Sunday afternoon, #7 Creighton temporarily takes a break from a murderous non-conference schedule to host perennially-rebuilding Nebraska. It’s their only home game between November 17 and December 22, a stretch of eight games where they will have played four ranked teams and three others with realistic postseason aspirations. The eighth? Nebraska, who snuck into the KenPom top 100 on Wednesday night at #97 with a big home win over Boston College.
Creighton is 6-2 with a top ten ranking, but with 25% of the schedule complete, some flaws have surfaced. Among the biggest and most concerning is the lack of production from the bench. Thursday against Texas, the bench was 0-for-6 from the floor with zero points and three rebounds in 29 combined minutes. It’s a trend where the starting five has to shoulder a disproportionate share of the load — and it’s a recipe for wearing down by February and March.
On the latest Bluejay Beat podcast (exclusive to our Patreon subscribers) former point guard Marcus Zegarowski expressed his concerns about it. “Coach wants to push pace, but I feel like the pace is wearing out Creighton instead,” Zegarowski said. “The bench has to find a way to contribute. Come in with a sense of urgency and energy. Come in and change the game — and it doesn’t have to be scoring. It could be defense, it could be hustling and diving on the floor for a ball. It’s not enough to just come in and give guys rest. They have to provide a spark.”
Zegarowski has an unmatched killer instinct among recent Bluejays, and you get a sense for how he inspired his teammates from listening to him. That fire is still there.
“The bench guys should come into each game thinking ‘I would start on 90% of college teams.’ Be a team player, but feel in your heart that you should be starting,” Zegarowski said. “Don’t talk about it. Do it. Come to practice and bust your ass. Believe that you deserve more minutes. Fight for it…The starters need to feel pressure from them. They need to feel like, ‘(so and so) is playing really well, I have to step my game up.’ When I was playing, Reef would come in and play great defense and it made me want to get better defensively. It’s not a selfish thing, it’s being a good teammate. You have to push each other.”
(He also shared an all-time classic story from his freshman year when he was coming off the bench, and his profanity-laced reaction to being asked to give Davion Mintz a rest in a game. But you’ll have to subscribe to hear it.)
With three non-conference games remaining, opportunities to get the rotation deeper are running scarce. And Sunday’s game is likely to be an emotional, hard-fought battle — it always is, even when the score is lopsided — where the starters will be once again be asked to shoulder a heavy load.
The Huskers have a roster full of newcomers, as Fred Hoiberg opted to blow things up in Year Four and essentially start over. To he honest, he didn’t have much of a choice, and if not for an 18-million dollar buyout he might not have had the chance. In three seasons, he’s won 24 total games and just nine in conference play, enduring losing streaks of 17, nine and 12 in a row in those three years. Last year, they were 1-16 before somehow managing to win three straight to end the year. For a program with one NCAA Tournament berth since 1998 and zero all-time wins in the big dance, he’s done the impossible and somehow moved them backwards.
Gone is Bryce McGowens and his 16.8 points per game. Ditto for Alonzo Verge and his 14.5 points and 5.4 assists per game. The lone returning starter is 6’9” big man Derrick Walker, who averaged 9.5 points and a team-high six rebounds per game a year ago. Hoiberg has surrounded him with a roster that emphasizes positional size, experience and skill, tapping into the transfer portal to try and jump-start the program.
To their credit, they do look much improved. They’re less of an ISO team than years past, with an assist on 57.8% of their made baskets. The Huskers have held seven of their eight opponents to 70 points or less and have climbed 63 spots in adjusted defense in KenPom compared to last season, and they’ve held five of their eight opponents to under 1.0 point per possession. They’re currently sixth in the Big Ten in rebounding margin at +5.6 per game, ranking 72nd nationally in rebounding margin after ranking 344th last year. NU has four players averaging at least 5.0 rebounds per game. They’re sixth in the Big Ten lead with 12.1 offensive rebounds per game, a total which is nearly 5.0 more per game than last season. Nebraska had a season-high 18 offensive rebounds at St. John’s.
But the bar was pretty low, and through eight games there’s a lot of concerns — they’ve turned it over on 19.9% of their possessions (221st in D1), and they’re one of the worst free-throw shooting teams in the country (62.4%, 334th). That’s an issue for a team who spends as much time driving to the rim as Nebraska does.
They’re coming off back-to-back lopsided wins over a pair of mediocre ACC teams in Florida State and Boston College, and their three losses are to St. John’s, Oklahoma and Memphis. Playing a nine-man rotation, six of them are scoring in double figures. Walker missed the first five games but since returning last week, he’s averaging a double-double (15.0 points, 10.0 rebounds). And unlike his teammates, he’s been insanely efficient — Walker is 22-of-29 from the field, taking smart shots and creating opportunities for shooters.
