Two weeks ago in Chicago, DePaul beat Creighton for the first time in a decade largely by dominating inside. The Blue Demons scored 46 of their 72 points in the paint, including Brandon Maclin’s game-winner.
Their defense allowed DePaul to take 22 of their 53 shot attempts at the rim (41.5%), unable to stop them from getting there or from scoring once they did as the Blue Demons made 16 of those 22 shots. DePaul had the edge in points off turnovers (14-10), second chance points (20-9), and a decisive 46-12 advantage in the paint.
Creighton covered up for a lot of deficiencies by shooting 14-of-27 from three point range (51.9%), and they just about stole a win in spite of themselves. It’s the third-most threes they’ve made in a game this season, behind only the win at Xavier (16) and a home win over Nicholls (17). By percentage, the only game where they shot better was the win over Xavier at home (54.2%). But because they led for most of the game, including in the final minute before Maclin scored the winning bucket, it felt like a game the Jays should have had.
“You know, we felt like we let one slip away from us out there,” Josh Dix said. “They’re a good team. They have a lot of good guards that can go and score, they’re big, they’re tough in the paint. They crash the glass and get a lot of rebounds. We’ve got to handle the boards better. We played with really good pace against UConn going up the floor and I think if we can get rebounds and run in this one, we’ll be successful.”
The defensive problems were primarily because of how they tried to make up for being unable to guard NJ Benson straight-up. The 6’9” senior averages 11.2 points and 7.3 rebounds per game, and had 23 points (on 10-of-11 shooting) with 10 rebounds in the first meeting. They were right to be concerned. Their strategy didn’t work. Going with a more aggressive ball-screen coverage than they usually employ, they not only failed to stop Benson, they got spread out to where they were also out of position for rebounding the ball.
DePaul is not a very good three-point shooting team overall (32.6% as a team, 217th nationally), and doesn’t have a ton of weapons to spread the floor with. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if the Jays opt to double-team Benson this time around, and gamble they can leave one of his teammates alone on the perimeter without paying for it.
One they can’t is 6’7” CJ Gunn, who leads the team in scoring at 14.0 points per game. He’s their top perimeter scorer (49-of-145, 33.8%), though he’s coming off a game where he was 1-of-9 from three-point range against Providence. With Josh Dix guarding him in Chicago, he scored just nine points and attempted only eight shots (1-of-3 inside the arc, 2-of-5 from three).
Another is RJ Smith, whose stats are catching up to Gunn after his recent struggles. Smith has made 36-of-108 (33.3%) from three; he was 1-of-4 from deep against CU two weeks ago, and scored just five points.
While they contained Gunn and Smith, two other guards had a lot of success, albeit in different ways. Brandon Maclin scored 17 and was 6-of-8 from two-point range, scoring off the dribble and taking advantage of the attention CU’s defense had to pay to Benson at the rim. Meanwhile, Layden Blocker had 11, making two of DePaul’s five made 3-pointers for the game.
In spite of Creighton’s success from outside in the first game, DePaul’s defense has been solid. Their adjusted defensive efficiency is 102.0 (48th nationally), and they’ve held opponents to just 47.1% shooting on two-pointers. They’ve done a good job of running opponents off the perimeter (just 33.5% of opponent’s shots have been threes, 23rd fewest in D1 and significantly below the national average of 39.6%). But weirdly, when teams have gotten off threes, they’ve been fairly successful — DePaul’s opponents have made 36.5% from three (putting their defense in the bottom 50 nationally in that category). It just hasn’t mattered because the volume is relatively low. The 27 threes that Creighton took in the first meeting are the third-most of any DePaul opponent this year; compare that to Creighton, who has met or exceeded 27 attempts in 18 of their 28 games.
“Defensively they’ve been extremely sound all season long,” Greg McDermott said Monday. “They won at Seton Hall, they had Xavier down 18 in the second half at Xavier and lost that game, they had Villanova down 18 points in the second half at Villanova and lost. So they’ve had some near misses on the road. It’s a team that, I think, really believes. They were on the free throw line with a chance to win it against Providence (on Saturday) and unfortunately missed a couple of free throws. They’re playing at a pretty high level.”
The rematch has something a Creighton-DePaul game hasn’t had in a couple of generations (since they met in the 1978 NCAA Tournament): real postseason stakes for both teams.
The Big East Tournament heavily rewards the top five teams in the standings by letting them skip Wednesday’s opening round and advancing them straight to Thursday’s Quarterfinals. Right now, Creighton is sitting squarely on the edge of that cutline, and look who’s on their heels:
4. Seton Hall: 9-8
5. Creighton: 8-9
6. DePaul: 6-10
7. Butler: 6-11
A victory gives the Jays a 9-9 conference record and builds a massive 2.5-game cushion between them and the Blue Demons (who would drop to 6-11); they’d be all but guaranteed a top five seed and a bye. But if DePaul manages to pull off another upset and sweep the season series? Creighton would fall to 8-10, while DePaul would improve to 7-10 — and DePaul would own the head-to-head tiebreaker, putting the Blue Demons in the driver’s seat for that coveted 5-seed.
