The final homestand of the 2023-24 regular season is a doozy: third-place Seton Hall and second-place Marquette. Considering the Jays knocked off first-place UConn a week ago, they have the opportunity to beat all three teams ahead of them in the Big East standings, all at home, in less than two weeks’ time. It’s a huge week, with the chance to set the Jays up for a run in March by earning a protected seed in the NCAA Tournament.
BracketMatrix currently shows the Jays as the top ‘4’ seed across the 107 brackets they track; beating both Seton Hall and Marquette this week would probably move them up to the ‘3’ line — an important distinction should they advance to the second weekend of the tourney.
But first, Seton Hall, a team whose spot in the tourney is a bit more precarious despite sitting ahead of CU in the Big East standings. They’re 18-9 overall and 11-5 in the league, and are squarely on the bubble (though they’re on the right side of it for now) with a NET of 61. The Pirates appear in 96 of the 107 brackets tracked by BracketMatrix, mostly in the 10/11 seed range, as their non-conference schedule continues to drag them down. Eight of their 18 wins are against Quad 4 opponents, two more came against Q3 teams, and their non-conference schedule ranks just 247th. A week where they play on the road against both Creighton and UConn could go a long way toward determining their fate.
The Jays won the first meeting in Newark 97-94 in triple overtime. Seton Hall probably feels like they should have won — they were a defensive stand away from winning in regulation before Steven Ashworth nailed a game-tying shot, after all.
And the Pirates led by five in the third OT before Creighton rallied, with Trey Alexander making not one but two go-ahead shots in the final minute.
At Tuesday’s press conference, Creighton’s players drew parallels to their games against Butler. After losing 99-98 in Omaha, a game where they had several chances to win late, the Jays were laser-focused for the rematch and won decisively 79-57 two weeks later.
“We were really focused and had high intensity going into Butler and as any competitive team does, (Seton Hall) is going to do the same thing coming into here,” Ryan Kalkbrenner said. “So you’ve just got to match it and maybe they come out playing super hard the first four or five minutes, but as long as you weather the storm and keep doing what we do and trust in our game, it will play out well for us.”
Francisco Farabello echoed that sentiment, telling the media that Seton Hall “probably thought that that game that went to triple-overtime they should have won, so they’re going to be angry, they’re going to be hungry and they know that it’s a great opportunity for them for the postseason. So, we’re going to have to be ready from the tip to when the buzzer goes off.”
Creighton is going to get Seton Hall’s best shot tonight, and it’s up to them to match it. If they don’t, given the extreme physicality that Seton Hall brings to every battle, CU will not like the outcome at the end of the night. After a game where the Jays allowed St. John’s to grab 15 offensive rebounds — put another way, a board on an embarrassing 40.5% of their missed shots — CU now faces an opponent who’s even better at that than St. John’s.
Seton Hall has grabbed an offensive rebound on 36.7% of their missed shots this year, 16th most in the country — and in conference games, they’ve grabbed 36.3% of their misses, second only to UConn. What kills you, though, is they don’t just create second chances, they take advantage of them. Seton Hall’s second-chance conversion percentage is 8.07%, as tracked by HaslaMetrics, 16th best in D1. In other words, their best offense is often after missing an initial shot.
It’s indicative of a style of play hyper-focused on the paint. 39.4% of Seton Hall’s total shots come on layups, dunks or tip-ins, second most in all of D1. 77.3% of their total points come either on two-pointers or free throws.
In that first meeting, Seton Hall grabbed 14 offensive rebounds in a 55-minute game (or a board on 28% of their missed shots). They were able to turn those into just 10 second-chance points. The Pirates were 31-of-72 on shots inside the arc, with Kalkbrenner blocking seven shots and altering countless others.
Over the weekend against Butler, Seton Hall turned the Bulldogs over four times in the first four minutes, taking all four the other way for easy baskets. The Pirates had 13 points off turnovers in the first eight minutes, and blasted out to a 16-3 lead on the backs of their defense. While Butler made runs to try and get back in the game, the tone had been set early — and that big early hole was one Butler could never fully dig out of. It’s a concern because CU had 13 turnovers in the loss to St. John’s on Sunday, and the Red Storm outscored the Jays by 11 in points off turnovers. Creighton tied its season-low for turnovers with six in the first game against Seton Hall, and replicating that ball security will be key tonight.
“They are so physical, I think one of the most physical teams that we play,” Greg McDermott said. “Kadary Richmond is just a really hard matchup. He’s got such great pace about his game and he gets to his spots. We’re one of the best at defending the rim and they’re one of the best at scoring at the rim, so something’s got to give. I think [Al-Amir] Dawes is playing at a really high level. I think Dre Davis has to be among the handful of guys for most improved player in the Big East this season. [Jaden] Bediako has provided a really solid defensive presence, and does some really good things offensively as well. So it’s a pretty complete team.”
Richmond averages 16.3 points, 7.0 rebounds and 5.0 assists per game, and though individual stats are always inflated in a 3OT game, his numbers are still eye-popping: he had 21/11/11 in those three categories. But he took 32 shots to get those 21 points — 37% of his team’s total shots for the game — and CU will take that kind of volume shooting any time.
