Saturday night, Gonzaga thoroughly dominated Oklahoma in an 83-68 win where they led by as many as 24 points. Their physicality and toughness were on full display, and the Sooners had no answer for it — in the first half alone, the Bulldogs outscored the Sooners 38-4 in the paint, a margin that grew to 58-20 by the end of the night. They attempted 21 more shots than the Sooners thanks to an 18-8 edge in offensive rebounds and their defense forcing 16 turnovers.
Watching that game surely kept Greg McDermott awake Saturday night. After the Jays’ 92-76 win on opening night over South Dakota, McDermott vented on his postgame radio interview about his team’s lack of toughness that night — and now they’re going into a hostile environment on the road to play a team that is as physical as any they’ll see this season, with as much length and athleticism as any team they’ll see. It’s a tall task, especially in the season’s second week.
Here’s what the Bulldogs’ frontcourt did against OU:
- 6’9” senior Graham Ike had 19 points and 11 rebounds
- 6’7” senior Tyon Grant-Foster added 14 points
- Jalen Warley, another 6’7” senior, and 6’10” junior Braden Huff each scored 13 points and the duo combined to grab 17 rebounds
Ike and Huff both had usage rates north of 28% a year ago, an old-school approach to offense where they pound the ball inside to their big men and let them go to work. Ike led the team in scoring at 17.3 points per game while shooting 61.5% from the field, and also averaged 7.3 rebounds. Huff was primarily his backup, and averaged 11.0 points and 3.4 rebounds per game while shooting 57.7% from the floor.
Not many teams boast two 6’9”/6’10”, 250-pound players with their skillsets and talent. And now they’re in the lineup side-by-side, giving Gonzaga one of, if not the, best front courts in the country. As Oklahoma learned, you might be able to slow them down somewhat, but shutting them both down? Good luck.
“I wish (Owen) Freeman was back in shape and 100%,” Greg McDermott said on Monday. “Clearly he’s not there yet and he probably won’t be for a while. It’s going to be a test for our front line. They’re two of the better passing bigs in the country and they just happen to be on the same team. So, that that provides a lot of challenges. They have a lot of different ways to try to get the the ball into the paint and we have to do whatever we can to make those catches difficult.”
Ike controlled the space around the rim offensively, consistently getting deep seals that forced the Sooners to either foul him or send a help defender. By drawing four fouls, he helped get both of OU’s starting big men (Mohamed Wague and Tae Davis) in foul trouble. And when they opted to send help instead, it opened driving lanes for their guards.
Gonzaga had toyed with the idea of playing them together last year, but decided to give it a try in the WCC Tournament title game against Saint Mary’s after losing a pair of regular season games to the Gaels. They were dominant, especially Huff, who seemed to thrive alongside Ike. In the NCAA Tournament, the Zags continued the experiment, and they blew out Georgia 89-68 with that duo combining for 31 points. In the second round, they were even better despite a loss to top-seeded Houston — Ike and Huff overwhelmed the Cougars’ vaunted defensive pressure, scoring 38 points in an 81-76 defeat.
With that said, Ike also fouled out in just 25 minutes of action against Oklahoma. That was a recurring issue a year ago; he had four or more fouls in 14 of 35 games. When he was out on Saturday, their offense struggled without an anchor to play through. Huff’s 13 points came on 6-of-17 shooting as OU packed the paint and dared him to take jump shots, a gamble that paid off. The Sooners tightened their defense in the second half and were able to force Gonzaga into settling for more three-pointers than they wanted to; the Zags were just 6-of-22 from three including 3-of-13 in the second half. And after scoring 49 points in the first half, they had just 34 afterward.
Neither player is a proficient rim protector. Huff is the quicker of the two and will typically be asked to guard on the perimeter, especially against teams who employ a small lineup to combat Gonzaga’s height advantage. Creighton can exploit that with the sheer number of shooters they can throw on the floor at once — 26 of Oklahoma’s 58 shot attempts were threes. They only made six of them. CU’s certainly had their share of games like that on the road, but if they want to steal a win on the road in this one, they’ll need to shoot better than the Sooners did from the perimeter.
Another player to keep an eye on is Tyon Grant-Foster, who was granted eligibility two weeks ago after a complicated case wound its way through the NCAA appeals process. A member of the 2018 high school class — the same class as Marcus Zegarowski, who hasn’t played for Creighton since March of 2021 (coincidentally against Gonzaga in the Sweet 16) — Grant-Foster is 25 years old. He played two years of junior college basketball, then for Kansas in 2020-21 and DePaul in 2021-22. At halftime of the Blue Demons’ first game that season he collapsed in the locker room and was rushed to the hospital; after several heart surgeries over the next 16 months, he was finally cleared for a return to competition in 2023.
