After a week where the Jays won convincingly in a pair of road games against power conference foes, their metrics have exploded. They were the #5 team in the country on KenPom on Monday morning, rising from #11, though that’s settled back to #8 at the end of the week. More importantly, they were #4 in the first official NCAA NET rankings that came out Monday morning. Accordingly, they’re #9 on Joe Lunardi’s overall seed list, making them the top 3 seed in his mock bracket.
It’s easy to see why: their adjusted offensive efficiency is 16th, and their adjusted defensive efficiency is 9th. Any team with an offense and defense that both rank inside the top 16 nationally is set up well to make a deep run in March. There’s some questions about how much stock to put in these numbers, both from Jays fans and externally, because their non-conference schedule hasn’t quite shaken out as expected — it currently ranks 90th according to KenPom, fifth-toughest among Big East teams, thanks to Iowa and Oklahoma State both struggling more than expected. But as the non-con enters the home stretch, the Jays have set themselves up about as well as you could possibly hope ahead of the Big East gauntlet.
Saturday’s opponent is Central Michigan out of the MAC, on paper the worst opponent Creighton will play all season, depending on your opinion of Florida A&M’s chances of getting rolling once SWAC play begins. The Chippewas come in with a 3-5 record and have been blown out by all three power-conference opponents they’ve played: 89-59 at Oklahoma (#21 KenPom), 94-67 at Florida State (#73), and 88-61 at Ohio State (#24). They lost by double-digits to both Louisiana Monroe (74-64 at home against a team ranked #288, which, yikes) and #247 Stetson (71-61).
Both their offense and defense rank in the bottom-quarter of D1 teams, with their adjusted offensive efficiency at 98.7 (283rd) and adjusted defensive efficiency at 110.9 (318th). They turn it over a ton (on 22.1% of possessions, 340th most in D1), don’t shoot very well (48.3% on twos, 32.7% on threes), and don’t get to the line very much (only 15.7% of their points have come via free throws, 295th lowest).
Concerning for the Chippewas coming into Omaha: those turnovers have led into tons of transition points for their opponents. According to data from Haslametrics, CMU has given up 12.3 points per 100 possessions directly off of their turnovers, 232nd in D1. More concerning: they’ve been really, really bad at guarding the perimeter. Oklahoma made 9-of-20 threes in their win (45%), Florida State was 12-of-28 (42.9%), and Louisiana Monroe was 10-of-24 (41.7%).
It’s a rebuilding year for Tony Barbee in his third year at the helm, with a whopping 12 new players: two D1 transfers, four JuCo transfers, and six freshmen. Their roster was decimated by the transfer portal, with two standouts leaving for high-major programs and large NIL deals (Kevin Miller, who averaged 18.5 points and 5.3 assists a year ago, is at Wake Forest now; Jesse Zarzuela took his 16.3 points per game to Oregon). Add in Reggie Bass, who averaged 12.4 points and 3 assist a year ago before transferring to Kent State, and other transfers by role players, and they were tasked with replacing over 50 points per game from a year ago.
Such is life in the MAC (and arguably, college hoops in general) in 2023. But Central Michigan dipped into the portal themselves, and added a budding star. Anthony Pritchard, a 6’2″ guard who transferred from Tulsa, leads the Chippewas in four separate statistical categories: scoring (13.5 points per game), assists (40), steals (17), and field goals made (44). He also ranks second on the squad in rebounding (5.1). Through eight games, Pritchard has six double figure scoring games, led the Chippewas in scoring four times, rebounding three times and assists seven times. And he’s not only the lone CMU player with more than nine total assists for the season (a wild stat on its own), he’s also the only player on the roster with a positive assist-to-turnover ratio.
It’s sometimes said that everything a team does runs through one player, but when you really dig deep you find out that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It is not an exaggeration in this case. Pritchard is The Guy for CMU — when he’s on the floor, 26.6% of possessions end with him doing something, and he’s taken 25.6% of their shots. Hell, he’s MADE more two-pointers (37) than all but one teammate have even attempted! It’s astonishing, to be honest.
6’6″ fifth-year senior Brian Taylor averaged 14.4 points (third-highest on the squad) and team-highs of 6.1 rebounds per game and 33 steals a year ago while ranking second on the team in blocked shots with 25. This year, he ranks third in scoring at 11.4 points per game, leads them in rebounds at 6.3 per game, and has the most made threes (9-of-27, 33.3%). Interestingly, one-third of his total shots have been two-point jumpers — but he makes that shot only 31% of the time. When he gets to the rim, he converts at a 61.5% clip. Watching clips of him shows how teams try to defend his quick dribble — they stop it and force him to pull up for jumpers.
6’10”, 255-pound junior Markus Harding is the third CMU player averaging in double-figures at 11.7 points per game, and is third on the team in rebounds at 4.5 per game. He missed the game at Ohio State last week, but returned to score 13 on 4-of-7 shooting with seven boards in their win over Valparaiso.
Other players to keep an eye out for include guard Derrick Butler, who is coming off a career-high 24 points against Valpo where he made 4-of-7 from three point range, and Jemal Davis who scored 15 against Ohio State with a pair of threes and 5-of-7 at the line.
Ordinarily, you might think a home buy game against a struggling opponent following a week off has “trap game” written all over it. But it’s not clear to me that Central Michigan is good enough to set the trap. The only drama in this one will likely be whether the Jays are able to build a big enough lead to get extended minutes for players like Josiah Dotzler and Johnathan Lawson.
