Saturday afternoon, Creighton plays host to a resurgent Marquette squad in a game that suddenly will have a lot more eyeballs on it than it would have a week ago — and not because it’s on network FOX instead of FS1, either. The college basketball world wants to know how the 18-1, seventh-ranked Bluejays will respond to the loss of Maurice Watson.
It’s a big loss, and he’s an impossible player to replace, though as I analyzed Friday morning, this Jays’ team has the pieces to absorb his loss much better than previous teams who lost their starting point guard. Who gets the start, who gets the bulk of the time, and how their offense looks will be the big storylines after the game.
Greg McDermott has been cagey about what they’ll do going forward, saying at a press conference Wednesday observers would “need to show up on Saturday at 1:30 to find out.” I don’t blame him one bit — why give Marquette any info to help gameplan? He did offer some hints, though.
“Given where we were in the Xavier game, and the intensity of that arena, I decided to go with experience,” McDermott commented on Wednesday. “With that experience, we weren’t able to play with the tempo we’d like to, so we made it more of a possession game to give ourselves a chance to win. That’s not what our program’s about. Our program’s about pace, that’s how our guys want to play, and we’ll continue to push forward with that same tempo.”
Reading between the lines, that sounds to me like they’re preparing for Davion Mintz to be the primary point guard, because he’s the only option that gives them the ability to play at that pace. Isaiah Zierden is the “experience” he was talking about, and as he noted, that didn’t allow them to play at the speed they wanted to. My best guess is Zierden gets the start in this one, but Mintz plays at least 20 minutes as he eases into the role he’ll ultimately take on over the next couple of weeks.
The first test for them is a Marquette team that enters Saturday at 12-6 overall and 3-3 in the Big East. Those records are a bit deceiving; among their nine non-conference wins, only two came against teams ranked in the top 125 by KenPom — Vanderbilt (72) and Georgia (43) while five came against teams ranked 260 or worse. So far in the Big East, they’ve beaten Seton Hall, DePaul and Georgetown, while losing to Butler, Villanova and Seton Hall (yes, they’re already done with the Pirates). They’re 1-3 in true road games, 1-2 on neutral floors, and 10-1 at home.
In other words, they’ve got some things to prove yet, and are probably looking at a wounded Creighton team as a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone — win their first conference road game, and beat a likely NCAA Tournament team for the first time.
They feature a different look than recent Marquette teams, especially last year’s frontcourt-dominated team that featured Henry Ellenson. 17-year old freshman Markus Howard, a 5’11” point guard, has electrified their backcourt and changed the look of the team.
MU is ranked first in the Big East (and eighth-best in the country) in three‐point field goal percentage (.412) and treys made (181). If they stay above the 40.0 percent clip for the season it would mark just the fourth time that has occurred since the 3‐point line was introduced in 1986‐87 — and the first time since 2009‐10 (.413). Marquette concluded last season having knocked down only 33.9 percent of its opportunities.
Howard is a big reason for that. The true freshman was slated to back up sophomore Traci Carter, but after Carter suffered an early-season injury, Howard moved into the starting lineup. He averaged just under ten points a game through the non-conference, though his lethal long-range shooting was already evident, as he made them at a 46% clip.
Once Big East play started, his production went through the roof. He’s averaging 19.2 points per game, shooting 54% from outside (19-35), 56% from inside (22-39), and 93% from the line (14-15). In nearly 26 minutes a game, he’s averaging just a shade over two turnovers a game, and has gotten back half of them on steals (7 takeaways in six games). With each passing game, he seems to add something else to his repertoire; last week against Seton Hall he had a career-high six assists thanks largely to an ability to drive to the rim and kick it out to an open shooter.
JaJuan Johnson (12.7 points, 4.8 rebounds, 2.8 assists) is their second leading scorer, and has taken the most shots on the team by a healthy margin. The senior guard was a decent three-point shooter last year (25-65, 38.5%) but that appears to have been an aberration because his outside shooting has fallen off a cliff this year. He’s making threes at a 31% clip (15-48), more in line with his first two seasons at MU where he made 21% and 29%, respectively. The 6’5” Johnson excels at scoring in and around the rim, but his ability to slash is limited when teams don’t have to respect his three-point shooting.
