[dropcap]We’ll[/dropcap] find out very quickly how good the 2018-19 Creighton Bluejays are, because Thursday night they play host to the Ohio State Buckeyes for one of the marquee matchups of the fourth annual Gavitt Tipoff Games. It’s an extremely stiff test this early in the season, but one that will pay huge dividends should the Bluejays pull off a win — or prove educational should they fall in defeat.
That’s been the case in every previous Gavitt Games battle. In 2015, a young Bluejay squad flew into Bloomington to face #14 Indiana after two blowout wins at home raised expectations. They were humbled in the hallowed halls of Assembly Hall, 86-65, in a game that wasn’t near as close as that score indicates, and promptly knocked back down to reality. In 2016 and 2017, meanwhile, wins over ranked teams in the Gavitt Games served as launch points for bigger expectations (or to confirm one’s already lofty expectations, depending on your mileage). A 79-67 win over #9 Wisconsin was the first big win of the Watson/Patton/Foster/Thomas era; a 92-88 road win at Northwestern showed they were still a force to be reckoned with even without Patton and Watson.
The Buckeyes, who went 25-9 last season in Chris Holtmann’s first year as head coach, lost three starters from that team — including Big Ten player of the year Keita Bates-Diop. They entered the year with mixed expectations, with predictions all over the map — did they overachieve last year, and are bound to regress this year? Or will they reload this year and not lose a step? Through two games the jury is still out, but they certainly look like they’ve reloaded.
They went on the road and won at Cincinnati in the opener, and blew out IPFW at home on Sunday. Point guard C.J. Jackson has been huge in both games, averaging a team-high 19.0 points and making clutch plays — for an example look no further than his dribble drive in the final minute of the Cincinnati game, where he took the ball into the teeth of the Bearcat defense and iced the win with a layup off the glass (it’s at the 1:50 mark of the highlights below).
The funny thing is, that drive is a bit of an anomaly; two-thirds of Jackson’s shot attempts through two games have been 3-pointers (14 of his 21 shots). And that’s nothing new. His shots were split nearly 50/50 between 3’s and 2’s a year ago — he took 172 two-pointers, and 169 threes. He certainly has the ability to break a defense down off the dribble, but he looks for the open three first. And if he gets hot, he can torch an opposing defense.
6’3″ freshman Luther Muhammad is a good on-ball defender and a nice compliment to Jackson offensively — through two games, Jackson and Muhammad have taken roughly 40% of the team’s shots, with Jackson doing damage behind the arc and Muhammad scoring inside the arc. Muhammad was a star recruit coming out of Jersey City, NJ, with his crazy high school highlight reel drawing the attention of none other than Kevin Durant. He also had a reputation as a hall-of-fame level trash talker, which OSU’s staff has tried to curtail somewhat.
Joining them in the starting backcourt is Andre Wesson, a 6’6″ junior guard whose younger brother Kaleb also starts for the Buckeyes. He doesn’t do anything that sticks out on a stat sheet — he’s taken seven shots through two games, scoring a total of eight points — but appeared to take a big step over the final six weeks of last season. Over that span, he scored 13 points at Purdue, had eight points and three assists at Michigan, five points and four assists vs Rutgers, and eight points with three rebounds vs Penn State. He doesn’t need to be a huge contributor statically on a team with as many weapons as Ohio State has, and fills the role he’s asked to play well.
Land Grant Holy Land detailed that role in a preseason article, noting “While he will probably never be completely out of his brother’s shadow, last year he showed an ability to do the little things that every team needs to be successful, but don’t always require a ton of ability.” To wit: against Purdue’s 7’2″ behemoth Isaac Haas, he defended him successfully when none of the Buckeye big men could do so, or without fouling — despite being eight inches shorter. Haas made five of his six shot attempts in the first half, but with Andre Wesson on him in the second half, was only 2-5, and was only able to grab three rebounds.
As good as their guards are, inside is where Ohio State will present the most problems for Creighton. Their most common lineup through two games — on nearly 45% of their possessions — has featured 6’9″, 270-pound Kaleb Wesson and 6’8″, 205-pound Kyle Young together, which to be fair is going to be a problem for most opponents. Both Wesson and Young are able to get position low on the block, and they’ve made 12 of 15 two-pointers so far this year.