Farabello said their plan on defending Richmond is the same as always: he’s going to shoot a ton regardless of how you defend him, so force him to take tough, contested shots from the spots on the floor you want him shooting from.
“He has the ball in his hands a lot, he’s the head of the snake,” Farabello said. “He’s really, really hard to guard; you have to make him take those tough shots.”
Also high on the scouting report are Al-Amir Dawes and Dre Davis, both of whom scored 21 in the first meeting. Dawes averages 14.6 points per game and shoots 36.3% from three; he made two of the Pirates’ five made threes in the first game. But like Richmond, he needed 20 shots to get his 21 points, indicating CU forced him into tough looks.
Davis, meanwhile, was the opposite: his 21 points came on just 12 shots, and he added nine rebounds and two blocks before fouling out.
For the Jays, Kalkbrenner had one of his best games of the year with 28 points, nine rebounds and seven blocks while playing 54 of the 55 minutes. The numbers are inflated, so how he got there is the more important point: they made a concerted effort, early and often, to get him the ball near the rim.
“I just think we got me a few shots early in the game that kind of established the rim presence and obviously it was a three-overtime game, so you’re going to have some loaded stats on that,” Kalkbrenner said. “But we just got a few easy ones early on. Opportunities kept presenting themselves throughout the game and anytime we can get a layup at the rim, we’ll take it.”
- Tip: 8:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Matt Schumacker and Donny Marshall
- 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
- Cable Cutters: Available on all major streaming platforms
- Streaming on the Fox Sports app and website
- Creighton 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 106 or 201 as well as on the SiriusXM App
- Seton Hall Radio: Pirate Sports Network
- Announcer: Dave Popkin
- Streaming on the SHU Pirates Mobile App
- Simulcast on SiriusXM channel 383 as well as on the SiriusXM App
- Seton Hall has posted at least 10 Big East wins in each of the last nine seasons, the longest stretch in program history. It’s also the second-most 10 win seasons in the league since the 2013 realignment, tied with Creighton and Providence.
- Kadary Richmond missed two games after the loss to CU on January 20 with soreness; since his return to the lineup at DePaul on Jan. 30, the Pirates have gone 5-1 and he’s posted three 20-point games and two double-doubles in wins over Xavier and St. John’s.
- The Pirates are 16-4 this season when Al-Amir Dawes scores in double figures and 7-2 when he’s the team’s leading scorer.
- On Sunday against St. John’s, Trey Alexander became the third different Creighton player to score 30 or more points at Madison Square Garden in the 22 games the Jays have played there since joining the Big East in 2013. The 31 points for Alexander, who was playing his 100th career game, were a season-high and one shy of his career-high done on Dec. 25, 2022 vs. DePaul. He’s averaged 20.9 points in Creighton’s last 10 games. The only other Bluejays to score 209 points or more in a 10-game stretch since 2005-06 has been Doug McDermott and Marcus Foster.
- Ryan Kalkbrenner had a career-high eight blocked shots on Sunday, making him the first Bluejay with eight rejections since Doug Swenson at UMKC on Nov. 18, 1998. Benoit Benjamin owns the top nine single-game blocked shot performances; Swenson and Kalkbrenner’s games with eight swats rank 10th best in program history.
- Three records that could fall tonight: Baylor Scheierman owns 103 defensive rebounds in home games this year, seven shy of the CHI Health Center Omaha single-season record of 110, done by Scheierman himself last season. Ryan Kalkbrenner owns 152 career offensive rebounds at CHI Health Center Omaha, trailing only Doug McDermott who had 155 from 2010-14. And Kalkbrenner has 32 swats in home games this year, six shy of his own single-season CHI Health Center Omaha record of 38 done in 2021-22. Kalkbrenner also had 35 swats last season at home.
Seton Hall leads the all-time series with Creighton 16-13. But Creighton has won six of the 10 meetings in Omaha, and seven of the last nine games in the series at all sites.
On February 28, 2009, Creighton beat Illinois State 74-70 on the final day of the regular season to clinch a share of the MVC regular season title. The Redbirds, led by Osiris Eldridge, had beaten the Bluejays four straight times, including an 86-64 thumping in Normal on January 3 of that season. Booker Woodfox and P’Allen Stinnett both scored 20 points in the game, and Woodfox went a perfect 4-4 from the free throw line in the final 17 seconds to secure the win.
It was their tenth straight win, moving them to 14-4 in the league and 25-6 overall, and sent them to Arch Madness as the #2 seed after losing the tiebreaker to co-champion Northern Iowa. They’d blow a huge lead to Wichita State in the quarterfinals only to be saved by Woodfox on a buzzer-beater, and then be blown out by the Redbirds in the semis 73-49 to banish them to the NIT despite their regular season accomplishments.
The Bottom Line:
Creighton opened as eight point favorites in Las Vegas, and KenPom predicts a nine-point win. ESPN’s BPI gives Creighton 91.6% odds of victory. That all seems bizarrely optimistic for an opponent CU needed three overtimes to beat in Newark, doesn’t it? I think the Jays win, but it’ll be closer than that.
Creighton 79, Seton Hall 73