Three other Golden Eagles average in double figures: Haanif Cheatham (11.3 points, 4.4 rebounds, team-high 3.3 assists), enigmatic big man Luke Fischer (11.3 points, 5.7 rebounds) and forward Katin Reinhardt (10.5 points, 2.5 rebounds). Andrew Rowsey (9.3 ppg.) and Sam Hauser (9.2 ppg.) aren’t far behind. This is a team that can fill it up, and they score nearly 84 points per game — a figure that has only dropped to 79.2 in league play, making them a full point better than the Bluejays in league games.
Creighton leads the league in scoring offense (86.7), assists (17.7) and assist/turnover ratio (1.52), with Marquette second in each category. Meanwhile, Marquette leads the league in three-point percentage (41.2 percent), with Creighton second.
Quick Notes on the Golden Eagles:
- The Golden Eagles knocked down 12 3‐pointers in the first half against DePaul January 14, helping the team set new program standards in Big East action. The 12 treys (including nine straight) prior to intermission were the most ever in an opening stanza since joining the league in 2005‐06 and as a result the 52 first‐half points also marked a new highwater mark for MU. The last time Marquette notched double digit 3‐pointers in a first half of a Big East game came against DePaul on Jan. 17, 2006.
- Marquette ranks first in the league and third in the nation in free throw percentage (.803). The Marquette roster currently features four players shooting 85.0 percent‐or‐better from the charity stripe and the trio of Markus Howard, Katin Reinhardt and Andrew Rowsey has missed a total of just six free throws all season. Dating back to the 1948‐49 campaign, Marquette has never finished above 80.0 percent as a team for the year. The two best efforts came in 1976‐77 (.778) and 2002‐03 (.771), the national championship season and Final Four campaign, respectively.
Bluejay Bytes:
- Creighton has outscored opponents 796-570 in the paint this year, the program’s best margin in that category since the school started tracking the stat in 2003-04. They’ve outscored the opposition in the paint in all six Big East games to date. In fact, the only opponent all year to outscore CU in the paint has been Arizona State. On that night, Creighton made 14-of-25 three-point shots.
- CU has 87 dunks so far this year, far more than any previous season under Greg McDermott, easily eclipsing the mark of 58 dunks in 35 games last year, and matching the 87 dunks in 68 games over the previous two seasons combined.
The Big Muddy Bulletin:
Justin Patton made the go-ahead (and eventual game-winning) basket over Xavier on Monday on a tip-in with 49 seconds left. He’s now a remarkable 12-12 on field goals in the final five minutes of games this year.
The Series:
Marquette leads the series with Creighton by a 50-32 margin, and the teams have split 40 all-time games in Omaha. Creighton has won four of the six meetings since the schools became Big East rivals, though the road team won both games last season.
Greg McDermott is 2-2 against Steve Wojciechowski as a head coach, and is 4-2 in his career against Marquette.
The Last Time They Played:
The last meeting between these two might have been the worst performance of the season for the Bluejays, or at the very least, the most inexcusable. They entered the game at 17-10 and 8-6 in the league, making it a must-win to keep their slim NCAA Tourney hopes alive. Instead, with the score tied at 27 late in the first half they let Marquette go on a 19-4 run spanning the end of the first half and start of the second to build an insurmountable 15-point lead.
It’s kind of jarring to go back and read the postgame comments, because I didn’t remember it being quite so bad. From Matt DeMarinis’ recap:
“McDermott didn’t feel like his Bluejays, who fell to 17-11 overall and 8-7 in Big East play, prepared like a team with a sense of urgency leading up to their second meeting with the Golden Eagles in the last week and a half.
“Tonight we had nothing,” McDermott said. “Nobody wanted to guard. Nobody wanted to share the basketball. We had to resort to zone in the second half, because our man-to-man defense was pitiful and the zone obviously gave us a chance to win the game. We executed some things in the zone pretty well. We had a couple opportunities when we tied it. We came out of a timeout, got a wide open shot and missed it.”
