When Creighton takes the floor on Tuesday, it will have been almost a month since they last played at CHI Health Center Omaha. They beat Villanova 79-59 on December 17, then had two games postponed due to COVID issues in the opposing program, and returned after 15 days with two road games.
“Obviously you’d like to be able to capture the momentum that came with that win, but we were not able to,” Greg McDermott told the media on Monday afternoon. His team practiced in the arena Monday afternoon, something he said was important because the team hadn’t been in the arena since the Villanova game.
Their opponent for the first home game in 25 days is #23 Providence, the second of three consecutive ranked teams CU will play. The Jays were rolled 75-41 in the first game of this stretch last week at Villanova against a Wildcat team determined for revenge after the loss in Omaha. A road game at #17 Xavier is next.
Picked seventh in the preseason Big East coaches’ poll, one spot ahead of Creighton, Providence has outperformed expectations by starting the season 14-2 with four Quad 1 wins. Some pundits have tried to dismiss that start as a fluke, with Jeff Goodman going so far as to call them “the luckiest program in the country” and outright dismissing three of those Q1 wins for coming when the opponent was missing a key contributor. True, they won at Wisconsin when they were without Johnny Davis, won at UConn when they were missing Adama Sanogo, and beat a short-handed Seton Hall team coming off a three-week layoff, but they won those games all the same.
Overall, though, human observers are higher on them than the computers. They’ve spent the last four weeks ranked in the AP Top 25, rising as high as #16. Across the 60 bracketologists that Bracket Matrix tracks, the Friars have an average seed of 6, or somewhere between 21-24 overall.
Meanwhile, KenPom ranks the Friars 50th overall and fifth in the Big East. The NCAA’s NET ranks them 35th; their metrics are kinder to the Big East as a whole than the others, so that still puts them fifth in the league.
Those are fairly large discrepancies given they’ve played 16 games. But regardless of where you fall on the “How good are the Friars?” question, their roster construction and style of play present pretty clear issues for the 2021-22 Bluejays. If the tape of Iowa State and Arizona State’s gameplans didn’t convince opposing coaches that beating the Jays up is the way to beat them, the tape of last week’s 75-41 loss at Villanova will.
“The ‘controllables’ are what hurt us against Villanova,” Trey Alexander said during Creighton’s media availability on Monday. “We have to control the things that we can. That’s rebounding the ball, boxing out, things of that sort.”
His coach was more blunt in his assessment. “It was the first time this season where I felt like we had a lot of young kids playing against grown men,” Greg McDermott said of that game. “They turned it into a physical wrestling match, and we didn’t respond to that very well.”
That’s concerning as they get ready for one of the most experienced teams in America. Providence is the ninth oldest team in D1 according to KenPom, starting four seniors and a junior. Their top six players have played in 629 combined games. And they’re the same big, bruising Friar team they’ve been throughout Ed Cooley’s tenure as head coach. They play slow, with an average possession lasting 18.5 seconds (305th in D1). Their adjusted tempo is 66.8, ranking 281st. Both of those stats magnify mistakes like live-ball turnovers and make offensive rebounds and second-chance opportunities doubly important.
While everyone in the Big East is capable of replicating a physical gameplan against the Jays, Providence is better built to do it than most. Asked about his team’s struggles against physicality so far this season, McDermott noted that the easy answer is a year in the weight room, because “our bodies are just different than a lot of the teams we’re playing right now.”
“The thing we have to get better at is playing through that physicality, and understanding that you can’t look at me in practice and want a whistle for a foul. I can’t have you stand and look at an official in a game and ask for a foul every play,” McDermott continued. “This is the Big East. It’s physical. And I’ve seen the numbers; officials are just not calling as many fouls this year. You have to figure out a way to play through it. We have to get physically stronger, but we also have to get mentally tougher.”
The Friars’ bruising attack is led by 6’10”, 260-pound Nate Watson. Just about everything they do offensively runs through Watson, as they’re committed to getting him as many post touches as they can. Defensively, he’s an elite shot blocker and rim protector who also cleans up the glass. He leads the team in scoring (14.1 ppg) and he is second on the squad in rebounding (6.3 rpg) — and is coming off a monster week that included a 22 point, 11 rebound performance against St. John’s where he made 9-of-11 from the floor and 4-of-5 from the line.
Al Durham, a graduate transfer from Indiana, leads the team in assists (3.0 per game) and is second in points at 13.3 per game. Playing 87.7% of the possible minutes through 16 games — Durham rarely leaves the floor — he’s been a consistent, huge addition to Cooley’s team. Where Durham has really affected the game is at the line; he’s attempted more free throws (110) than two-point shots (90) this year. He’s made more free throws (90) than all but one player in all of Division 1 hoops. Against St. John’s over the weekend, he was 6-of-6 from the line, and he was 8-of-9 at Marquette earlier in the week. The week before, he was 5-of-6 against DePaul and 8-of-10 against Seton Hall. He’s a difficult player to stop once he gets a head of steam, and will put pressure on the Bluejay defense like no one they’ve seen so far.
