For the second time in four years, Creighton has advanced to the quarterfinals of the NIT by virtue of winning two home games. And like in 2016 when they battled BYU, they now go on the road to take on another really tough opponent with a three-letter acronym for a name — this time it’s TCU.
The Horned Frogs won the NIT two years ago, and are on the short list of favorites to win it this year after finishing the regular season with a 20-13 record and missing the NCAA Tourney by inches — they were officially listed by the committee as one of the First Four Out and were given a #1 seed in the NIT as a result. Jamie Dixon’s three years as head coach at TCU have followed similar paths, as his teams have blasted out to hot starts and then faded down the stretch each season. In 2016-17, they started 8-0 but finished 0-7 in their last seven regular season games; a pair of upsets in the Big XII tourney over Oklahoma and Kansas got them into the NIT where they won the title. A year ago, they started 12-0, went just 9-9 in the league, and lost three straight to end the season — their final regular season game, their only Big XII tourney game, and an upset loss to 11 seed Syracuse in the NCAA Tourney.
This year, they started 12-1 and then won just seven games the rest of the season. They lost six of their final eight regular season games. They were knocked out of the Big XII tourney in the quarterfinals by K-State. And much like 2017, they’ve gotten hot in the NIT with a pair of double-digit wins over Sam Houston State and Nebraska.
TCU is a well-balanced team, ranking 53rd in offensive efficiency and 39th in defensive efficiency. They’re a good offensive rebounding team, grabbing a board on 31.1% of their missed shots (third in the Big XII and 83rd overall). And they aren’t heavily weighted in any one area offensively — 31% of their points come via the three-pointer, 51% on two-pointers, and 18% on free throws.
Defensively, the opposite is true. They were the best team in the Big XII against the three-point shot (opponents made just 32% of them) and ranked ninth against all other shots (opponents made 53.5% of their two-pointers). They block a fair number of shots but have been unable to consistently stop dribble penetration and have allowed opponents to get to the rim — and score at the rim — a lot.
There are two main areas Creighton may be able to exploit to their advantage. First, TCU is extremely sloppy with the ball, committing a turnover on 19.2% of their possessions (229th nationally). Creighton has forced 15 steals over their first two NIT games — eight against Memphis and seven against Loyola — and staying active defensively will yield similar results against this team. The trick? To do it without fouling. TCU has attempted 53 combined free throws through two NIT games, and with referees in NIT games being what they are, Creighton may not be able to be as aggressive as they’d like to be.
Second, TCU has a short bench and generally plays just six or seven players. Four of their five starters played 30+ minutes on Sunday night against Nebraska, including Desmond Bane who never left the floor. Their top two guards rank among the top three in the Big XII in quantity of minutes played. With just 48 hours in between games, the faster Creighton is able to push the pace the better — CU would like nothing more than to turn this into a track meet and wear out TCU in the second half. If they can accomplish the first key — turning TCU over and running in transition — that will go a long way toward accomplishing the second.
Individually, the Horned Frogs are top-heavy as you’d expect with such a short rotation. Five players average in double-figures for points, a group led by the aforementioned Desmond Bane. He’s a consistent scorer on a hot streak, which makes him twice as dangerous — thanks Nebraska! — and is coming off a game where he scored 30 points and made six of nine from 3-point range against the Huskers. Over the last five games, he’s made 20-of-31 (62%) of his threes.
Sophomore forward Kouat Noi, on the other hand, is mired in a slump. He averages 13.8 points per game, but has made just four of his last 23 three-pointers over the last three games (2-for-10 against Nebraska, 2-for-8 against Sam Houston State, 0-for-5 against K-State). And other than one game against Oklahoma State on March 13 where he made 4-of-7, his cold shooting goes back even further — since returning from an ankle injury on February 23, the usually-sharp-shooting Noi is making just 18-for-58 (31%) from three.
Senior point guard Alex Robinson runs the show, and averages 12.6 points and 7.1 assists per game (ranking fifth nationally in the latter). He’s really, really good in transition and sets up the Horned Frogs for success. You have to go back to January to find a game where he had fewer than four assists, and he has 20 combined assists through two NIT wins. As with most super-high-usage point guards, he commits a higher than average number of turnovers as he tries to create plays. He has 123 turnovers so far this year, to be exact.
