Last Friday against an Iowa State team expected to be one of the nation’s best defensive clubs, we saw glimpses of what the 2025-26 Bluejays’ ceiling could be, specifically during a 7-1/2 minute stretch of the first half where they had a 23-0 run that featured 10 straight defensive stops. The second half gave Greg McDermott’s staff plenty of teaching moments on film, as the 46-23 lead they’d built in the first half let them go deep into the bench almost from the beginning of the second half. Perhaps as a result of their experimenting with lineups, they had 10 turnovers in the second half after committing just one in the first half.
It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the blowout win happened without arguably their two best players. Owen Freeman hasn’t played a minute for the Jays yet, and hasn’t played period since a January finger injury ended his season at Iowa. Nonetheless, he was named Preseason First Team All-Big East on Tuesday based on his pre-injury excellence for the Hawkeyes a year ago (16.7 points, 6.7 rebounds). Jackson McAndrew sat out last Friday’s exhibition with an undisclosed minor injury, and was named to the Preseason Third Team All-Big East list after setting a Creighton freshman record with 69 made three-pointers a year ago.
Both are progressing and practiced this week. At Friday’s practice, McDermott told WBR’s Matt DeMarinis that they will be game-time decisions tomorrow. No doubt they’d like to get them on the floor at least briefly before the season opener on November 5, if they can — but they’re also not interested in rushing either of them back if it means risking a setback. The November 11 road game at Gonzaga is right around the corner, and they’ll need both of them that night.
Freeman wasn’t alone in being recognized by the media in NYC. Three other Bluejays earned recognition on the Preseason All-Big East Teams announced on Tuesday: Josh Dix (Second Team), Jackson McAndrew (Third Team) and Nik Graves (Third Team). It’s the first time since 2022-23 that the Jays have landed four players on those lists.
CU was picked to finish third in the league. They’ve matched or exceeded its preseason projection in all but one season since joining the Big East in 2013-14, and are seeking a 10th straight finish in the top four of the league standings.
The Big East media aren’t the only ones perennially underrating Creighton in the preseason. KenPom added a new data point over the offseason showing where teams were ranked ahead of the season by his algorithm and where they finished; while it’s not news, it’s still striking to see in one chart that they’ve beaten KenPom’s projection in 10 of his 16 seasons.
- 2011: Preseason 79 / Final 98
- Difference: -19
- 2012: 82 / 28
- +60
- 2013: 26 / 15
- +11
- 2014: 12 / 17
- -5
- 2015: 45 / 79
- -34
- 2016: 84 / 40
- +44
- 2017: 32 / 28
- +4
- 2018: 45 / 30
- +15
- 2019: 33 / 55
- -22
- 2020: 36 / 12
- +24
- 2021: 14 / 22
- -8
- 2022: 53 / 50
- +3
- 2023: 23 / 12
- +11
- 2024: 12 / 11
- +1
- 2025: 12 / 35
- -23
This year, the Jays begin ranked #41 by KenPom, for what its worth.
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While they were very familiar with Iowa State before last weekend’s game, their opponent in the second exhibition will present a lot more surprises. It’s been two years since they faced Colorado State, and the entire roster and most of the coaching staff has turned over since then.
The Rams were 26-10 a year ago and won the Mountain West tourney, then upset fifth-seeded Memphis in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. If not for a buzzer-beating fadeaway from Maryland’s Derik Queen to give the Terrapins a 72-71 win in the next round, the Rams would have been in the Sweet 16. But head coach Niko Medved left for Minnesota after the season, and their superstar guard Nique Clifford (18.9 points, 9.6 rebounds, 4.3 assists) left for the NBA, where Sacramento drafted him 24th overall.
Combined with the departure of eight other players, new coach Ali Farokhmanesh inherited a near-complete rebuild. Jays fans know him well — he was a thorn in their side (and of everyone in the Valley, for that matter) from 2008-10 at Northern Iowa. In four career games against CU, his Panthers went 3-1. He scored in double figures all four times (15, 17, 18 and 10) and shot 12-of-32 (37.5%) from three. In January 2009, he scored four points in the final minute of a UNI comeback in Cedar Falls, a 69-66 win. And then he became a household name in March of 2010 with one of the gutsiest shots you’ll ever see. Up by one with 30 seconds to play, he hit a three in transition to seal an upset of #1 Kansas. Most players would have pulled it back and drained clock, or perhaps driven it to the rack and either drawn the foul or taken a contested layup. Instead he took a step back and drained one of the most famous shots in March Madness history — one that left CBS’ Kevin Harlan exclaiming “You cannot be serious with that shot!”