Wesson was named to the Big Ten’s All-Freshman team a year ago, after averaging 10.2 points and 4.9 rebounds a game. But once they had film on him, opponents figured out ways to neutralize his strengths and expose his weaknesses. Specifically: Wesson proved incapable of guarding smaller, quicker forwards or more perimeter-oriented big men without fouling, with his 289-pound frame simply unable to keep up. In the NCAA Tournament, he only played seven minutes against South Dakota State; Gonzaga went with a smaller lineup, and he had more fouls than points in 12 minutes of action.
That’s a disturbing trend for the big man: he had three or more fouls in 19 of the team’s 33 games last season, including seven games with four fouls, and five games where he fouled out. He had an irritating penchant for racking up fouls early in games, too, relegating him to the bench for huge chunks of games.
He’s shed 20 pounds in an effort to better defend quicker posts, and through two games he’s managed to do so without the foul trouble that so often plagued him late last year. Creighton is right to be concerned about him doing damage in the paint, but making Wesson chase their big men around the perimeter is likely equally as concerning to the Buckeyes.
6’9″, 230-pound freshman Jaedon LeDee gives them another big off the bench if either Wesson or Young get in foul trouble; to no one’s surprise he didn’t play in the Cincinnati game, as the combination of a tight game and an intimidating road environment aren’t great for a freshman to make his debut if you don’t need him to. LeDee played 13 minutes against IPFW, and what a strange debut it was — he drew seven (7!) fouls in those 13 minutes, attempted 14 free throws (14!!) and made 12. He also took two shots from the field, making them both. Obviously it’s unlikely any other team on their schedule will be so completely unable to guard him that they foul him over and over and over, especially after film of him going 12-14 from the foul line gets around, but still, what a bizarre game.
Creighton has to be ready from the tip to match the Buckeyes’ physical presence, and has to have a Plan B and Plan C if their big men get rolling early. Double teams, throwing out their small lineup and playing two of Samson Froling, Jacob Epperson and Martin Krampelj together, rolling the dice with a small lineup and making Wesson run sprints around the perimeter, bringing back the 1-3-1 zone we saw briefly on Sunday against ETSU…everything has to be on the table.
Off the bench, Duane Washington (6’3″, 190 pound freshman) scored 20 points on 6-9 shooting from three-point range against IPFW. He’s primarily a perimeter threat, as nearly 80% of his shot attempts have been threes, albeit in an extremely small sample size. Keyshawn Woods (6’3″, 205 pound senior) is another perimeter threat off the bench, and is a grad transfer from Wake Forest. He started his career at UNC-Charolette where he averaged 8.4 points, 2.3 rebounds, and 1.2 assists per game as a freshman, before transferring to Wake Forest, where he played two seasons averaging in double figures both years.
- Tip: 6:00pm
- 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
- Satellite Radio: SiriusXM streaming channel 973 (Ohio State broadcast)
- For Cord Cutters:
- Keita Bates-Diop starred for Ohio State last year, averaging 19.8 points and 8.7 rebounds per contest en route to Big Ten Player of the Year honors. His father, Richard Bates, played at Creighton from 1979-83. Richard contributed 478 points and 276 rebonds in 69 games as a Bluejay.
- Kyle Young has yet to miss a shot this season (5-5) and is 6-7 from the foul line and 1-1 from 3-point range.
- Ohio State is playing for the second time in the Gavitt Games after defeating Providence 72-67 on November 17, 2016.
- Creighton is a perfect 60-0 all-time in regular-season home games that take place on or before Nov. 26th. Creighton has won 63 of its 64 regular-season November home games since 1990, falling only to Boise State in 2012.
