With two games remaining in the regular season, Creighton sits at 19-9 overall and 11-6 in the Big East. They’re smack dab in the middle of the bubble for the NCAA Tournament, appearing on 107 of the 119 brackets tracked by BracketMatrix with an average seed of 10. In other words, if the season ended today they’d be in — but there’s work to do to keep it that way.
To that end, Bart Torvik’s site has a fun tool called “teamcast” that lets you try out different scenarios to see how it affects seeding or a bid. His T-Rank has been lower on the Jays than other metrics, and currently has them 78th, so his bracket also has them a bit lower. Creighton is currently his last team in the bracket; splitting the next two games keeps them in the tourney in that exact same place. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t matter much which game they win. Beating UConn makes them the top 12 seed; beating Seton Hall instead puts them on the same line.
Winning both games moves them up to the 10 line, and out of the “last four in” group.
If you’re so inclined, you can even go through the entire season and toggle results back and forth to see how they affect the situation. As you’d expect, the home loss to Arizona State back in December is a lead anchor — switching that one game to a win moves them up one entire seed line to a 9. The home loss to Xavier does the same thing.
Some bracketologists are higher on the Jays than T-Rank is. Where the committee falls is anyone’s guess. But back in the real world, there’s a couple of unexpected developments that could help CU. Arizona State has won five of their last six to climb into the top half of the PAC-12, and is now #102 in the NET; if they can somehow get to 75 or above, that home loss moves into Quadrant 2 and becomes much less of an anchor. And Nebraska, winners of two straight, is up to #148. The cutoff for a Q2 road win is 135, so if they continue their late-season rally that win could vault the Jays’ NET ranking even more.
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Creighton’s opponent Wednesday night is 18th-ranked UConn, winners of five straight including a wild 71-69 victory over Villanova last week that saw coach Dan Hurley ejected from the game for… encouraging fans to make noise after he’d been assessed a technical foul? Apparently. I’m sure it made sense to notoriously thin-skinned referee James Breeding at the time.
Hurley’s personality ranges from annoyed to prickly to angry, and fluctuates between the three depending on how the action on the floor is going. Sometimes it spills off the floor, as it did following Creighton’s 59-55 win in January.
“A couple of fans were yelling ‘(Bleep) you, Hurley, you suck,” Hurley told reporters later. “So I yelled back at them. If you’re going to yell at me, and you’re 100 feet away, behind layers of people — that’s some coward (bleep). But I understand. It’s part of the deal. But I’ll say, too, that you may hear something back from me. I won’t just walk away.”
It was an incredibly physical game, as it always is against Hurley’s Huskies. Ryan Nembhard was sick and in bed for two days prior to the game; though he played 35 minutes out of necessity, it was mostly off the ball and one of his worst performances of the year. He had six points, one assist, one rebound and four turnovers. Trey Alexander did the heavy lifting, and had zero turnovers against their full-court pressure. That’s rather important experience in hindsight, given that Nembhard is out for the season and Alexander will play the point in the rematch.
The Bluejays’ game plan was to rely on Ryan Kalkbrenner to bottle up Adama Sanogo inside, plug up the lane to keep UConn’s drivers from getting into the paint, and let Isaiah Whaley shoot whatever he wanted from outside. Greg McDermott said after the game that they were OK with that trade-off, because what the Jays gained by giving up those open looks did more good for them than the 12 points UConn scored on made threes by Whaley did for them. Creighton was able to keep their defensive focus in the paint and keep their rebounders around the basket, leading to 32 defensive rebounds and more transition opportunities.
Kalkbrenner defended Sanogo better than anyone had all year to that point; in the first half, Sanogo had only four points on 2-of-7 shooting with four rebounds. The super sophomore is all over the Big East leaderboard, ranking eighth in scoring (14.5 points per game), second in rebounding (8.2), second in field goal percentage (52.4%) and sixth in blocks (2.0). At 6’9”, 240 pounds Sanogo runs the floor more like a guard than a big man, and covers up a lot of things defensively at the rim.
The one thing he doesn’t do is shoot jumpers, which means UConn wasn’t able to drag Ryan Kalkbrenner out to the perimeter defensively — Big East teams have done that with increasing frequency to get the shot-blocker away from the rim. Because Sanogo plays almost entirely near the basket, and Kalkbrenner is such a great defender without fouling, he was able to frustrate the Huskies’ big man. If that repeats itself, it’s a very good sign for the Bluejays.
Kalkbrenner exited with an injury and played just 22 minutes in the first meeting; Arthur Kaluma did an admirable job on Sanogo, but counting on a repeat performance on a knee that is less than 100% is not ideal.
Senior point guard R.J. Cole leads the Huskies in scoring (16.1 points), assists (4.18), and steals (35 in 28 games). He’s the only player among their top seven to stand shorter than 6’5”, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less of a bruiser — Cole has drawn the most fouls on the team, and the most charges defensively.
Cole is an 86% free throw shooter (98-of-114). He’s a capable scorer from everywhere, and as their primary ball handler the fact that he’s had just 52 turnovers in 930 minutes played tells you everything you need to know about how sure handed he is. He didn’t have a spectacular game in the first meeting, but still had his fingerprints all over it — in 35 minutes he had 13 points, nine rebounds, three assists, three steals and a block.