They’re likely without A.J. Reeves, who averages 10.7 points per game and has missed the last two games with a finger injury. He’s out for this one according to Jon Rothstein:
Alyn Breed, a 6’3” second-year freshman, started in Reeves’ place against St. John’s and is listed as the probable starter tonight in Providence’s game notes. Breed averages 3.8 points and 1.1 assists per game, but Bluejay fans remember him for hanging 15 points on them in a 74-70 win in Omaha last January — he made 2-of-3 in the paint, 2-of-2 from three-point range, and 5-of-8 at the line with six boards and three assists. It’s the best game of his career so far, by a fair margin.
Noah Horchler is their top rebounder and biggest threat from three-point range, averaging 9.8 points and 8.4 rebounds per game. Roughly half of his shot attempts have been threes, and he’s hit at a 40.7% clip (24-of-59). Without Reeves on the floor to keep perimeter defenses honest, Horchler struggled last week — he was 0-for-5 on threes against St. John’s, and missed his only attempt against Marquette. That’s something to watch for tonight. He affected both games in other ways, however, particularly against St. John’s where he grabbed 13 rebounds (five of them offensive).
- Tip: 8:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Vince Welch and Steve Lavin
- 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
- Cable Cutters: Available on all major streaming platforms
- Streaming on the Fox Sports app and website
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Brody Deren
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Unbelievable fact given Providence’s success in recent years: prior to entering the polls earlier this season, the last time the Friars had been ranked was the week of Feb. 22, 2016
- Ed Cooley needs two wins to surpass Dave Gavitt and move into second place all-time at Providence. The Friars’ win over St. John’s last weekend marked Cooley’s 300th career win; his record in 11 years at PC is 208-137.
- The Friars have a team record five graduate students on the roster this season, and the average age of their top nine players is 22.1 years
- Each of the previous 14 times Creighton has lost by 20 or more points, they’ve answered with a victory in their next game, dating back to March of 2009. And each of the last three times they’ve lost by 30 or more, they not only won the next game but rattled off a long winning streak following the loss.
- Creighton’s 41 points at Villanova were its fewest since a 67-40 loss to Georgetown on Jan. 31, 2015. It was just the fourth time in Greg McDermott’s 12 years at Creighton that the Bluejays failed to score 50 or more points.
- Creighton is 7-0 this season when grabbing 10 or more offensive rebounds. The Bluejays average 11.20 offensive rebounds in its 10 wins, compared to 8.00 offensive boards in its four losses.
Providence leads the all-time series, 17-12, but the teams have split 12 meetings in Omaha. Since Creighton joined PC in the Big East in 2013, the Friars have won 11-of-19 contests, including 2-of-3 Big East Tournament contests. Five of the last six match-ups in Omaha have been decided by six points or less.
Creighton has had a ton of success on January 11th over the years, winning each of its last nine games on 1/11 — with seven of them on the road.
The most memorable of those is the “Showcase in Springfield”, as WBR’s Creighton Otter dubbed it — Doug McDermott’s 39-point barrage at Missouri State in 2013 where he made 14 consecutive shots, outscored the entire Bears team in the second half, and illustrated the dictionary definition of “single handedly beating an opponent” in real time. From his recap:
“Don’t poke the bear. In essence, that’s what Action 3 News television sports director Chase Williams and broadcaster extraordinaire (and WBR contributor) Nick Bahe warned no one in particular Friday night. With the early minutes of Creighton’s road game at Missouri State proving a bit chippy and very physical, the gentlemen bringing the TV broadcast back to the living rooms and sports bars in Omaha proved prophetic. Be careful how physical you get with Doug McDermott, Bears; most of the time he excels in the face of such confrontation.
And so began what for our current purposes we’ll call The Showcase in Springfield.
McDermott scored 39 points in 33 minutes, setting the JQH Arena record and single-handedly pulling the Jays away from a game Bears team in the second half. McDermott missed just one shot in the second half, going 10-11 from the field, 3-3 from three-point range, and 5-5 from the free throw line. His 28 points in the second half were more than the entire Missouri State team combined (25). He also doubled up his own teammates during the second stanza, 28 to 14.”
In the WBR Highlight Reel afterward, I cracked a smile reading the note alongside of it.
“39 points, 15-19 field goals, 14 consecutive made field goals, (McDermott) did it all in this one. A reader of ours made a comment to me recently that he watched a highlight reel with his granddaughter and she noted that Creighton never misses. Usually, that’s because of the way they’re edited; in this case, Doug actually NEVER MISSES. Enjoy.”
The Bottom Line:
Tonight’s game is a tossup — KenPom predicts a 69-67 Creighton victory, and ESPN’s BPI gives Providence a 52.3% chance of victory. Vegas favors the Jays by either 4 or 4.5 depending on where you look. Funny enough, the line moved by two full points once Creighton began promoting this as Dollar Beer night on social media.
That sounds about right.
Creighton 71, Providence 66