout to try and stop the avalanche, it was 55-38 Creighton; since the Aces had that 23-15 lead prior to Kenny Lawson’s three-possession takeover, it had been a — seriously, this is no misprint — 40-15 run for the Jays. That’s perhaps the best sustained stretch of hoops they’ve had all season long, and it came against a pretty good opponent in a huge game.
The Bottom Line:
Creighton wins their fifth straight, though it will be close throughout.
#21 Bluejays 77, Providence 71