[dropcap]The[/dropcap] 2019-20 season gets real in a big hurry on Tuesday night, as Creighton goes straight from a blowout home win over Kennesaw State played in front of a laid-back audience to a true road game at Michigan that will be played in front of a hostile crowd.
It’s an old coaching axiom that you learn a lot about your team the first time you play on the road. That will be especially true for Creighton in this game, because the Wolverines are a big, physical team — and the Bluejays are, well, not. From Jon Teske to Isaiah Livers and on down the line, Michigan has size and length that CU doesn’t. That makes this a fascinating early look at how the Jays will fare against the sort of teams that fill the Big East slate. Can their great guard play compensate for what they give up inside? Can they rebound well enough to allow them to run in transition?
The Wolverines advanced to the Sweet 16 a year ago, but a lot has changed since March. Coach John Beilein headed to the NBA. Their top three scorers (Ignas Brazdeikis, Charles Matthews and Jordan Poole) headed to the NBA, too. Some things haven’t changed, though: they’re once again predicted to finish in the top half of the league, as there’s enough talent in the cupboard under new coach Juwan Howard that Big Ten media picked them to finish fifth in the preseason poll.
7’1, 265 pound senior Jon Teske causes problems for a lot of opponents. A year ago he averaged 9.5 point and 7.1 rebounds with eight double-doubles, all of them in Big Ten play. He shot 52.1% from the floor and 36% from three-point range in conference games. He led the Big Ten in blocks with 75. And he did it all mostly without getting into foul trouble, averaging over 27 minutes a game. Teske is hard to defend because he’s effective not only on the block, but coming off of a ball-screen for jump shots, too.
In CU’s case, there’s simply no one who matches up with him size-wise. Kelvin Jones and Christian Bishop *are* Creighton’s size, literally, and neither can match his size or physicality. Bishop gives up six inches and 60 pounds in a head-to-head battle. Jones gives up three inches and 30 pounds. There’s no one else on the active roster taller than 6’5″. With both players prone to foul trouble, it’s concerning.
How well they can defend Teske without fouling, and how well they can keep him off the glass without fouling, may well be the key to the game.
Fellow senior Zavier Simpson has deceptively quick hands, and was named to the Big Ten’s All Defensive Team a year ago after logging 53 steals (1.43 per game). He had five at Villanova, and CU fans are well aware of how difficult it can be to turn the Wildcats over. His steals power their transition game, which is where he truly excels. Simpson had the sixth-best assist to turnover ratio in all of D1 hoops a year ago (3.3), and also the sixth-most total assists in the country (244, or 6.6 per game). He had eight games with 10 or more. He had five or more in 27 of their 37 games. Simpson’s a capable scorer (8.8 points per game on 43% shooting) and has a surprising nose for the ball (5.0 rebounds per game), but he’s more often the type of player who affects the game — often controlling the game — through avenues other than scoring.
6’7″, 230-pound junior wing Isaiah Livers primarily came off the bench a year ago, averaging 7.9 points and 3.9 rebounds a game. When asked to play a bigger role in February when the excellent Charles Matthews was injured, he was excellent in his own right — Livers had a double-double with 12 points and 10 boards against Nebraska in his first career start. and followed it up with 11 and 5 at Maryland. He was their best three-point shooter by percentage a year ago (42.6%) and made the third-most threes (52). The vast majority of his shot attempts a year ago were three-pointers (61.3% of his total shot attempts, to be exact) but he does have the ability to attack teams inside the arc when asked (21% of his shots came at or near the rim, according to Hoop-Math.com, with roughly half of them created himself off of dribble penetration). He’ll probably be asked to do so against the undersized Bluejays.
Freshman Franz Wagner, the 6’9″ younger brother of former Wolverine star Moe Wagner, was expected to play a big role right away. Instead he’ll miss the first 4-6 weeks of the season with a fractured wrist. Other players of note include 6’1″ junior Eli Brooks, who scored 24 points on 5-of-11 shooting from three-point range in their season opening win against Appalachian State after averaging 2.5 points a year ago.