Transferring to Grand Canyon, he averaged 20.1 points and 6.1 rebounds en route to winning the WAC Player Of the Year. He then averaged 14.8 points and 5.9 rebounds a year ago. Those two seasons, combined with the two years of junior college and his year at Kansas (which the NCAA classified as his extra COVID season) seemingly exhausted his eligibility. He argued successfully that a blanket NCAA waiver given to former junior college transfers in December 2024 meant he had one more year.
TYON GRANT-FOSTER pic.twitter.com/zt3FB6p2Ei
— Gonzaga Basketball (@ZagMBB) November 9, 2025
TGF SLAM‼️ pic.twitter.com/4kOHthbcTi
— Gonzaga Basketball (@ZagMBB) November 9, 2025
TGF pic.twitter.com/DFdKNSlbSK
— Gonzaga Basketball (@ZagMBB) November 9, 2025
He had 14 points and seven rebounds (four offensive), repeatedly exploding over and around the Sooners for putback dunks that electrified the crowd. Accounting for both Ike and Huff when boxing out for a rebound is tough enough; having to also know where Grant-Foster is makes defensive rebounding against the Zags a really difficult proposition.
6’7” forward Jalen Warley, a senior transfer who played three years at Florida State, gives them another experienced player to plug into the frontcourt with a different skillset from the others. He’s an active defender that harasses opposing forwards, and he’s aggressive on the glass — five of his eight rebounds were offensive against OU. They even experimented with sliding Grant-Foster to the ‘2’ in the second half against Oklahoma, allowing them to play him, Warley, Huff and Ike at the same time.
That experiment is partially because their frontcourt is simply that deep and that good, and partially because the backcourt has a lot of question marks. Starting point guard Braeden Smith is experienced — he played two years for Colgate and led them to the NCAA Tournament a year ago — but he has struggled so far at his new school. After scoring three points with four assists in the opener, he had two points and three assists against OU in just 13 minutes before freshman Mario Saint-Supery took over. Saint-Supery played the other 27 minutes at point guard, and along with his eight points, six assists and three steals, he drew six fouls. How that position shakes out will be an early storyline for the Zags.
“Grant-Foster is such a good slasher and he can take it off the rim, he can lead the break, his back cuts offensively, his work on the offensive glass, it’s all terrific,” McDermott said. “And then, you know, Warley really changes the game, too, because he’s totally different. He can switch some ball screens. He can provide a little bit more pressure defensively for them. And he’s a downhill driver. They can give you a lot of different looks and, you know, you talk about the two bigs a lot, but at the end of the day, they’re probably on the only on the court together 12 to 15 minutes and the rest of the game, you’re dealing with a little bit smaller, more athletic lineup.”
For Creighton to steal a win, they need Owen Freeman to hold his own against Graham Ike — if he can’t slow him down defensively without fouling, he has to at least come close to matching his scoring output on the other end. They will need Jackson McAndrew to find his shooting touch from outside after struggling against South Dakota. They’ll need Jasen Green to provide leadership and stability on defense, making sure his teammates are in the right spots and upping his team’s level of physicality. And they’ll need their newcomers, especially their guards, to be poised. Nik Graves, Blake Harper, and Austin Swartz have played road games at their previous schools, but The Kennel is a different beast. If they struggle, can Josh Dix — who played three years in the Big Ten — shoulder the load while they adjust?
“I think we’re going to learn a lot regardless of what happens,” McDermott said. “Obviously, it’s a very difficult place to play against an outstanding team who is extremely well coached. You don’t know how your team’s going to react to that, especially when you have this many new guys. It’s going to hopefully be a day of growth for us one way or the other.”
Both teams have question marks. Both would probably prefer this game came a bit later in the non-conference slate, when they’re a little more settled in. It will a heck of a measuring stick for both of them to see where they sit on November 11. For his part, McDermott noted that with the way the rest of their non-conference schedule shook out, playing Gonzaga in the season’s second week was the best option.
“Sometimes when you schedule these games, you have to take whatever date works and you know, with our game with Nebraska in early December and with what we have in Vegas over Thanksgiving, this was probably the best time for it,” he said on Monday. “We wanted one right before conference play and one at the beginning, so we have Kansas State at the end and the Zags now. Fortunately we played two high level exhibition games. Obviously they’ve played Oklahoma in a regular season game. We’ve both played good competition. Hopefully, we’re ready for it.”
Tip: 9:00pm
Venue: McCarthey Athletic Center, aka “The Kennel”, Spokane, WA
TV: ESPN
Announcers: Dave Flemming and Sean Farnam
In Omaha: Cox channel 31 (SD), 1031 (HD)
Satellite: DirecTV channel 206, Dish Network channel 140
Cable Cutters: Available on most major streaming platforms, with the exception of YouTube TV
Streaming on the ESPN app
Radio: 1620AM, 101.9FM
Announcer: John Bishop
Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
Simulcast on SiriusXM channel 83 as well as on the SiriusXM App
Live Stats:
Follow along on Stat Broadcast
This will be only the fourth non-conference matchup between two AP Top-25 ranked teams in the McCarthey Athletic Center since 2015. Over the last 10 years, the Bulldogs also had three other games against WCC member Saint Mary’s where both programs were ranked in the AP poll. In the six total Top-25 games in the McCarthey Athletic Center in the last decade, Gonzaga won five, with the lone loss coming to No. 19 Arizona in 2015.