“I hope we have a little extra juice and energy. We lost a close one earlier, and we’re playing for a lot,” McDermott said. “We’re both trying to chase that four seed and at worst end up as a five. That’s important as you enter the Big East Tournament to play one less game. So, we’ve got plenty to play for even though we haven’t had the year that we had hoped we would have. But when we have one of our worst years in a long time and we’re talking about fourth place in the Big East, I guess, it’s not all bad.”
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Nearing the end of his second season at the helm, Chris Holtmann has 28 wins in two years at DePaul – the most from a Blue Demon head coach through their first two seasons since Jerry Wainwright in 2005-07 (32).
Across his last three games, NJ Benson is averaging 21 points and 9.3 rebounds while shooting a combined 86.2% from the floor.
For the second-straight year, DePaul is among the nation’s leaders in assist rate, assisting on 61.5% of the team’s made field goals which is 22nd nationally. As a team, DePaul is averaging 15.3 assists per game, which ranks top-100 nationally. Layden Blocker has a team high 3.6 assists per game, which ranks top-10 in the Big East.
Creighton grad Doug McDermott, the 2014 National Player of the Year, reached a milestone last Saturday (Feb. 21) when he drained two shots to give him 1,000 career NBA three-pointers made. While he’s the 179th player in NBA history to make at least 1,000 three-pointers, he’s just the second to do so after also scoring 3,000 or more points at the collegiate level, joining Hersey Hawkins. McDermott is one of eight players in NBA history to shoot 41 percent or better from three-point range while making 1,000 or more trifectas. Kyle Korver is also one of those eight, giving Creighton the distinction of being the only college with two players on that elite list.
The other six players? Joe Harris, Steve Nash, Stephen Curry, Wesley Person, JJ Redick and Dana Barros.
Nik Graves game-winner against Seton Hall should come as no surprise…he’s been playing his best basketball of the season of late as evidenced by his six straight games with five or more assists. That’s the longest streak of games with five or more assists by a Bluejay since Steven Ashworth did it in 13 straight games from Jan. 25-March 13 last season. Graves leads Creighton with 45 assists and has just 14 turnovers in Creighton’s last nine games. He’s also tied with Josh Dix for the team-lead in points (104). He’s also made 24-of-28 free throws (.857) while shooting 34-for-75 from the floor (.453) in that time.
Creighton lost the first meeting of the season vs. DePaul, 72-71, on Feb. 11th. Creighton is now 13-12 in one-point games under Greg McDermott and 87-80 in program history in one-point games. Creighton is 2-1 in games decided by one point this season. The Jays have played a school-record four games decided by exactly one point on eight occasions (1945-46, 1955-56, 1974-75, 1979-80, 1996-97, 2007-08, 2011-12, 2014-15). The Jays have played the same team to a pair of one-point games twice in the same season just three times in its stories history, as it happened against Drake in 1946-47, Northern Iowa in 2004-05 (when Greg McDermott was UNI’s head coach) and vs. Seton Hall in 2014-15.
Creighton has won 28 of the last 30 meetings with DePaul to take a 33-17 lead in the all-time series. Creighton is 26-2 in the series since joining the Big East, and 11-1 in the Omaha meetings (with 10 straight wins) since joining the league.
Twenty-three of the last 27 meetings in the series have been decided by double-figures, but the last two meetings have been a double-overtime thriller inside Madison Square Garden and a one-point Blue Demons win in Chicago that snapped CU’s 23-game win streak in the series.
On February 25, 2012, Creighton held off Indiana State 61-60 on the final day of the regular season. The Jays overcame a four-point deficit in the final three minutes with a game-ending 7-2 run, as Antoine Young scored the final four points. With 1:42, he beat the shot clock with a step-back jumper to give them a 59-58 lead. He hit two free throws to make it 61-58, ISU’s Jake Odum made a layup to cut it to 61-60, and then Young missed the front end of a one-and-one to give the Sycamores a chance to win it. But CU’s defense was up to the challenge, and they pulled out the win when ISU’s Dwayne Lathan missed a shot at the buzzer.
It was their third consecutive dramatic finish in the span of seven days. One week prior, they beat Long Beach State 81-79 on a buzzer-beater by Young. And four days before this one, they beat Evansville 93-92 in overtime.
Creighton opened as 5.5 point favorites, and the line has moved to 3.5 since. ESPN’s BPI gives the Jays 77.3% odds of victory, while KenPom predicts a six-point CU win with 71% odds and Torvik predicts a five-point win with 70% odds.
It’ll be another tight one, but the Jays will get it.
Creighton 76, DePaul 70