On March 23, 2014, the Baylor Bears ended one of the most beloved eras in Creighton hoops history in humiliating fashion: an 85-55 destruction in the second round of the NCAA Tournament that served as the curtain call for Doug McDermott, Grant Gibbs, Ethan Wragge and Jahenns Manigat. Until today, I hadn’t watched the locker room video of Greg McDermott’s speech to an inconsolable team of Bluejays since that night; I hadn’t been able to stomach it, and frankly, it’s so seared in my memory that there was no need to rewatch the actual video anyway.
It’s a loss that Jays fans have long wanted revenge for. So it’s only fitting that the path to the second weekend of the 2023 Tourney for this extremely hyped group of Bluejays runs through those same Baylor Bears. It’s time to rewatch that video, relive those awful memories, and prepare to avenge that loss.
“Nobody has to remind me,” GregMcDermott told the media in Denver on Saturday. “That was a tough, tough day for our program.”
“Think back to 2014,” he continued. “That team was recruited to play the Missouri Valley, and we played in the Big East and finished second. That team was built heavily on shooting. There weren’t many games that we shot it poorly because there were so many guys who could shoot it on that team. As we’ve moved into the Big East, obviously we’ve gotten a little longer, a little more physical.”
The bad news as the Jays prepare for the Bears in 2023: Baylor is still Baylor, a great offensive team with lots of weapons. They have the second-best offensive efficiency in the country at 121.6 — the D1 average is 104.9, and Creighton, who ranks 29th, is seven points worse per 100 possessions at 114.4.
It’s fueled by perhaps the best set of guards Creighton has seen this season. Keyonte George, Adam Flagler and LJ Cryer are elite scorers who force almost every defense they face to make tough decisions on who to pay extra attention to, and who to guard straight-up.
“They can afford one guy to have an off night and still be at a pretty high level on the offensive end,” McDermott said.
That was on display in their win over UC Santa Barbara on Friday. George scored just nine points, shooting 2-of-9 overall and 1-of-7 from three-point range. But Flagler and Cryer scored 33 combined points on just 23 shots, and the Bears pulled away for a double-digit win.
Over 45% of their shot attempts on the year have been three-pointers, 22nd most in D1. They make those shots at a 37.1% clip, 31st best in D1. When they’re hitting, they’re really, really hard to stop — much less beat. One of the teams they struggled with the most? Iowa State, who handed them three of their 10 losses. McDermott called his former assistant, ISU head coach TJ Otzelberger, on Friday night to chat. Partially to console the Cyclones coach on their NCAA Tourney exit, certainly, but also to talk shop.
“You know, their defensive scheme is considerably different than ours, and that’s not something you can change in a day,” McDermott said of their conversation. “But he gave me a few thoughts.”
Slowing down those guards will be a handful for Trey Alexander, Ryan Nembhard and Baylor Scheierman. It seems likely that Alexander will draw the assignment initially on Flagler, a 6’3” senior who played a bit role for Baylor’s 28-2 national title team of two years ago and is now a star in his own right. He averages a team-high 15.6 points and 4.7 assists per game, and had 18 points with five assists on Friday against UCSB.
George, a projected lottery pick in this year’s NBA Draft, also averages 15.6 points per game. At 6’4” he’ll be a tough draw for either Nembhaard or Scheierman to slow down, and whichever doesn’t get him will have to contend with Cryer who averages 14.5 points per game while making 41.8% of his threes (76-of-182).
That’s the bad news.
The good news: Baylor generates a lot of their offense off of second-chance opportunities, grabbing an offensive board on a whopping 34.5% of their missed shots (20th best in D1). Creighton is one of the country’s best defensive rebounding teams, allowing opponents to grab just 23.3% of missed shots (12th best). And Baylor draws a lot of fouls, with a free throw rate of 37.0% (42nd highest in D1). 20.6% of their total points have come from the line (58th most). Creighton fouls less than almost anyone in college basketball.
Defensively, this Baylor team is not in the same league defensively as their 2021 National Title team, especially in the paint. Their adjusted defensive efficiency is 101.3, ranking 99th in D1, but in Big 12 play it ballooned all the way to 109.3 to rank dead last in the league. It’s largely because they allowed Big 12 opponents to shoot a ghastly 56.9% on two-point shots and an effective field goal percentage of 53.0%.
