Trailing 10-4 four minutes into Sunday’s season opener, Creighton looked a bit rusty — they missed three of their first four 3-point attempts, and North Dakota State’s Sam Griesel was creating opportunities all over the floor. Then a pair of Bluejays changed the momentum of the game.
Shereef Mitchell checked in at the 15:48 mark and immediately began harassing Griesel and making him uncomfortable. His on-ball defense was tremendous, and Greg McDermott noted in his postgame press conference that Mitchell “changed the game. We were sluggish defensively, and he gave us a spark.”
Speaking of sparks, Memphis transfer Antwann Jones got the start on Sunday when Denzel Mahoney opted to sit out less than 24 hours after returning from COVID-19 quarantine. Jones was fairly quiet in his first run on Sunday, but after taking a deep breath and a two-minute break on the bench, he returned to score ten straight points and give CU the lead for good. The first two came courtesy of this dribble drive from the top of the circle:
And following a pair of free throws, he drained this three in transition:
Then they pulled away using the same formula they deployed time after time in the winter of 2020 to win the Big East regular season title: they spread their scoring across multiple options with four players in double figures (Christian Bishop, Marcus Zegarowski, Mitch Ballock and Jones), they shared the ball unselfishly with an assist on 18 of their 27 made baskets (66%), and they played at a relentless pace with barely any turnovers (4).
Later in the half, Jones snared this rebound in traffic — look at where he came from and how high he leapt to get it — and promptly drilled a jumper. Plays like that add another dimension to what was already a pretty unstoppable offensive force a year ago, and probably give opposing coaches watching gamefilm a headache.
To begin the second half, they scored on nine of their first 11 possessions, turning a 36-24 lead into a 54-34 blowout after just seven minutes. They led by as many as 23 before NDSU ended the game on a 14-2 run to make the final score a bit closer.
And along the way, the biggest question of the day was answered as Marcus Zegarowski’s surgically repaired knee looked no worse for the wear. He showed off the full arsenal, from draining this three as the first half clock expired:
To driving into the paint, collapsing the defense, and dishing to Christian Bishop for a dunk:
To changing speeds like few in the college game can, blowing through three defenders and finishing in traffic.
And so with the first win of the strange 2020-21 season out of the way — played in front of a mostly empty arena except for friends and family, with socially-distanced bench areas, coaches and players not in the game wearing masks, and staffers sanitizing the rims and balls at halftime — Creighton is set to host the UNO Mavericks.
Nebraska-Omaha won’t play a home game until January 2, casualties of their home arena being used as the site for the National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC)’s bubble. They went 1-2 in the Gulf Coast Showcase, beating Middle Tennessee and losing to Austin Peay and Abilene Christian, and over the next month will play Drake, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Kansas State on the road, among others — a gauntlet that begins with #9 Creighton on Tuesday.
Picked fourth in the preseason Summit League poll (just behind North Dakota State, who was picked third), Omaha also placed senior forward Matt Pile on the preseason first team All-Summit list. Pile is averaging 9.7 points and 9.7 rebounds through three games, after averaging a double-double a year ago with 11.6 points and 10.0 rebounds per game. He’s their active career leader in points, field goals made, free throws made, total rebounds, offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, blocks, games started, minutes played and double-doubles, so to say their success starts with Pile is more true than almost any other single player on the Jays’ schedule.
His rebounding prowess is something to keep an eye on given that Creighton often sacrifices rebounding for pushing tempo. Whether UNO has enough shooters to make them pay is another question. They’re still figuring out replacements for graduating seniors KJ Robinson, who was their leading scorer a year ago at 15.2 points per game, and JT Gibson who was their best three-point shooter.
One of those replacements is junior Marlon Ruffin. The sophomore averaged 12.5 points and 4.3 rebounds per game off the bench with 12 double-figure scoring performances in 16 league games a year ago, and over the last four games upped those numbers to 17.0 ppg, 5.3 rpg and 2.3 apg, bolstered by a career-high 30-point performance at Western Illinois. The Summit League’s sixth man of the year, he’s continued coming off the bench this year and is the only Maverick to average in double figures. He had 16.3 ppg, 3.7 rpg, 1.0 apg and 1.7 spg in the Gulf Coast Showcase. And he’s attempted 19 free throws in three games, making 18.
Still, UNO has made only 6-of-33 three-pointers through three games (18.2%) and has only 24 assists against 64 turnovers. Yikes.