While the Bulldogs only return 36 percent of their scoring from last season, along with 34 percent of their rebounding, the current roster features four 1,000-point career scorers and two more at 845 and 727. Seven Zags have played at least 65 games in their careers, with six averaging at least 20 minutes per game. GU’s roster features the 2022-23 Mountain West Conference Preseason Player of the Year (Graham Ike), the 2022-23 Big Sky Conference Player of the Year (Steele Venters), the 2023-24 WAC Player of the Year (Tyon Grant-Foster), and the 2023-24 Patriot League Player of the Year (Braeden Smith).
Other players to note include Emmanuel Innocenti, who was a member of the All-WAC Defensive Team at Tarleton State in 2023-24. Innocenti started at the ‘4’ against Oklahoma and had three points, three assists and a rebound. 6’3” graduate senior Adam Miller started 30 games for Arizona State a year ago and averaged 9.8 points per game. He’s also played for Illinois and LSU, and has scored everywhere he’s been, averaging 10.3 points while shooting 38.7% overall and 34.5% from three in his career. And Steele Venters, who scored 1,139 points in three years at Eastern Washington while making 40.1% of his threes, adds punch off the bench.
On the roster front, it was announced Monday that Aleksa Dimitijevic will officially redshirt the 2025-26 season. Discussions with Hudson Greer are still ongoing, with a redshirt still a distinct possibility for him. And lastly Josh Townley-Thomas, who suffered a foot injury last week against South Dakota, had successful surgery and will be out 6-8 weeks.
Due to the Big East’s partnership with Fox Sports, Creighton doesn’t play a ton of games on the ESPN family of networks. Creighton has played on the original ESPN (not ESPN2/ESPNU/ESPNNEWS) just eight times since 2008-09, and not since a Dec. 1, 2022 loss at No. 2 Texas. Creighton’s only regular-season win on ESPN since the start of the 2006-07 season was in 2022 against Arkansas in the second round of the Maui Invitational, though it’s worth noting CU did defeat Alabama and Wagner in the 2016 NIT on ESPN. By comparison, Creighton has appeared on FS1 211 times (winning 146) since the network started in 2013 and 42 times on ‘big’ FOX (winning 23) since 2015-16.
Not only is Creighton a perfect 16-0 in season-openers under Greg McDermott, but the Bluejays have started 2-0 in all but one campaign (2019-20) under McDermott as well. That 2019-20 team (which lost at Michigan), of course, went on to share the Big East regular-season title.
Creighton is 6-5 all-time against Gonzaga in a series that dates to 1947, but seeking its first win over the Bulldogs since a Jan. 15, 1977 win in Spokane. The teams last meeting came in the 2021 NCAA Tournament at Hinkle Fieldhouse in the Sweet 16, where an undefeated Gonzaga squad topped CU, 83-65.
Greg McDermott is 0-3 against Gonzaga and Mark Few, and is 4-5 in his career against the current membership of the West Coast Conference (1-5 with Creighton).
Creighton defeated the UMKC Kangaroos 96-70 on November 11, 2013, in a game that saw Doug McDermott score 37 points, just another ho-hum, pedestrian offensive game for the most prolific scorer in school history. From Ott’s wrap-up:
“Creighton’s All American scored the team’s first 9 points and 14 of the team’s first 18 points. His CU teammates were feeding the school’s all-time leading scorer, facilitating the type of night that could have knocked Bob Portman out of possession of the single-game scoring record (51 points in December 1967).
McDermott finished the first half with 25 points after playing nearly the entire first stanza. He was needed on the floor because despite his scoring outburst the Bluejays allowed a 12-3 run that turned an 18-11 CU lead into a 23-21 deficit with 7:35 left in the first half.
No worries. McDermott went to work again, tying the game with a layup and then grabbing a defensive rebound during the Kangaroos’ next possession. He hit a triple on Creighton’s subsequent trip down the court to give the Jays a lead they would never relinquish.
All told, McDermott captained a 32-8 run, one that he capped with a layup and a three-pointer within the first minute of the second half. Just like that, the Bluejays were up by 22 points and could play the rest of the evening out testing various personnel combinations.
Please, Creighton fans. Never take Doug McDermott for granted.”
KenPom predicts a 10-point Gonzaga win. ESPN’s BPI gives the Zags 88.1% odds of victory. It’s an uphill battle for sure, and if this game happened in two months I think everyone would feel better about the Jays’ chances. There’s probably still too many question marks and too many roles being filled by newcomers to pull off the road win.
Gonzaga 77, Creighton 72