After picking up their biggest win of the young season by defeating #12 Texas Tech in Las Vegas, Creighton begins a four-game homestand Tuesday night. The opponent is Oral Roberts, a veteran team picked to finish third in the preseason Summit League poll. The Golden Eagles have played the nation’s fifth-toughest schedule to this point, and they’ve given the teams on that schedule a run for their money.
- They lost 80-75 at KenPom’s #22 team, Oklahoma State, and were competitive throughout — they never trailed by more than 10 points, and made the Cowboys sweat out the win with a furious late rally that saw them trim the deficit to a single possession.
- They lost 74-67 at Tulsa (KenPom #113), holding a four-point lead with 10:56 to play in the game before the Golden Hurricane pulled off the win late.
- They lost 87-74 at Iowa (KenPom #48), though they basically played the Hawkeyes even for the final 30 minutes. Iowa led by 14 points after ten minutes; Oral Roberts lost by 13.
- And they lost 68-59 at Wichita State (KenPom #51), a game that followed a similar blueprint to the one at Oklahoma State — they dug themselves an early hole, then rallied a bit late to make the home team sweat.
While Creighton is likely going to win, if those four road games are any indication this will likely be closer than people expect until very late in the game.
One reason for that? Summit League freshman of the year Kevin Obanor, a 6’8″, 240-pound forward — he’s a challenging matchup for most teams, but particularly for the Bluejays given their lack of size. Obanor has made 38.9% of his three-point attempts in his career. He has the ability to both knock down mid-range jumpers and post up opposing bigs. He’s an aggressive rebounder (averaging 8.0 rebounds per game and ranking among the top 200 players in D1 in offensive rebound percentage — he’s grabbed 11.8% of missed shots when he’s been on the floor). And he’s a decent shot blocker.
Fortunately for the Jays, his counterpart in the middle is injured and not expected to play. 6’8″, 240-pound senior Emmanuel Nzekwesi, a preseason first-team All Summit League honoree, had averaged 14.5 points and 7.8 rebounds through four games.
In the backcourt, Max Abmas has led the way for the Golden Eagles so far this year. The 6’1″ freshman is averaging 14.4 points through his first seven collegiate games, though he’s not a terribly efficient shooter — he’s made 29.9% from three-point range (a zone where 70% of his shots come from) and just 30.8% on two-point jump shots. He can score, and has, but he’ll take a fair number of shots to get there. And it looks like he has the green light to shoot as much as he wants — he’s attempted an insane average of 10 three-point shots per game (9.6 to be exact) — which leads you to believe he’s a better shooter than he has been so far. In a close game, a hot three-point shooter can tilt the outcome and if this one is closer than expected, keep an eye on Abmas.
6’3″ senior Deondre Burns is a grad transfer from Arkansas Little Rock. A slippery guard who has done a really good job of attacking defenses in the paint throughout his career, both via dribble penetration and through coming off ball-screens, Burns gives Oral Roberts a different dimension offensively. Three-fourths of his shot attempts have been inside the arc the last two seasons; he will shoot from three-point range so defenses have to respect that, but he’ll primarily look to score inside 20 feet.
There is reason to think Creighton is a tougher matchup for Oral Roberts than the other four teams they’ve taken to the wire — and thus, more likely to win going away. ORU likes to play fast, with an adjusted tempo of 75.0 to rank 19th in the country. Their average possession length is under 16 seconds. Their average opponent’s possession length is under 15 seconds — that ranks 4th in D1. They’re going to try to run, which generally plays into CU’s hands especially at home.
They don’t protect the rim with the type of big, long shot blockers San Diego State, for example, threw at the Jays. ORU has blocked just 4.8% of opponent’s shots, ranking 322nd in the country.
And they aren’t a terribly good shooting team — their effective field goal percentage of 42.6% ranks among the bottom 40 teams in the country. Their three-point percentage of 26.1% ranks 322nd. They shoot just 45.1% on two-pointers, ranking 273rd.
The Golden Eagles have hung around against tougher opponents by playing fundamentally sound defense, creating turnovers via the steal, and rebounding the ball extraordinarily well — which allows them to get out in transition and push tempo. They had 14 offensive rebounds at both Oklahoma State and Tulsa, and 13 at Wichita State; part of that is a product of missing so many shots, as they missed (not attempted, MISSED) 25 three-pointers at both Oklahoma State and Tulsa and 20 at Wichita State. But it’s also a product of toughness. After the loss to the Shockers, Gregg Marshall told the media “We’d pull away, then they’d cut it back. They’re a really tough team and a physical team and a big, strong team.”