Unlike Creighton, they’ve yet to play a game and are itching to gauge themselves. “It’s exactly what you want to test yourself with against a high-level team. They’re competing for NCAA Tournament seeding every year, so you want to measure yourself against them and see where you’re at,” Farokhmanesh said of the Jays this week.
“You’re just so familiar with what each other does and how each other plays that we need to see somebody else. I think it’s going to be great for us to see somebody else and on the road,” Farokhmanesh said. “You’re getting thrown in the fire right away. It’s going to be a good crowd, they’re a great program.”
They were picked seventh by the media ahead of their final Mountain West season this week; the Rams will move to the rebuilt Pac-12 next year. They didn’t have anyone voted to the conference’s preseason teams. That doesn’t mean the cupboard is bare — it just means what is there is unproven.
Rashaan Mbemba (7.0 ppg., 3.6 rpg.), Kyle Jorgensen (4.1 ppg.) and Nikola Djapa (2.4 ppg.) are the only Rams returners who saw action a year ago, as only 13.8 percent of the scoring and 16.9 percent of the rebounds are back.
The players Farokhmanesh has brought in are a mix of high-major transfers looking for bigger roles and highly-regarded freshmen recruits. 6’4” guard Jase Butler was a four-star Top 100 recruit out of high school but struggled to earn playing time at Washington. Another former four-start recruit, 6’10” forward Carey Booth, will be at his third school in three years. He played for Notre Dame in 2023 (averaging 6.1 points and 4.5 rebounds) and Illinois in 2024 (where his production dipped to just over a point per game in 5.6 minutes per). CSU had recruited the native Coloradoan both times before, but Farokhmanesh finally closed the deal. And 6’1” guard Brandon Rechsteiner played in 58 games for Virginia the last two years and started 17, averaging seven points, one rebound and 2.8 assists a year ago.
From the mid-major level, they brought in 6’6” guard Jevin Muniz from Florida Gulf Coast, who started all 34 games a year ago and averaged 10.6 points, 5.8 rebounds and 4.2 assists. 6’3” guard Josh Pascarelli started 58 games the last two years at Marist and led them in scoring (15.9 points), three-point shooting (39.3%) and three-pointers made (62). And 6’8” forward Augustinas Kiudulas averaged 15.2 points, 6.3 rebounds (2.4 offensive) for VMI a year ago.
Farokmenesh told the media in Fort Collins last month that he believes the team is long and athletic, with defensive versatility and the ability to take away the perimeter. They should provide another sturdy test for the Jays, whose tough schedule does not give them the luxury of figuring things out on the fly.
- Tip: 6:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: None
- Streaming on GoCreighton.com/Watch for $7.99
- Announcers: Simulcast of the Creighton Radio broadcast
- Radio: 1620AM, 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Live Stats:
Some stuff from MWC media day this week:
Greg McDermott is 33-0 in fall exhibition games as a Division I head coach, including an 10-0 mark at UNI, a 7-0 record at Iowa State, and a 16-0 mark at Creighton. That includes two straight exhibition wins over ranked teams, as they beat #14 Purdue last October and #16 Iowa State last weekend. All but two of his triumphs have been by double-digits (the win over Purdue last year, and a 58-57 win over EA Sports in 2006 when he was at Iowa State.) That same EA Sports team, previously known as Global Sports, is the only one to have beaten Creighton in a fall exhibition since 1994 — they beat Dana Altman’s teams three times (in 1999, 2000 and 2003).
Creighton unleashed a 23-0 run on Iowa State during last Friday’s exhibition, turning an early 8-4 deficit into a 27-8 lead over a span of just under seven minutes (6:57). Dating back to the start of the 2021-22 season, it was Creighton’s largest run in any game, including exhibitions. The previous best? A 21-0 run over Upper Iowa on October 30, 2021, turning a 32-29 game into a 53-29 blowout. In regular season play, they unleashed a 20-0 run on Texas Southern in 2023 and a 19-0 run on Providence in the 2022 Big East Tourney.
Creighton finished the 2024-25 season ranked 35th overall by KenPom.com. That included the nation’s No. 33 offense, and No. 44 defense. Creighton has finished with a top-25 offense per KenPom eight times and a top-25 defense three times in 15 completed seasons under McDermott.
Creighton and Colorado State have split six all-time regular-season meetings, though the Jays won both previous meetings in Omaha. CSU has had the upper-hand of late, posting victories in 2021 in the U.S. Virgin Islands and 2023 in Kansas City in the two most recent meetings.
Greg McDermott is 0-2 in the regular-season in his career against Colorado State — but he defeated Ali Farokhmanesh all three times that they played when Farokhmanesh was an assistant at Nebraska.