Wednesday night, Creighton picked up a huge road win at first-place, tenth-ranked Seton Hall. It sets up some interesting scenarios heading into the stretch run; the most intriguing, certainly, is the possibility of a one-game, winner-take-all game for the Big East regular season title on the season’s final day between the Pirates and Bluejays. For that to happen, Seton Hall has to lose one of their five games before coming to Omaha (and with Villanova, Butler and Marquette left to play, it could happen). For what it’s worth, KenPom’s projections have them losing on the road at Marquette.
If it’s going to matter, though, Creighton has to take care of business by winning out. The quest to do that begins Saturday night against last-place DePaul, a team Creighton beat handily in Chicago last month. It’s a game CU should have little problem winning, in theory, which makes it dangerous in reality.
“I just told the guys, enjoy tonight,” Coach Greg McDermott said on the postgame radio show after Wednesday’s win at Seton Hall. “Sleep with a smile on your face. You’re going to get up tomorrow morning, and everybody’s going to pat you on the back and tell you how great you are. Stay married to the process. The process has gotten us to here.”
Noting that DePaul is much better than their deceptive record, he continued. “We have won and we have been successful because guys have bought into the gameplan and they’ve bought into the roles we’ve asked them to play. We can’t deviate from that. While we’re going to enjoy tonight, when we get up tomorrow we’re flipping the page. Just like we flipped the page when we lost at Providence. Flip it and get ready for the next one.”
The next one comes against a team who hasn’t won since the last time we saw them on January 22. The Jays’ 83-68 victory was the beginning of a six-game losing streak that has seen the Blue Demons fall to 1-10 in the Big East. They’re projected to finish 2-16, which would be their fourth consecutive last-place season and and fifth time in seven seasons since the reconstituted Big East launched. Combined with a ninth-place finish in 2016 (with a 3-15 record, they were saved from last by a St. John’s team who went 1-17) and last-place finishes in each of the final five seasons of the prior version of the league, its been a rough ride for a long time for DePaul. Of all the awful seasons they’ve endured, this one is the toughest to figure; there’s talent on this roster, and they beat good teams in the non-conference, only to once again fall flat in the league.
Creighton held their own and arguably got the better of DePaul on the interior in the first game. Points in the paint were dead even 28-28. DePaul had more offensive rebounds (12 to 9) but Creighton had twice as many second chance points (10 to 5). And though the 6’9″ Paul Reed was every bit as dynamic as advertised with 22 points, 12 rebounds and three blocks, the rest of DePaul’s big men (6’11” Nick Ongenda, 6’7″ Darious Hall, and 6’7″ DJ Williams) combined for 11 points, 8 rebounds, 9 fouls, 1 block, 1 steal and 5 turnovers.
6’9″, 225-pound forward Jaylen Butz did not play in that game due to injury. He’s been wildly inconsistent; he’s shooting 53% in league games, which seems like a nice, efficient number. But in the last five games, he scored 14 points on 6-of-11 shooting at Georgetown, 4 points on 2-of-6 shooting against Xavier, 14 points on 5-of-6 shooting at Marquette, 8 points on 3-of-7 shooting at Seton Hall, and 7 points against St. John’s. That’s a microcosm of his season. But if Butz is “on” in this game, it could flip the equation in the paint for the Blue Demons.
Paul Reed’s numbers have dropped somewhat as the losses have piled up for DePaul, but he remains a terrific player and the best NBA prospect in the league. Averaging 15.6 points, 10.9 rebounds, 2.8 blocks and 2.0 steals per game, Reed leaves his fingerprints all over DePaul’s games. He’s scored in double figures in 21 of their 24 games. He’s had seven or more rebounds in every single game, and eclipsed nine boards in every game but four. When he gets the ball on the block, he’s as close to automatic as there is in college basketball, making 67.3% of his shots at the rim. Reed proved tough to contend with for the Jays in Chicago, scoring 22 points on 10-of-17 shooting with 12 rebounds, three blocks and a steal in 38 minutes.
Freshman Romeo Weems had a nice game, too, scoring 11 points points with 8 rebounds — four of them offensive — in 36 minutes of action. Meanwhile Kansas transfer Charlie Moore, who leads DePaul in scoring at 15.9 points per game, struggled big time. He had just 13 points on 3-of-15 shooting, and committed four turnovers.