How many is that? As turnover prone as the Jays have been at times, no one on the team has more than 73 (Davion Mintz). The Jays haven’t had a player with 100+ turnovers since the lone full season Mo Watson played (115 in 2015-16). Robinson is fantastic, he’ll rarely come out of the game, and he’ll handle the ball most of the time that he’s on the floor. It’s not so much a question of stopping him so much as it’s a question of limiting how much damage he inflicts.
Two other TCU players average in double figures: JD Miller (10.9 ppg.), 6.6 rpg.) and Kevin Samuel (7.7 ppg., 6.9 rpg.). Samuel is a 6’11” freshman who averages over two blocks per game and puts constant pressure on the rim. As with most good shot-blockers, he can effect every shot in his vicinity even if he doesn’t block it.
- Tip: 8:00pm
- Venue: Schollmaier Arena (6,800); Fort Worth, Texas.
- TV: ESPN
- Announcers: Roxy Bernstein and Fran Fraschilla
- In Omaha: Cox channel 31 (SD), 1031 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 602 (SD), 1602 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: Check your local listings
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 206, Dish Network channel 140
- Streaming on WatchESPN
- Radio: 1620AM and 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Nick Bahe
- For Cord Cutters:
- TCU is 16-6 all-time in the NIT, including 7-1 at home, and won the tournament during its last appearance in 2017. This is the second time in school history that TCU is playing in a postseason tournament for a third-straight season — the last came at the end of a great run in the nineties.
- Kevin Samuel’s 68.4 percent shooting would rank as the best in school history if the season ended today. His 72 blocked shots are the fourth-most in a season at TCU, the most ever by a freshman.
- TCU has made 270 3-pointers this season and is four away from surpassing the school record of 273, set during the 2016-17 season. And the Horned Frogs rank 16th in the nation with 16.4 assists per game; for the third-straight year, TCU is leading the Big 12 in assists.
- Creighton and TCU have played two common opponents this season, Oklahoma and Nebraska. Creighton lost 83-70 in Norman to Oklahoma on December 18. TCU lost 76-74 in Norman on Jan. 12 and 71-62 on Feb. 16 in Fort Worth. And Creighton lost 94-75 at Nebraska on Dec. 8 in Lincoln, while TCU topped the Cornhuskers in Fort Worth by an 88-72 margin on Sunday night.
- The last Big East team to make the trek to Madison Square Garden to play in the NIT semifinals was Notre Dame in 2008-09. No Big East team has won the NIT since West Virginia in 2006-07.
- All ten Big East teams earned postseason bids after all ten finished the regular-season .500 or better. But one week later, only two Big East teams are still alive as the league is out to a 5-8 start in the postseason. The two teams that are still alive, Creighton and DePaul, were picked ninth and 10th in the preseason league poll, respectively.
Creighton has won two of the three all-time meetings. They won 72-64 in December of 1959 in Red McManus’ first year on the bench, and then split a home-and-home series in 2002 and 2003.
The last meeting was on Super Bowl Sunday, 2003. The Jays stepped out of MVC play briefly on the 26th of that month for a non-conference home game with the Horned Frogs, and won 89-79.
Creighton overcame a 16-point second half deficit to win. Kyle Korver led the 10th-ranked Bluejays with 23 points and nine rebounds as Dana Altman tied Arthur A. Schabinger atop Creighton’s all-time coaching wins list with his 163rd victory.
The Jays donned vintage basketball jerseys for the flight to Fort Worth. The only question is: Best team photo, or GREATEST team photo?
My wife and I watched “The Dirt” over the weekend. It’s a terrible movie based on a really, really entertaining book (funny how that happens so often!). Stick to the Crue’s old videos instead.
The Bottom Line:
Vegas favors TCU by 3.5. KenPom favors TCU by five. And while non-NCAA Tournament games played on ugly, distracting courts have not been kind to Creighton (see also: 2011 CBI at Oregon) and the last time Nebraska lost a tourney game to avoid a postseason matchup with the Jays did not end well for Creighton, either, I think Creighton wins this one.
Bluejays 80, Horned Frogs 76