- Tip: 4:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Lane Grindle and Jess Settles
- In Omaha: Cox channel 78 (SD), 1078 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 620 (SD), 1620 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: FS1 Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 219, Dish Network channel 150
- Streaming on FoxSportsGO
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters
- Other likely starters are guards Ayo Akinwole (5.3 points, 3.3 assists per game), Zach Thornhill (5.7 points, 2.7 rebounds), and Marco Smith (4.3 points, 2.3 rebounds). Forward Wanjang Tut (7.7 points, 5.0 rebounds) joins Pile in the middle.
- At No. 9, Creighton is Omaha’s highest-ranked opponent of the Mavericks’ 10 year Division I era. The designation previously went to No. 13 Kansas in 2017-18.
- UNO is 29th in D1 in effective field goal percentage in transition (67.7%) — a tremendous mark — and 229th in halfcourt situations (38.3%) — a stark difference. Slow them down and force them to work for a shot, even a bit, and they’ve struggled to score.
- Since CHI Health Center Omaha opened with a 2003 exhibition game between Nebraska-Omaha and Creighton, the Bluejays have been near unbeatable in the facility against teams from Nebraska. Rob Anderson points out in his game notes that CU is 16-1 against in-state foes, outscoring those teams by an average of 81.59 – 63.59. In regular-season games, Creighton is 9-0 at CHI Health Center Omaha against in-state teams, having outscoring the opposition 75.89 – 62.44.
- Creighton’s No. 9 ranking in the AP poll this week marks the 14th week the Jays have spent in the Top 10. All but one of those times have occurred under Greg McDermott. Creighton’s highest AP ranking ever has been No. 7 (Jan. 16, 2017; March 9, 2020; March 16, 2020).
- Creighton did not have a turnover in the first half vs. North Dakota State. The Bluejays played in 575 games from 2003-04 to 2019-20 and had a turnover in all 1,151 halves (including the St. John’s game that was halted in March) during those 17 seasons.
Creighton and Nebraska-Omaha have met 43 times in the regular season, and CU has won 40 of them. The last time they played a regular season game was in 1995, when the Jays won 74-71.
The teams have met seven times in exhibition play since that 1995 tilt, most recently a 96-67 Bluejay win in a 2017 charity exhibition to benefit the American Red Cross Hurricane Relief Fund.
Creighton head coach Greg McDermott is 4-4 in games that count against Nebraska-Omaha. He went 3-3 when he was at Wayne State from 1994-2000, and split two meetings in 2000-01 while he coached at North Dakota State.
One of those previous meetings that counted? On December 1, 1987 the Jays beat Nebraska-Omaha 61-60 thanks to last-second heroics from James Farr, and a couple of key plays from freshman Bob Harstad. The future Bluejay great rebounded a missed three-point shot by guard Duan Cole and scored to give Creighton a 55-52 lead. Then with 3:26 left, he rebounded a missed free throw by Rod Mason, shot and scored again to give the Jays a 57-52 advantage. UNO took the lead on back-to-back threes by Bryan Leach, leaving the Jays just eight seconds for a last shot. With all 6,217 fans in the Civic Auditorium — and everyone on UNO’s bench, for that matter — knowing who would get the ball, Farr took a pass in the backcourt and dribbled through UNO’s defense for a layup with two seconds remaining that gave the Bluejays a 61-60 victory.
He told the World-Herald after the game, “Coach Barone told me to get the ball, take it down and penetrate and make something happen if I had the shot take it, if not, penetrate and dish off. Fortunately, everybody stayed with their man, so I just took it to the basket.”
In this bizarre sports landscape created by COVID, #21 Oregon will play two games this week at CHI Health Center, neither of them against Creighton. They’ll play Seton Hall because they didn’t want to travel all the way to New Jersey, and the Pirates didn’t want to go to Oregon, so they’re meeting in the middle. And they’re playing Mizzou because their meeting in a preseason tourney was canceled.
According to the World-Herald’s Jon Nyatawa, though, Dana Altman wanted to play the Bluejays. He called to see if his Ducks could get a game with their schedule decimated by the virus, and while CU told him their slate was full, they worked with him to make their arena available for other games.
And if either UNO or Kennesaw State have to back out of their games? Altman said they’ll act as a back-up plan.
On our morning drives to his daycare, my seven-month son and I listen to music. Much to my surprise, the more guitar the song has, the more he smiles and loves it. Dance music? Nah. Pop? Nuh-uh. Rock? He’s grinning ear to ear. This one from ZZ Top is already a favorite.
I guess I’m rubbing off on him already.
The Bottom Line:
Creighton runs away with this one. Bluejays 85, Mavericks 63