If there is one obvious achilles heel for Michigan, it’s depth. They have two open scholarships currently and their active roster consists of just 10 players. They played just eight players against Appalachian State, with all five starters logging 28+ minutes. If foul trouble strikes — and starters Livers and Adrien Nunez both had four fouls in their first game — there’s not a lot on the bench to turn to.
A less obvious achilles heel might have emerged last week in their season opener. Michigan had a 67-37 lead with 12 minutes to play, and then scored just 12 points the rest of the game. Two giant runs by the visiting Appalachian State Mountaineers erased a 30-point deficit: a 13-4 run that featured a three-minute Michigan scoring drought, and a 18-0 run that featured four more scoreless minutes from the Wolverines. If not for going a perfect 6-of-6 from the line in the final minute, Howard’s coaching debut might have ended in embarrassing fashion.
What the heck happened in the final 12 minutes? A lot of Michigan analysts seem to chalk it up to the lack of a proven, run-stopping scorer and to so much of their rotation being relatively inexperienced. Appalachian State made eight of their final 10 shots in the paint. Michigan had nine turnovers and 12 missed shots in their final 20 possessions. If there’s a textbook way to blow a 30-point lead, that’s pretty close to it.
A scoring drought that long — and blowing that big of a lead at home — has to be a concern. The underlying reasons are likely to sort themselves out by later in the season, but on Tuesday night, the same flaws that led to that drought could very well surface again. Here’s hoping Creighton can capitalize.
- Tip: 5:30pm
- Venue: Crisler Arena, Ann Arbor, MI
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Tim Brando and Bill Raftery
- 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 Josh Dotzler
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Satellite Radio: Michigan broadcast on SiriusXM Channel 383
- Announcers: Brian Boesch and Terry Mills
- For Cord Cutters:
- Michigan has appeared twice in the Gavitt Tipoff Games, losing to Xavier 86-70 in 2015 and beating Villanova 73-46 in 2018 in a rematch of the national title game from the year before.
- First-year head coach Juwan Howard was a member of the “Fab Five” with Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson, and played in two Final Fours. An assistant coach for five seasons with the Miami Heat after a 19-year NBA career, he brought in veteran Phil Martelli as an assistant to help him acclimate to running a big-time college program. Martelli spent 34 years as the head coach at St. Joseph’s with 444 career wins, seven NCAA Tournament berths, one Sweet 16 and one Elite Eight.
- You probably remember Howard’s basketball career. You might not remember his multiple roles in TV and movies. According to Michigan’s media notes, Howard appeared in 1994’s basketball documentary film ‘Hoop Dreams’. In 1996, he appeared in an episode of the TV show ‘Hang Time’, and then had an appearance in the ‘West Wing’ in 1999 playing a former Duke basketball player. Additionally in 1999, Howard was on an episode of ‘Arli$$’. He is still a member of the Screen Actors Guild.
- Not only is Creighton a perfect 10-0 in season-openers under Greg McDermott, but the Bluejays have also won their second game in each campaign under McDermott. Tuesday’s game will be CU’s biggest test in the second game of the season since defeating No. 9 Wisconsin 79-67 on Nov. 15, 2016 in Omaha in the Gavitt Tipoff Games.
- Creighton is 5-4 under Greg McDermott in its first true road game of the season, and 14-11 in the last 25 years in the initial road game. The road opener has been the barometer for Creighton’s postseason plans in the previous 11 years. Creighton has made the NCAA Tournament the five times it has won the road opener, and missed the NCAA Tournament the other six seasons.
- This year marks the fifth edition of the Gavitt Tipoff Games. Creighton has participated each season, going 2-2 in the event while facing three ranked teams. The Jays lost at #14 Indiana 86-65 in 2015, beat #9 Wisconsin 79-67 in 2016, beat #20 Northwestern in Evanston in 2017, and lost to Ohio State 69-60 in Omaha.
Michigan has won both previous meetings, with the most recent coming in the 2009 Old Spice Classic in Orlando. A 83-76 overtime loss to the Wolverines kickstarted a miserable weekend at the House of Mouse for the Jays — losses to Xavier (80-67) and Iona (63-55) sent them back to Omaha without a win in a tournament that was an integral part of their schedule. In the span of three days, they’d gone from playing for resume-building wins on a potential NCAA Tournament at large bid, to knowing they’d need to win the MVC Tournament title to secure a bid, all before December 1.