“But we haven’t practiced the best the past week or so. I’m not sure we really want to practice that much. Sometimes in life you get what you deserve, and we deserved this, because from our seniors all the way down to our freshmen, for whatever reason they think they’ve arrived and they weren’t much interested in practicing. Obviously that’s my responsibility, because I let it happen. I let guys walk away from me in practice. I let them stand by the trainer. I let them talk back to me. That’s unfortunate, because we had a chance to do something special here and tonight we didn’t have it.”
It’s a good bet the team remembers that performance (or lack thereof) well; while that might well have been on their minds entering this game before Watson’s injury, it’s doubtful it is now.
Gratuitous Linkage:
Before last week’s battle against DePaul, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel profiled Markus Howard’s rise.
What the Other Side is Saying:
“What we can say about Creighton is this: Watson was injured with 6:55 left in the first half against Xavier. Watson’s injury came after he completed a layup to tie the game at 21, and he had drawn a foul on the play, and Khyri Thomas came in and sank the freebie on the and-1. 22-21 Creighton, and Watson would not return. With the game happening in Xavier’s building and with it being very obvious that Watson wouldn’t come back, at least not in this game, Creighton beat the #22 ranked Musketeers 72-67 and led by as many as 11 with 7:32 left in the game.
That’s probably a bad sign for Marquette’s chances in this game. Greg McDermott gets four days to prepare to face the Golden Eagles without Watson, not just one halftime break like he did against the Musketeers. Will Creighton be as good as they had been so far this season, with KenPom’s seventh best offense and 51st best defense? Probably not. They’re also not going to just quit and die, either.”
-Preview Primer, AnonymousEagle.com
This Date in Creighton Hoops History:
On January 21, 2012, Creighton rolled over Indiana State 75-49 in front of a national TV audience on ESPN2. From Ott’s recap:
“The afternoon set up well for star sophomore Doug McDermott to introduce his game to a national television audience. ESPN2 was in the house, ready to heap praise on McDermott. But the Sycamores decided to force Creighton players other than Dougie Fresh to beat them, hounding McDermott with double and triple teams. ISU held him to a season-low 12 points and forced him to commit 3 turnovers. But McDermott helped in other ways, by grabbing 11 rebounds for the second time in three games and swinging the ball away from him and toward open shooters. His teammates did the rest.
If casual basketball fans tuned in to watch McDermott and get a feel for how the sophomore All American candidate can take over a game, they instead saw the real reason the Bluejays might be a tough out come March. The Jays spread the ball around beautifully, assisting 17 times on 24 made field goals while turning it over just 10 times. Seven of Creighton’s 14 first half field goals came from beyond the three-point arc, as the Bluejays effectively buried the Sycamores in an avalanche of long-range shooting. Jahenns Manigat, Josh Jones, and Ethan Wragge each made two treys in the first half, while Grant Gibbs added one, and CU headed to the break up 42-25. An 8-minute dry spell late in the game cost Creighton a chance to truly decimate the Sycamores (the Jays only scored 7 points from the 8:40 mark until Taylor Stormberg hit a shot with less than a minute to play), but by then the afternoon had taken on the feel of an early season non-conference game against a cupcake opponent. It was anything but a trap; in fact, the outcome and the way the Bluejays got there probably serves as more frightening to opponents than would a career night by McDermott.”
Completely Random, Totally Rad Music Video of the Day:
The Bottom Line:
I believe Creighton will look at this as a sort of referendum game — and offer proof that no, their season did not end when Maurice Watson, Jr. went down, and no, their goals do not change. They’ve been discounted this week, by national media, local media, college basketball fans, even some around the Big East. As Watson himself told WBR in 2014,
“Even though I’m not playing I still don’t want my school to be disrespected, because I play for the name on the front of my chest, not the name on my back. I’m a part of this family now, and when they disrespected them they disrespected me.”
Yeah, Creighton rolls in this one.
Bluejays 85, Marquette 70