But it’s also because their opponents had an assist on 60.5% of their made baskets, last in the Big 12, and only forced a turnover on 16.5% of possessions, ninth out of 10 teams in the league. They also had the lowest block percentage (5.2%) and steal percentage (7.6%) in the league.
The Bears have been bullied inside by opposing bigs all year, ranking 315th in 2-point defense. And now they get to face Ryan Kalkbrenner, fresh off a 31-point performance in the first round of this tournament. Baylor coach Scott Drew said the closest comp to Kalkbrenner that he’s schemed against is probably Kansas’ Udoka Azubuike and David McCormack.
“He’s a big target,” Drew said. “He’s like a big tight end in football across the middle. It’s hard to guard them. I mean, you can front them, you can double them, try to push them out and be physical with him.”
It seems likely that the Bears will have to double Kalkbrenner. If and when they do, it’s up to the Jays’ shooters to make the open looks they missed on Friday against NC State.
So at the end of the day, the more things change, the more they stay the same: in 2023 as it was in 2014, Creighton’s going to need their guards to hit open threes in order to advance past Baylor and into the Sweet 16. If they can get there, the bracket has been blown to bits in front of them — their next opponent would be 15th seed Princeton, who knocked out 2-seed Arizona and 7-seed Missouri.
Ahead of tip-off, here’s a sneak peek of the Creighton radio broadcast intro hype argument, courtesy of Voice of the Jays John Bishop:
- Tip: 6:10pm
- Venue: Ball Arena, Denver, CO
- TV: TBS
- Announcers: Lisa Byington, Steve Smith, Avery Johnson and Andy Katz
- In Omaha: Cox channel 27/1027
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 247, Dish Network channel 139
- Streaming here
- Creighton Radio: 1620AM, 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Nick Bahe
- Streaming on The Varsity Network app, Powered by Learfield
- National Radio: Westwood One
- Announcers: Dave Pasch and Fran Fraschilla
- Simulcast on SiriusXM channel 135 or 203
- Baylor shot a season-high .549 to down UC Santa Barbara 74-56 in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament. Adam Flagler had a game-high 18 points to become BU’s all-time leading scorer in NCAA Tournament games.
- All nine of BU’s losses have come against teams currently ranked in the top 30 of the latest NCAA Net rankings, and BU’s 11 quad-one wins are the fourth-most in the nation.
- Baylor is the only Power-Six team to have a guard trio each averaging more than 14.5 points per game.
- Ryan Kalkbrenner has become the first player in Creighton basketball history to appear in four NCAA Tournament victories. Last week he became the first Bluejay to appear in five Big East Tournament wins.
- Creighton won at least one NCAA Tournament game in 2021, 2022 and 2023. That makes CU one of six teams in the country to have a win in each of the last three NCAA Tournaments, joining Arkansas, Baylor, Gonzaga, Houston and UCLA. The only other time that Creighton has won an NCAA Tournament game in consecutive seasons came in 2012, 2013 and 2014, also under Greg McDermott.
- Baylor Scheierman didn’t waste any time making history on Friday, sinking a three-pointer just 12 seconds into the win over NC State. It was his 44th straight game with a three-pointer (the nation’s 4th-longest active streak), and 34th in a row in a Bluejay uniform. The 34 straight games with a triple is one more than the previous school-record held by Ty-Shon Alexander in 2018-19.
- Speaking of Scheierman, he owns 282 rebounds this season. In the last 30 seasons, the only Bluejay with more was Doug McDermott with 288 in 2011-12. No Bluejay has secured more than 290 rebounds in a campaign since Benoit Benjamin’s 451 in 1984-85, when he snared a whopping 14.1 per contest in 32 games.
Creighton is 3-2 all-time against Baylor. The teams last met in November of 2017 when the Bears won 65-59 at the Hall of Fame Classic.
In the most recent Creighton win (Dec. 4, 1999), the Bluejays trailed 61-47 with three minutes to play in regulation before a Ben Walker runner at the buzzer tied the score at 67 and forced overtime. In the overtime, Creighton took its first lead of the day and held on to win by one.
Creighton has played three times on March 19 — two wins in the NIT (70-61 over Loyola in 2019 and 87-54 over Wagner in 2016) and a loss last March when they took Kansas to the brink in a 79-72 loss in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
The Bottom Line:
This is about as close of a matchup as it gets in March. ESPN’s BPI gives Creighton a 51.2% chance of victory. KenPom favors the Jays by one point, while Vegas oddsmakers favor Baylor by one point.