“In the season’s first four games, twice Creighton has held a second half lead over a Top 20 team, only to lose. Both times, they proved they’re a good team capable of winning against that level of competition, but unfortunately also proved they’re not a great team because they were unable to actually beat that level of competition. It’s tough to realize that a team is THAT close, but isn’t able to get over the hump repeatedly.
Thursday’s battle with Michigan was especially tough, because Creighton was up by five with three minutes to play and had the ball…only to lose the lead and the game.”
It was a loss that left Ott grasping at straws:
“Past Bluejays players, at the comedic expense of Dana Altman and some of the other coaches, joke about the repetitious instructions doled out by Dana and his staff season after season. Bend your knees! Get a good base! That’s how you hang a banner! We have to get better on the boards!
Add to this storied collection what fans find themselves muttering under frustrated breaths immediately following Creighton’s close-but-not-quite matchups against the Big Boys. We played pretty well, but we couldn’t close them out. We’re almost there … just needed a few breaks to go our way. We can hang with those teams.
The Bluejays played pretty well* against the Maize and Blue. Just like we all wrote about after Creighton played pretty well* against Dayton but lost.
The *asterisk denotes where my “pretty well” gets cut off from what I really want to write, which is: “…pretty well, except for in the last 5 minutes of a big game in which Creighton has a lead.”
Take your pick. Dayton and Michigan early this season. Kentucky last year in the NIT. Both regular season games against Drake in 2008 when the Bulldogs were (aghast!) ranked in the top 25. The NCAA Tournament game against Nevada in March 2007. A road game against Southern Illinois just a few weeks earlier that year. Not to mention the number of games in which CU held a large second half lead against lesser opponents but took the foot off the accelerator, only to see the (usually visiting) team come back late and make the game closer than expected.”
On November 12, 2010 the Greg McDermott Era at Creighton officially tipped off with a 71-57 win over Alabama State. All of WBR’s postgame coverage from that game is fun to look back at but how’s this for describing Doug McDermott and Jahenns Manigat after their first game?
“There were other key performances on opening night, too. Jahenns Manigat, the freshman guard from Canada, made 3-5 from long range for 12 points in 22 minutes, but it was his energy off the bench — on defense, going after loose balls, keeping his teammates up when the game turned tense in spots — that while can’t be quantified with stats, is impressive for a freshman and gives the Jays another dimension they lacked last year.
And of course, Doug McDermott, who after 18 points in the exhibition last week had 16 points and 7 rebounds in the opener. He’s a throwback to an earlier era of Creighton hoops (or to Greg McDermott’s teams at UNI, for that matter) in that he doesn’t overwhelm you with physical skills, and if you’re an opponent, you don’t see any one area of his game that makes it obvious why he’s as good as he is. Yet he’s almost always in the right place for rebounds, for tip-ins, to catch passes for easy baskets, and on defense. He just has that intangible about him that can’t be coached. He’s the type of player you play against, aren’t necessarily impressed with, then you look up at the end and he’s got 15 points and 8 rebounds and you say to yourself “How the heck did that happen?”. And he does it every single night. Creighton’s had a lot of those type of players over the years. They’ve won a helluva lot of games with those type of players. They’d gotten away from that in recent years, but with Doug McDermott, they’ve got another one of them, and an awfully good one, I’d say.”
I’m quite often a damn fool — my wife would say it’s most of the time, tbh — but every once in a blue moon I look back at something I wrote years ago and think there’s a tiny chance I have brief moments of clarity.
Then again, I may have undershot his ceiling at 15 points a game. His ultimate career arc would have seemed absurd on the morning of November 13, 2010, however.
Did you really think Creighton could visit the great state of Michigan without the Primer linking to two of that state’s greatest 1980s exports, Axel Foley and Bob Seger? Of course not.
The Bottom Line:
This is a game that matches the #31 and #32 teams in the country according to KenPom, so in theory you’d think this should be a fairly evenly matched battle. In theory.
In reality, Michigan’s advantage inside will probably be too much for CU to overcome on the road. KenPom has this as a four-point loss, 74-70. I agree, but I think it’ll be a bit higher scoring.
Michigan 80, Creighton 76