- Tip: 1:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS2
- Announcers: Lane Grindle and Raegan Pebley
- In Omaha: Cox channel 216 (SD), 1216 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 621 (SD), 1621 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: FS2 Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 618, Dish Network channel 397
- Cable Cutters: Available on all major streaming platforms
- Streaming on the Fox Sports app and website
- Radio: 1620AM, 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Ross Ferrarini
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Simulcast on SiriusXM channel 137 or 201, as well as on the SiriusXM app
- Guard Aidan Rubio leads the Chippewas in 3-point shooting, while hitting 9-25 (36.0 percent) of his shots. He has missed each of the last two games but could return on Saturday.
- Sophomore Paul McMillan IV provides Central Michigan scoring and shooting off the bench. McMillan, a transfer from NJIT, has scored in double figures three times and ranks fourth on the squad in scoring at 6.8 points per game.
- Max Majerle, son of former NBA player (and CMU great) Dan Majerle, started 17 of the last 19 games a year ago for the Chippewas. He’s yet to play this year.
- Creighton handed Nebraska an 89-60 defeat on Sunday. It was Creighton’s third-largest margin of victory in a road game under 14th-year head coach Greg McDermott, trailing only a 93-58 win at DePaul on Feb. 11, 2017 and an 81-51 victory at Southern Illinois on Jan. 27, 2013.
- Baylor Scheierman was named both the Big East Player of the Week and the Oscar Robertson U.S. Basketball Writers Association National Player of the Week after his massive performances in two wins last week. Scheierman had 21 points, eight rebounds and two steals in Thursday’s win at Oklahoma State, and followed it up with 24 points on six 3-pointers in the win at Nebraska.
- Scheierman is now the leading scorer in the Big East at 19.3 points per game. He’s aiming to become the first Creighton player to lead the Big East in scoring since Doug McDermott in 2013-14. McDermott led the nation with 26.7 points per game en route to National Player of the Year accolades.
Creighton is 0-1 all-time against Central Michigan. That “one” is a doozy, though: a 79-73 loss in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the First Round of the 2003 NCAA Tournament. CU came into the game with a 29-4 record and their best-ever seed at the time, six. Ten days prior, they destroyed Southern Illinois 80-56 in the MVC title game, rolling into the tourney with all the momentum in the world. Then they ran into Mike Manciel, Chris Kaman and the Chippewas.
It’s a game I’ve never revisited or rewatched in the 20 years since because it’s among the most painful Jays’ losses I’ve seen in my 45 years, but I finally pulled out the dusty VHS tape this week. Let’s rip the band-aid off and talk about it for a minute, shall we?
CMU were champs of the MAC that year, and a very good team with a future longtime NBA player of their own. But they took an inexplicable 50-24 lead as the most successful Bluejay team in modern history (to that point) played their worst game of the season at the worst possible time. They trailed 38-22 at the half, shooting just 6-of-24 from the floor and scoring on only 11 of 36 possessions — season-worsts in all three categories. They committed 13 turnovers in the first 20 minutes, leading to 21 of CMU’s 38 points, and went the final six minutes without a field goal.
CMU’s pressure defense had the Jays’ ball handlers rattled; Manciel’s red-hot shooting had their perimeter defenders scrambling; and to add insult to injury most of the damage came in the final 9:41 of the first half with Kamen on the bench after picking up his second foul.
It didn’t get much better from there. CMU used a 12-2 run out of the locker room to open the aforementioned 50-24 lead. The Jays turned it over on their first two possessions, missed five of their first six shots, and their defense was still stuck in quicksand. With 16:24 left the primetime CBS audience was switched to other games in most of the country.
They missed what was almost one of the biggest comebacks in NCAA Tournament history. The Jays had missed 22 of their first 29 shots — and then made 11 in a row. They cut a 26-point deficit down to two with a pair of giant runs, first a 32-13 run spanning seven minutes to cut the lead to seven, and then a 10-0 spurt in two minutes. Both runs featured Mike Grimes as the catalyst, scoring 11 points in those final 14 minutes. But everyone got hot at once, with Kyle Korver, Mike Lindeman, and Joe Dabbert all making huge plays.
Down 72-70 with 1:38 to play, Dabbert fumbled a pass under the basket that would likely have been a wide-open layup to tie it. And that was it — CMU closed the game at the line and got the 79-73 win. Creighton spent the last couple of months of the 2002-03 season playing with fire, overcoming slow starts with furious late-game heroics including in the first two rounds of the MVC Tournament. But they dug too deep of a hole in this one, and waited too long to begin their comeback.
It remains impossible to understand, even 20 years later. How did a Bluejay team full of veterans, a program that had been to five consecutive NCAA Tournaments, come out flat for the Big Dance? How did a team that rose to the top ten in the rankings by outworking and outhustling everyone they played turn in 20 minutes of uninspired basketball on the biggest stage?
Steve Pivovar of the Omaha World-Herald called it “March Badness” in the next day’s paper. Drawing inspiration, that’s what I wrote on the spine of the VHS tape 20 years ago before it got buried in a box. And that’s where it’s back now.
The Bottom Line:
Creighton is favored by 29 on KenPom, and ESPN’s BPI gives them 99.0% odds of victory. There was no line in Vegas yet when we published. As I wrote above, the only drama in this one is wondering how many minutes McDermott can get for the back half of his bench.
Creighton 95, Central Michigan 64
