With a month to play, the middle of the Big East is a jumble of five teams separated by just a single game. Creighton unfortunately finds themselves in that group after losing two straight; the Jays are tied with their opponent on Saturday, Xavier, for fourth place at 7-5. St. John’s, Butler, and Providence are all 6-6, with Butler and Providence facing off on Saturday. As those five teams begin to separate this weekend, the loser of the Xavier/Creighton game will drop below the cutoff line for a first-round bye in the Big East Tournament.
There’s a lot of basketball still to be played, but for the Jays, it’s getting late early. A once-favorable looking schedule now looks ominous — KenPom predicts a 4-4 finish over the final eight games, though two of the wins and three of the losses are essentially toss-ups (predicted as a one-point margin one way or the other).
That a team with self-proclaimed Final Four aspirations finds itself in this situation, having these conversations, is frustrating. If Saturday isn’t a must-win, it’s damn close if just from a morale standpoint — while the temperature of Bluejay fans online is running hot now, a three-game losing streak in February would break the mercury.
Creighton’s offense has come alive over the last five games, scoring 87, 97, 85, 85 and 98 points. Problem is, their defense has tanked at the exact same time. They’ve given up 91, 99, 62, 78 and 94 points in those five games (with hapless DePaul the outlier at 62). Their KenPom ranking for adjusted defensive efficiency ahead of that Seton Hall game? 7. Today it sits at 38.
Enter Xavier. They’ve won three in a row to climb back into the race, and are coming off a 56-53 win over Villanova where their defense suffocated the Wildcats so completely on the final possession that VU couldn’t even get a shot off.
When they met in Omaha three weeks ago, the Bluejays and Musketeers exchanged leads nine times with CU ahead for 19:29 and XU in the lead for 17:24. Xavier led by as many as seven points in the second half before Creighton flipped the game in less than two minutes — highlighted by a pair of threes from Baylor Scheierman, the Jays erased a 58-51 deficit and turned it into a 60-59 lead.
Scheierman then sealed the win with a pair of massive threes late in the game, en route to 20 points. Alexander added 27 and nine rebounds; Kalkbrenner had 16 points and nine boards while holding Xavier’s players to just 15-of-34 shooting inside the paint.
And then there was Steven Ashworth. He hit some huge shots, yes, but it was his defense on Xavier’s leading scorer, Quincy Olivari, that stole the headlines. Olivari came in averaging 18.9 points per game and had made five threes in each of the previous two games; he scored 15 on 5-of-12 shooting and was just 1-of-4 from behind the arc. It’s a real outlier — he’d been hot before that game, and Ashworth frustrated him so much that Olivari drew a technical foul for shoving him after a defensive set.
After the game against CU, he picked right back up where he left off, making 18-of-34 (52.9%) from three in the four games since. One of those? A monster 43-point effort against DePaul where he was 5-of-8 inside the arc, 7-of-12 outside, and 12-of-12 from the line with 10 rebounds, three assists and three steals. Goodness.
Whether or not Ashworth can duplicate that feat on the road might go a long way toward determining the outcome.
Desmond Claude (16.0 points per game) and Dayvion McKnight (11.6 points per game) both scored 20 in the first meeting, albeit in very different ways. Claude took 23 shots and was 0-of-5 from three point range (on brand for a player shooting just 18-of-83, or 21.7%, from three on the season.) All of his points came in the paint and from the line. McKnight, meanwhile, was the only Musketeer whose jump shot was on that night — he was 4-of-5 from three-point range, one of just two games this season where he’s made more than 2 three pointers.
Claude’s struggles from three are the only thing holding him back from being an all-conference type player, because he’s been really good in lots of other areas (as CU saw last month.) He’s made 57.3% of his shots at the rim and 39% from midrange, and he’s shooting 77.6% at the line (and 84.8% in Big East play). All those drives to the rim have resulted in drawing the ninth-most fouls in the league per 40 minutes. Yet he keeps hoisting 4-5 threes per game, ostensibly to keep defenses honest — if teams don’t have to guard him on the perimeter, his dribble-drives to the rim are a lot harder to initiate. But it’s a killer.
Xavier doesn’t force a ton of turnovers on the season (just 16.2% of opponent’s possessions, ranking 254th), but they make the most of the ones they do get. In the first meeting, Creighton had just nine turnovers but Xavier turned them in 21 points. Combine that with grabbing 14 offensive rebounds that turned into 19 second-chance points, and you’ve got a recipe for playmaking that gets the Cintas Center crowd riled up. Whatever else CU does or doesn’t do, they can’t give up 40 points against their non-set defense again and expect to win.
