When we last saw the Jays in action, a depleted roster was taking the eventual national champion Kansas Jayhawks to the wire in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Since that March afternoon, the hype surrounding the 2022-23 version of the Jays has built to unprecedented levels around these parts — hype that they haven’t shied away from in the least.
Sunday night, their play host to DII Drury University in the lone public dress rehearsal before the curtain goes up for real next week. As usual with exhibition games, there’s a connection to Drury — CU didn’t just pull their name out of a directory of possible opponents from a lower division. In this case, their coach is Chris Foster, who played for Greg McDermott at UNI from 2001-05 and served as his grad assistant in 2005-06. Foster has brought teams to Omaha twice before — his Truman State team lost a regular season game 101-69 in 2017, and his McKendree team dropped an exhibition 95-63 in 2019.
The connections go deeper than that. 6’7” junior Brady O’Connell — younger brother of recently graduated Bluejay guard Alex O’Connell — joined Drury this summer after two seasons at Old Dominion. He’s one of 13 newcomers on the roster, including nine freshmen and four transfers, as Foster tries to rebuild the program in his second season as head coach. They were 10-16 in his first year, and just one player returns from that squad — 6’2” guard Quenton Shelton, who averaged 10.8 points per game, ranked second on the team with 56 three-pointers made and shot 38.4 percent from deep.
Among the newcomers are grad transfer Preston Cook, a role player at Auburn the last four seasons, and Brock Wakefield from The Citadel, who averaged 4.6 points last year scoring 37 points in eight games. The most consequential transfer might be Adam Moore, a 6’6”, 215-pound senior who transferred within the Great Lakes Valley Conference from Quincy University to Drury. He averaged 7.8 points and 4.4 rebounds last year while shooting 37 percent from three-point range.
A year ago, the Jays’ exhibition game featured far more question marks than answers beforehand, and there weren’t any easy answers to most of those questions afterward. Heck, there weren’t answers to a lot of those questions by the start of conference play, either.
365 days later, there’s a lot more certainty around where the Jays are at. Not that there aren’t questions. There always are in late October. Chief among them this October: how will superstar transfer Baylor Scheierman look in Creighton’s offense? The one in which he thrived at South Dakota State was polar opposite to the one CU runs — lots of ISO and stagnation as opposed to movement.
Shot Quality’s analytical breakdown in this Twitter thread does an excellent job of breaking down that question, and how his game fits into Creighton’s system.
“I think he’s learned to just trust the offense and let it come to him rather than trying to have him force it,” Greg McDermott told the media this week. “Like I’ve said before he can score the basketball but he’s an elite, elite passer. Adding that to what we already had returning is quite a skill to add to this group.”
Details from Saturday’s closed door scrimmage against Iowa State have been scarce; the only “on the record” information we have is this team photo tweeted out by McDermott afterward. The rumor mill on message boards and social media reported that Scheierman had a big afternoon, with various numbers attached to that statement. McDermott didn’t argue with that assessment when asked, saying that he was “really good.”
Then he elaborated.
“He makes great decisions. He plays with intelligent pace. He’s able to use the pass fake, the shot fake, the head fake to freeze the defense and then make the right read after that happens. He did that on several occasions (on Saturday).”
TCU transfer Francisco Farabello is another player Jays fans are intrigued by, with some wondering where his playing time will come from on such a talented roster. There’s no questions in the mind of his coach.
“He’s a rock. He’s Mr. Steady. He brings it every single day,” McDermott told the media this week. “His communication skills are really good. For someone that’s new to the program he’s played a lot of college basketball at a high level and it shows. He’s in the right place at the right time. He makes the right play and doesn’t make many mistakes. I just think he can be a real glue guy for this team because we can use him in a lot of different ways. He’s going to be an important part of our rotation.”
Likewise, redshirt freshman Mason Miller is also looking for an avenue to carve out playing time, and at this point he’s earned the chance according to McDermott.
“He gave us really good energy Saturday,” he said this week. “Came in, ran the floor, made some shots and was active on the glass. I’m trying to get him to talk a little more and he’s getting better at that. He’s kind of quiet by nature. If he’ll just stick his nose in there and compete and run the floor and communicate, athletically he does some things that are pretty special. I had said in the preseason I’d be disappointed if he wasn’t part of the rotation and at least to this point, he’s earned that right.”
And of course, there’s the question of how big of a leap the returning players will make. How big (or small) that leap is projected to be for Arthur Kaluma, Ryan Nembhard, Ryan Kalkbrenner and Trey Alexander is one of factors driving experts’ differing opinions on the Jays’ ceiling.
For their part, coaches around the Big East bestowed preseason all-conference honors on Kaluma, Nembhard and Kalkbrenner. The name missing from that group? Alexander, who became a star last March with his play in the Big East and NCAA Tournaments.
“I think people maybe are sleeping on Trey Alexander a little,” McDermott said of him this week. “But you can’t have five guys on the all-conference team, so I get it.”
Noting that his progress from last March until now has been excellent, McDermott said that he’s also “been one of our most consistent players in practice. I’m pretty confident that will carry over once the games begin.”
- Tip: 6:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: None
- Streaming on FloSports
- Announcers: Simulcast of the radio broadcast
- Radio: 1620AM and 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Nick Bahe
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Drury played in front of a total of 22,209 fans in 2021-22, an average of 854 fans per contest. That included a high of 2,132 for a home game vs. Missouri S&T. Sunday’s crowd could come close to that total — Creighton’s largest exhibition attendance in school history was 16,317 on Nov. 7, 2014 vs. Sioux Falls, while last year CU’s exhibition vs. Upper Iowa drew 14,844.
- Greg McDermott is 29-0 in fall exhibition games as a Division I head coach, including an 10-0 mark at UNI, a 7-0 record at Iowa State, and a 12-0 mark at Creighton. All but one of his triumphs have been by double-digits.
- Creighton is 53-6 since 1981 in fall exhibition games thanks to 21 straight victories. The only team since 1994 to beat Creighton in an exhibition setting has been Global Sports, which eventually merged and changed their name to EA Sports and had three victories.
Creighton and Drury have never met in an exhibition nor regular-season contest. Greg McDermott is 1-2 in his career against Drury, with those games coming when he was head coach at Wayne State, as he lost a game in 1995-96 and split two meetings in 1998-99.
McDermott is 1-0 against Chris Foster in regular-season games, beating his Truman State team 101-69 in 2017. He is also 1-0 against Foster in exhibition play, defeating his McKendree team 95-63 in 2019.
Last October 30, Creighton rolled over Upper Iowa. The Bluejays used a 32-2 run to pull away from the Peacocks and get a 76-61 victory.
Ryan Hawkins led four Bluejays in double figures (15), while Arthur Kaluma and KeyShawn Feazell cleaned up on the boards, with 9 rebounds each. Alex O’Connell had 14 points and Ryan Nembhard and Feazell both had 10 points in the victory. Nembhard also led the team with 8 assists.
The Bottom Line:
Wednesday night, Jim Flanery’s similarly-hyped women’s hoops team won convincingly 91-34 in their exhibition opener. This one isn’t likely to be THAT lopsided, but the Jays should pull ahead by enough to confidently play their bench significant minutes.
#9 Creighton 90, Drury 58