6’6” senior Tyrese Martin is third on the team in scoring at 13.3 points, and second in rebounding at 7.4 boards per game. He doesn’t take a ton of threes (just 30% of his total shot attempts), but he’s been incredibly efficient on the ones he does take (34-of-79, 43.0%). That keeps defenses honest against both him and the rest of the Huskies.
Whaley was the player CU opted to give space to shoot in the first meeting in exchange for putting more attention around the rim; he averages 7.9 points per game and had 20 against the Jays. He made 4-of-5 two-pointers and 4-of-8 threes. Creighton is more than happy to let him repeat those numbers if it means they’re able to stop Cole, Sanogo and Martin from getting hot.
- Tip: 7:30pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Kevin Kugler and Nick Bahe
- 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
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Satellite Radio: XM 388; SiriusXM app 978
- UConn has faced three teams that it lost to earlier in the season — Seton Hall, Xavier and Villanova — and has evened the season series by defeating all three. Creighton is the fourth team that defeated the Huskies earlier in the year, but it is the first team the Huskies will have to defeat on the road in order to even the season series.
- UConn’s trio of R.J. Cole (16.1), Adama Sanogo (14.9) and Tyrese Martin (13.3) is the second highest-scoring trio in the Big East, averaging 44.3 points per game, just behind DePaul’s Javon Freeman-Liberty, David Jones and Brandon Johnson (46.6). In just conference games, the UConn trio is averaging 44.2 and ranks third, behind St. John’s Julian Champagnie, Posh Alexander and Aaron Wheeler (45.4) and the trio from DePaul (44.9).
- UConn ranks in or near the Top 20 in several Division I categories. The Huskies rank 2nd in blocked shots per game (6.6) and total blocks (184). The Huskies are 4th in offensive rebounds per game (13.82), 8th in total rebounds per game (40.71), 12th in rebound margin (7.6), 18th in scoring margin (11.01), 24th in field goal percentage defense (.399) and 25th in total rebounds (1,140).
- Ryan Hawkins leads the Big East in double-doubles, both overall and in league play. His 11 overall double-doubles are two more than Georgetown’s Aminu Mohammed. Nine of those have come in league play, four more than UConn’s Adama Sanogo and Seton Hall’s Alexis Yetna. Hawkins’ 11 double-doubles are the most in a season by any Bluejay since Doug McDermott also had 11 as a sophomore in 2011-12. No CU player has had 12 or more double-doubles since Bob Harstad had 12 in 1989-90.
- Creighton went 7-2 in the month of February, including a 4-2 road record. CU won four of those games by four points or less. During the month, Creighton had five players averaging in double-figures, led by Ryan Hawkins (17.9 ppg., 8.9 rpg.).
- Trey Alexander, assuming a much larger role after the injury to Ryan Nembhard, was named Big East Freshman of the Week after averaging 13.0 points, 5.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 1.0 steals in two games.
Creighton is 4-0 all-time against UConn, with all four meetings taking place in the last 15 months. Last year Creighton defeated the Huskies in Storrs (76-74), Omaha (74-66) and New York City (59-56). This year’s first match-up was contested in Hartford and also won by the Bluejays, 59-55.
Last season Creighton became the first Big East team to beat UConn multiple times in the same season since Syracuse went 3-0 against the Huskies in 2011-12. That Syracuse team had also been the last Big East team to beat the Huskies three times in the same campaign. Creighton is the only team that UConn has ever played four or more times without a victory.
On March 2, 2013, Creighton defeated Wichita State 91-79 in a winner-take-all game for the MVC Regular Season title on the final day of the season. It was a memorable Senior Night where the Venezuelan national anthem was played for Gregory Echenique prior to the “Star Spangled Banner”, Josh Jones suited up one final time and was introduced as an honorary starter, and the greatest moment the CenturyLink Center DJ has ever had, playing audio of Dorothy from “Wizard of Oz” stating “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore…” right before the tip, leading into video of the locker room speech from Rudy.
Then Doug McDermott went out and scored 41 points to lead the Jays to the title, in what would wind up being the Jays’ final MVC regular season game, and it became an even better memory. What a helluva game that was. Here’s a whole bunch of links to WBR content after that one, because it’s worth reliving.
- Morning After: Creighton 91, Wichita State 79
- Creighton Seniors Defeat Shockers, Cut Down Nets in Home Finale
- Ott’s Thoughts: McDermott Remarkable in Championship Clinching Win Against Wichita State
- Highlight Reel
The Bottom Line:
With a win, Creighton clinches a top-five seed in next week’s Big East tournament and the opening round bye that comes with it. They probably also can feel pretty confident about an NCAA Tournament bid.
Provided UConn can find the arena — they apparently think they’re playing in Grand Island or Norfolk based on this tweet showing their players standing in a remote corn field, not the nearly 1-million population metropolis of Omaha — I’ll pick the Jays to prevail in front of a rowdy, hostile, fueled-by-dollar-beer-night crowd.
Bluejays 68, #18 UConn 64