Keisei Tominaga is second in scoring at 11.8 points per game, and the sophomore is coming off of a 23 point night against Boston College where he made 4-of-5 from three point range. The 6’2” guard from Japan has been the perfect sixth-man, providing a spark of offense off the bench and getting starter-type minutes.
Sam Griesel, a native of Lincoln, transferred from North Dakota State where he was a high-volume scorer and elite passer. From a scoring standpoint, he’s still settling in at the high-major level; he’s failed to score in double figures in five of eight games. But his passing has translated seamlessly, as he had 15 assists against four turnovers in the games against Florida State and Boston College. If there’s a concern, it’s that in their lone true road game, at St. John’s, he had eight turnovers against the Red Storm’s defense. He and Baylor Scheierman know each other well, both from high school and in the Summit League, so their first (and only) battle in the Creighton-Nebraska series will be a fun little subplot.
- Tip: 3:30pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Lane Grindle and Nick Bahe
- 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, 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- C.J Wilcher (11.3 points), Emmanuel Bandoumel (10.1) and Juwan Gary (10.1) round out the Huskers averaging in double figures. The Huskers have had six different players lead the team in scoring (Griesel-Maine; Wilcher-Omaha; Tominaga-St. John’s and Boston College; Gary-UAPB, and OU; Bandoumel-Memphis; Walker-Florida State) and eight players score double figures at least once.
- The Huskers are fourth nationally in fewest fouls per game (11.9) as of Dec. 2. Nebraska has made more free throws (88) than its opponents have attempted (81), while one opponent (Florida State) has gotten to the line more than Nebraska in the first eight contests.
- Sunday’s game at No. 7 Creighton starts a stretch of three straight potential top-10 teams (No. 7 Creighton, No. 10 Indiana and No. 5 Purdue). Nebraska has never had three straight games against top-10 teams dating back to the start of the AP poll.
- The Bluejays put up 76 points vs. Texas Tech’s No. 15 defense, 90 points vs. Arkansas’ No. 6 defense and 79 points vs. Arizona’s No. 47 defense while in Maui. Creighton owns the No. 10 offense this season and the No. 32 defense, per KenPom. Nebraska is 91st on offense and 112th defensively.
- In the past 11 regular-season meetings in Omaha, Creighton has led for a combined 371:27 compared to NU’s total of 40:05. Creighton has opened up a double-digit lead in each regular-season game in Omaha, whereas Nebraska has not led by more than nine (that coming in 2003-04) in any of those contests.
- Ryan Kalkbrenner had 20 points and 13 rebounds on 9-for-10 shooting at No. 2 Texas on Thursday. That performance made him the nation’s first player with a night with at least 20 points and 13 rebounds on 90 percent shooting from the field against a top-25 team since UCF’s Tacko Fall had 20 points, 13 rebounds and made all 10 field goal attempts against No. 3 Villanova on a neutral floor at the Charleston Classic on Nov. 20, 2016. Kalkbrenner is the only player since the start of the 2010-11 season to have a game like that in a true road game against a top-25 foe.
Creighton leads the all-time series 29-26.
As Creighton head coach, Greg McDermott owns a 10-2 record against Nebraska. He is the only Creighton men’s basketball coach to win seven straight games over the Cornhuskers (2011-17), and his ten overall victories are tied with Dana Altman (who was 10-7 against NU) among Bluejay head coaches all-time.
McDermott owns a 16-4 record in his career against the Cornhuskers, second only to another perennially struggling program (DePaul, who he is 17-1 against).
Creighton has led at halftime in 19 of the past 23 regular-season meetings (including 14 of the last 17 meetings), with eight double-digit leads at intermission in that span. And four of the five times that Creighton trailed at half, it came back to win the game anyway. Nebraska has led at halftime and beaten Creighton in the regular-season just once since Jan. 8, 1997, with that coming in December of 2018.
Also of note, Nebraska has scored more than 30 first half points in just four of the last 18 regular-season meetings at all sites.
The last time Creighton played Nebraska on December 4, the Huskers were whistled for a personal foul, a technical foul on a player, and a technical foul on their head coach…all on the same play. The Huskers had been trailing 46-45 in a back-and-forth game played at their pace; by the time Doug McDermott and Grant Gibbs combined to make five of six free throws, the Jays led 51-45, the home crowd had been whipped into a frenzy, Creighton was able to ride the momentum to push the pace faster, and the outcome was never in doubt again.
The Bottom Line:
“They should be pissed off. It has to be like that if they’re going to meet their potential.”
We’ll leave you with one last bit of inspiration from one Marcus Zegarowski, talking on our latest Patreon about Sunday’s game. Creighton is double-digit favorites everywhere you look, and if they’re as good as they appear, that should be the outcome.
#7 Creighton 82, Nebraska 65