That said, it’s been a lot of years since I’ve seen a team so devoted to shooting the three despite being so demonstrably bad at it. If they have a night where they catch lightning in a bottle, they’ll be hard to beat because of everything else they do well — they’ve been competitive against good teams in spite of all those missed threes, after all. Here’s hoping when that happens, we see it in YouTube highlights and not in person at the CHI Health Center.
Get there early — it’s Dollar Beer Night!
- 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
- Streaming on FoxSportsGO
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Brody Deren
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters
ORU has had three different players lead them in scoring through seven games, as Deondre Burns, Kevin Obanor and Max Abmas have taken turns with the hot hand.
The Golden Eagles have made 59 three-pointers in seven games (an average of 8.4 made threes per game) despite shooting just 28.5 percent from distance.
Before Creighton scored 83 points on Friday, Texas Tech had allowed only one team to score more than 80 points since the start of last year — 85 by Virginia in the 2019 NCAA Tournament title game. And Creighton’s 46 points in the first half tied the most by any TTU foe in a half since the start of last season, something only Kansas did (in Lawrence).
Creighton freshman Shereef Mitchell had a season-high 10 points in last Thursday’s game vs. San Diego State, becoming the seventh different Creighton player to score in double-figures this season.
Last Friday’s win vs. No. 12 Texas Tech marked the seventh straight season that Creighton has knocked off a top-25 opponent. Greg McDermott is 16-30 as Creighton coach against top-25 foes, more than twice as many top-25 wins as any other coach in program history. Prior to McDermott’s arrival, Creighton was 18-115 all-time against top-25 foes.
Creighton is 7-4 all-time against Oral Roberts, but two of the last three meetings were decided by a single point.
The last time Creighton faced off with Oral Roberts on Dec. 17, 2016, an unbeaten (10-0) Bluejay team nearly tasted defeat for the first time. CU trailed 65-60 with 6:08 left before scoring the final six points of the game, compiling 10 consecutive defensive stops. WBR’s Morning After recapped the wild win:
“After scoring nine points in the first 2:20 of the second half to take that 54-41 lead, they scored just 12 points the rest of the half. TWELVE POINTS. Over the next eleven minutes, Oral Roberts outscored them 24-6, with the Bluejays taking ill-advised, quick shots that often came before potential offensive rebounders were even in position should the shot not go in, or committing sloppy turnovers.
While the starters began the slide, the bench finished it off. Clinging to a 54-49 lead, Isaiah Zierden checked in for Foster and immediately committed a turnover that led to points. Leading 58-53, Tyler Clement and Martin Krampelj came in for Watson and Patton; Clement made a terrible pass on his very first offensive possession that led to the fast break layup from Owens to tie the game at 58 (and force a Creighton timeout to get the starters back in).
Having surrendered momentum and given ORU the bravery to think they could actually win, not even the starters could stem the tide. Foster missed an ill-advised three that led to the Owens basket to give ORU a 60-58 lead. Patton, Foster, and Zierden missed shots on the next three possessions and ORU took a 62-58 edge. Patton briefly stopped the bleeding with a dunk to make it 62-60, but then Owens — the 6’9” center who’d made three 3-pointers all year and would be encouraged by almost any defense to take as many of them as he desired — banked in a three from 25 feet out. It was a ridiculous shot, but the kind that goes in when it’s your night; now up 65-60 on the tenth ranked team in the country with five minutes to go, it was increasingly looking like it was indeed their night.
It would be the last points Oral Roberts scored in the game. The Jays took timeout and instituted a 1-3-1 zone, and it immediately knocked ORU off their game. They took wild, off-balance shots three straight possessions, and then the Jays went back to their man-to-man defense to keep them off-balance. The result was eight straight missed shots and three turnovers in their last six possessions — leading to zero points over the final six minutes of the game, which gave their offense just enough elbow room to eek out the win.
In between the defensive stops, Patton scored buckets on back-to-back possessions to cut the deficit to 65-64, the latter coming on a dunk with 4:15 to play, and Foster nailed a jumper to give them the lead 66-65 with just over three minutes to play.”
On December 3, 2013, Creighton won at Long Beach State, 78-61, following up a disappointing holiday tournament with a solid road win. The Jays lept out to a 48-28 lead at halftime, thanks to making 10-17 three-pointers to stun the home crowd. It was the first start for Ethan Wragge, as the Jays looked to get his offense into the game earlier, and he rewarded his coach with 15 points including back-to-back threes during the early moments of the second half.
Of course, that’s not the memory most people have of the Long Beach State game. It’s of the Big West Conference’s failed webcast and LBSU’s live stats working only sporadically, and of Creighton fans entertaining themselves on Twitter while listening to the game on the radio.
The Bottom Line:
Closer than expected (for awhile), Creighton ends up winning by 14.
Bluejays 79, Golden Eagles 65