The Jays’ scouting report was spot-on heading into the first meeting. When their guards drove into the paint, they used jump-stops to create good looks instead of challenging DePaul’s array of seven-foot-wingspans at the rim. They made sure to keep their hands up high when Moore came off of ball screens on the perimeter; at only 5’11” that forced Moore to float passes over the top instead of zipping passes into the paint — and that gave CU’s defense an extra split-second to react. They kept Moore from getting downhill by defending him aggressively and closing off driving lanes. And they flattened DePaul’s defense by slipping Christian Bishop behind them anytime they slipped a ball screen.
Offensively, much of what DePaul does is unstructured on purpose. They average 12 offensive rebounds a game, and have outrebounded opponents on the season. It’s one area Creighton could run into trouble against DePaul — the Jays have not always done a good job boxing out this year, and if the Blue Demons are getting lots of second chances, their chances of stealing a road win go up substantially.
Before the first meeting, we said that these weren’t the Blue Demons of yesteryear. They’re certainly more talented, but in mid-February they’re exactly where they almost always are, at least in recent years — in last place, playing the role of spoiler instead of contender.
- Tip: 6:30pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Jeff Levering and Dickey Simpkins
- 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:
- In DePaul’s 76-72 loss to Georgetown last weekend, Paul Reed recorded his 15th double-double of the season and grabbed at least 10 rebounds for the 30th time in his career.
- The Blue Demons have blocked at least five shots in 16 of their 24 games this season, including seven games with at least seven rejections.
- Charlie Moore and Paul Reed are ranked among the top 20 nationally in a variety of statistical categories while the team is 13th in blocks per game, 17th in total blocks, 22nd in steals per game and tied for 24th in turnovers forced per game. Moore is seventh in total assists and ninth in assists per game. Reed is tied for fifth in double-doubles, eighth in defensive rebounds per game, ninth in rebounds per game, tied for 12th in total blocked shots, 13th in blocks per game and tied for 17th in total blocked shots.
- Creighton had four men score exactly 18 points on Wednesday at Seton Hall, as Damien Jefferson, Marcus Zegarowski, Ty-Shon Alexander and Denzel Mahoney all reached that mark. It’s the first time that Creighton has had four men score 18 or more points in the same game since at least 1981.
- The 20 lead changes in Wednesday’s win at Seton Hall were the most in any game Creighton’s played in since December 12, 2009 when they had 20 lead changes in a 75-72 loss at George Mason.
- The last time he faced DePaul in Omaha on March 9, 2019, Mitch Ballock had a career-high 39 points on just 14 shots, and went 11-for-12 from three-point range. His 11 three-pointers were two more than the previous Creighton single-game record held by Kyle Korver and Ethan Wragge, and tied the single-game record for the Big East.
- The halftime entertainment on Saturday, for those of you going to the game in person, is “KC Disk Dogs” — professional canine frisbee catchers!
Creighton has won 16 of the last 17 meetings with DePaul to take a 21-16 lead in the all-time series. Fourteen of the last 15 meetings in the series have been decided by double-figures, with the exception being Creighton’s first trip to Wintrust Arena in 2018 where CU prevailed, 76-75, on a late three-pointer by Bluejay star Marcus Foster.
The Jays won 83-68 on January 22, behind 19 points from Mitch Ballock and 14 from Damien Jefferson. Marcus Zegarowski was one point shy of a double-double, with 9 points and 10 assists.
On February 15, 1986, Creighton defeated Indiana State 64-51 in a game far more memorable for a bench-clearing brawl than anything that happened in the actual game. Senior forward Keith Smith, a player described as the Bluejays’ equivalent of an offensive lineman by first-year coach Tony Barone, rebounded a miss and put it back to give the Jays a 31-27 lead with three minutes left in the first half.
Indiana State’s Bryan Kegerreis and Creighton’s Kenny Evans got into it as they ran up court, and after exchanging vicious shoves, both benches emptied onto the court to join the melee. Smith was in the middle, of course, and played the role of enforcer in protecting his teammates in the scrum. Once the officials cleared the court, they determined Evans was to blame and sent ISU to the line to shoot technical foul shots. They missed both, then missed a wild shot after keeping possession due to the technical, and instead of capitalizing on an opportunity to tie the game, remained down four and were never as close again.
“I think it was a factor because A, it helped fire them up, and B, we didn’t capitalize,” Indiana State coach Ron Greene said after the game. “We were down four when it happened and could have tied the game. The incident also fired up the Bluejays’ fans. They booed the rest of the game every time Kegerreis touched the ball.”
The Bottom Line:
Mitch-a-Palooza Vol. II mixtape drops Saturday night, as Mitch Ballock once again torches DePaul’s defense. Probably not to the historic level of a year ago, but enough to carry the Jays to a double-digit win.
#23 Creighton 85, DePaul 69