- Tip: 11:30am
- Venue: Cintas Center, Cincinnati, OH
- TV: FOX
- Announcers: Tim Brando and Robbie Hummel
- In Omaha: Cox channel 10 (SD), 1010 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 42 (SD), 1042 (HD); DirecTV 42;
- Dish Network 42 or 5203
- Outside Omaha: Your local FOX affiliate
- Streaming on FoxSportsGO
- Creighton Radio: 1620AM, 101.9FM
- Announcer: John Bishop
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Simulcast on SiriusXM channel 138 or 201, as well as on the SiriusXM App
- Xavier Radio: 700 WLW-AM
- Announcers: Joe Sunderman and Byron Larkin
- Streaming on the Varsity Network
- National Radio: Syndicated on ESPN Radio affiliates nationwide
- Announcers: Mike Couzens and Bob Valvano
- Streaming on ESPN.com
- Quincy Olivari earned Naismith Trophy and USBWA Oscar Rob- ertson National Player of the Week honors as well as Big East Conference Player of the Week after averaging 33.0 points and 8.5 rebounds in wins over St. John’s and at DePaul. Olivari’s 43 points at DePaul were the most by a player in a Big East game since 2019. He’s second in the league in scoring (18.9 ppg.) and 3-point field goal percentage (fifth in the nation at .450), and leads the Big East and is 15th in the nation in 3-point field goals at 3.1 made per game.
- Senior big man Abou Ousmane is fifth in the Big East in offensive rebounding (3.0 rpg.), and sixth in blocks (1.5 bpg.) after tying his career high with five vs. Villanova.
- Freshman Trey Green, who scored a career-high 23 points at Providence on the strength of five 3-pointers, has hit at least two 3-pointers in seven Big East games.
- Xavier is fourth in the nation in fast break points at 17.0 points per game.
- Creighton’s Baylor Scheierman and Xavier’s Quincy Olivari rank as two of the best shot-makers in the Big East Conference. Olivari ranks second in the league with 18.9 points per game, while Scheierman is third with 18.6 points per game. Both men are tied for the league lead with 72 three-pointers made, as well. Scheierman shoots 83.8 percent from the line, while Olivari connects at an 83.6 percent clip.
- Creighton has played in three different overtime games this season, losing to Villanova (Dec. 20), winning at Seton Hall in triple-overtime (Jan. 20) and losing at Providence (Feb. 7). Creighton is 12-9 in overtime games under Greg McDermott, and 10-10 in the next game after an overtime battle.
- Baylor Scheierman had 26 points and 10 rebounds vs. Butler on February 2nd, then added 27 points and 12 rebounds five days later at Providence. He’s the first Bluejay with back-to-back games of 20 points and 10 rebounds since Doug McDermott from March 1-4, 2014. McDermott was also the last Bluejay to do it in three straight games when he did it in four straight from Nov. 25-Dec. 10, 2011 early in his sophomore season.
Xavier owns a 22-18 lead in the series with Creighton, including a 12-7 lead in Cincinnati. Xavier won 2-of-3 meetings a year ago, with the home team winning each regular-season contest before the Musketeers eliminated the Jays from the Big East Tournament in New York City.
Creighton won 85-78 in Omaha on Jan. 23rd earlier this year.
On February 10, 2008 Creighton toppled Southern Illinois 72-53 in Omaha. They got 20 points off the bench from Booker Woodfox, nine points and 11 rebounds from Kenny Lawson, and 14 points from P’Allen Stinnett in the win.
Preseason MVC Player of the Year Randal Falker scored the first basket of the game, but then the Jays scored 10 straight — including five from Stinnett — and after taking a 14-4 lead, the game was never closer than ten points the rest of the night. They eventually built a 45-26 lead at halftime, scoring one more point in a half than they had the entire game two weeks earlier in Carbondale (the infamous College Gameday trip to SIU meant to celebrate what had recently been one of the most heated rivalries in college hoops, but instead a national TV audience on ESPN primetime was treated to a 48-44 clunker of a game).
The Bottom Line:
Xavier is favored by 1.5 in Vegas, and KenPom predicts a one-point Musketeer win. Interestingly, ESPN’s BPI disagrees, giving Creighton 57.6% odds of victory.
If CU can pull off the road upset, they’ll go a long way toward cleansing the palate after two straight losses. If not? They’ll limp home at 7-6 in the league riding a three-game losing skid. Yikes.
I think CU pulls out a tight one here.
Creighton 74, Xavier 72