- Creighton owns 20 victories under Greg McDermott after trailing by double-figures at some point, including Sunday’s win over East Tennessee State when CU trailed by 12 points with seven minutes left. Ten of those comebacks have come away from home. Notably, the comeback over ETSU was just the second time in nine seasons under Greg McDermott that the Bluejays had trailed by 12+ points with less than seven minutes left and won. The other time? February 21, 2012, when Creighton trailed 73-61 to Evansville with 6:20 left before rallying to post a 93-92 overtime win. You might remember that one.
- Mitch Ballock and Samson Froling led Creighton with three rebounds on Sunday vs. East Tennessee State. It was the fewest rebounds by a team leader in a Creighton game since November 30, 2004 when Jimmy Motz, Anthony Tolliver, Tyler McKinney, Dane Watts and Johnny Mathies each had three rebounds in a win at Xavier. Ironically enough, there’s more on that game in the next section!
Creighton and Ohio State have met eight times, with the Buckeyes winning five of them. The first four meetings were prior to WWII; Ohio State won a 1963 game in Columbus, and then the teams split a home-and-home series in the 1971-72 and 1972-73 seasons — Ohio State won 94-76 in Columbus, and Creighton won 79-71 in Omaha.
The last time they met came on a neutral court, in the championship game of the 2004 Guardians Classic in Kansas City. One night after Tyler McKinney dished out 11 assists with zero turnovers in a 78-54 rout of Mizzou, he hit a game-winning shot with 4.2 seconds left in OT to beat the Buckeyes. It was the first career double-double for Anthony Tolliver, with the A-Train scoring 13 points and grabbing 10 boards. The Jays needed his big game, as OSU’s standout guard J.J. Sullinger smothered Nate Funk defensively — Funk was 3-13 from the floor and 0-3 from behind the arc — while scoring a team-high 16 points himself (on 7-11 shooting).
Interestingly, McKinney hit a game-winner in their next game, too, nailing a jumper with 21 seconds left in Cincinnati to lift the Jays to a 73-72 win over Xavier.
Funny story: This is the third consecutive year the Bluejays have played in the Gavitt Games on November 15. In 2016, they knocked off #9 Wisconsin 79-67, and in 2017 they defeated #20 Northwestern 92-88.
Lots of players shined in that 2016 win over Wisconsin. Marcus Foster scored 15 points and got the Jays off to a good start. Maurice Watson had a double-double with 17 points and 10 assists, while also coming up with four steals. Justin Patton played 29 (!) minutes and managed to stay out of foul trouble despite defending some of the best post players he’ll face all year, and did an excellent job preventing Nigel Hayes, Ethan Happ, and Vitto Brown from doing damage in the paint. He also scored 10 points, grabbed seven boards, and had one of the most ferocious blocks a Creighton player has swatted in the post-Echenique Era.
But Khyri Thomas shined brightest. The sophomore from Omaha did a fantastic job of executing the defensive gameplan to limit the effectiveness of Big Ten Preseason POY Nigel Hayes by double-teaming him anytime he caught the ball near the rim. Hayes scored 16 hard-earned points but took just four shots inside the arc. And if that’s all he’d contributed, it would have still been a solid effort. Oh, but he did so much more. Thomas scored 18 points, and scored from everywhere — dunks, three-pointers, jumpers, free throws. With 6:55 to play and the Jays up by a precarious five points, he stole the ball from Bronson Koenig and drove the length of the floor for a layup and a free throw. Then after a defensive stop, he nailed a corner three in transition and suddenly it was an 11 point lead.
In the final minute, he may have single-handedly sealed the win with a 10-second sequence where he grabbed a hard-fought rebound, threw an outlet pass to Patton for an uncontested dunk, then stole the ball from Ethan Happ and raced downcourt for a dunk of his own.
Here’s the full highlight reel from a memorable night at the CLink:
As loyal Primer readers have found out over the nearly 15 years of some form of this feature, I’m superstitious as hell. This song was in the Primer a year ago for that November 15 Gavitt Games meeting, and that turned out OK. So let’s hit “repeat” on the ol’ jukebox.
The Bottom Line:
KenPom predicts a two-point Bluejay win (74-72). Vegas predicts a one-point Buckeye win. Either way, it seems likely to be close. Let’s split the difference!
Creighton 75, Ohio State 74