If Creighton wants to get back in the race for the Big East regular season title, Saturday’s game against #13 Xavier is a must-win. The Musketeers are 9-1 in the league at the halfway point, and own wins over second-place Marquette (8-2) and fourth-place Creighton (6-3), plus a sweep of UConn. True, they still have to play at Marquette, and have yet to play 8-2 Providence at all. But falling three games behind them in the standings (and in effect four games, with the tiebreaker) would be game over.
In their 82-79 win at UConn on Wednesday, they led by as many as 17 points and were so difficult to stop that Danny Hurley – as strict of a man-to-man coach as there is — switched his team into a zone defense.
“I think they kinda threw their hands up after trying to defend them man-to-man,” Greg McDermott said this week at his media availability. “Xavier just doesn’t have any weaknesses. There’s nothing you can really cheat off of. You have to play everybody pretty honest.”
Creighton, too, threw their hands up after trying to defend Xavier earlier this month. They switched to a zone late in the game in Cincinnati, and it was effective — they forced two turnovers and disrupted their shooting rhythm. But as UConn discovered, the downside to playing a zone against Xavier’s frontline is that it’s easy to get out of position for defensive rebounds when they miss a shot. With 7’0” Jack Nunge and 6’9” Zach Freemantle crashing the glass, one is likely to be matched up against a guard in a zone scheme, and they win that mismatch more times than not.
That previous matchup was a 76-possession barnburner that Sean Miller called “one of the most up-tempo games I’ve ever been a part of.” Xavier won 90-87, but not before Creighton led for over 19 minutes of game time — the Musketeers needed a late 16-3 run to take control, and even then Baylor Scheierman nearly brought CU back single-handedly. He had 25 points, and had an opportunity to tie the game on the final offensive possession.
The Jays opted to guard Freemantle with Ryan Kalkbrenner, and it worked brilliantly: a player who averages 15.1 points had just five, shooting 2-of-9 from the floor. But that meant sticking Arthur Kaluma on the 7’0” Jack Nunge, and that didn’t work at all. Nunge averages 14.3 points, and had 15 on 5-of-8 shooting, to go along with 12 rebounds, three assists and two blocks.
“We really made a lot mistakes on our ball screen coverages in Cincinnati,” McDermott said this week. “Sometimes we over-helped, sometimes we didn’t help enough. When we watched that on film the day after, I know the guys were frustrated with our inability to execute our plan.”
Mistakes or not, the plan makes sense. Freemantle is 6’9” but operates mainly around the basket; Nunge is 7’0” but can stretch the floor and is a threat to shoot from anywhere.
It’s why walk-on Zander Yates, who took center stage on Wednesday with three 3-points in garbage time of their win over St. John’s, is looking forward to the prep work ahead of Saturday’s game.
“I get joy from helping the starters prepare. In practice I usually play as the other team’s ‘five’, so this week I was Joel Soriano,” Yates said on the postgame radio show after Wednesday’s win. “I don’t usually get to shoot threes in practice. But as we prepare for Xavier I’ll get to shoot threes — I’m looking forward to these next couple of days, because I’ll be Nunge in our prep, like I was last time.“
Complicating matters, in terms of matchups, is the presence of Souley Boum. The UTEP transfer is an electric player and a stone-cold killer late in games. He had 26 points in 39 minutes of the first meeting, making 7-of-13 inside the arc, 2-of-5 outside, 6-of-7 at the line, and had eight assists.
McDermott admitted this week that they still haven’t really figured out what to do with him, even with the benefit of a full game worth of film to study. They initially stuck Trey Alexander on him, hoping his length could disrupt Souley. It didn’t. They tried the smaller Shereef Mitchell on him off the bench, hoping his quickness and aggressiveness could bother Souley. It didn’t.
“You have to be there on the catch. That’s the key,” McDermott said. “He’s so good at scoring — it doesn’t matter if he’s running off the screen or off the dribble. And his midrange game is really good. He’s really creative there. We have to try and make his life as difficult as we can, and then we have to make him defend on the other end.”
And then there’s Colby Jones. The 6’6” junior scored 20 points in the first meeting, making 7-of-11 inside the arc and 2-of-4 outside. He was completely overshadowed by his teammates, and yet he had 20 points. That’s what makes Xavier so difficult — even their secondary scoring options are lethal. Jones also guarded Scheierman in the game’s final six minutes, with FS1’s “Inside the Huddle” microphones picking up Sean Miller in a timeout saying “Colby, I know you’re tired, but you have to take 55 (Scheierman).” He held Scheierman to 0-for-6 shooting with a foul and a turnover, after he’d been 10-of-12 shooting before that.
Meanwhile, Xavier didn’t have much of an answer defensively to Kalkbrenner. In 38 minutes he scored 15 points, but he only took eight shots — making five. All night long, Xavier gambled defensively that they could front Kalkbrenner with Nunge and Freemantle and get away with it. The Jays played right into their hands — not only did they fail to throw the ball over the top to try and take advantage of their fronts (only doing so one time), they mostly ignored him altogether in favor of jump shots from other players. Ryan Nembhard took 17 shots. Scheierman took 18. The Jays didn’t shoot well enough, consistently, from outside to force Xavier to compensate by trying something else inside.
Still, though, the Jays scored 87 points on the road, with 1.14 points per possession. They turned it over just 11 times, and had 20 assists on 32 made baskets. That should be enough to win most of the time. Xavier was just slightly better — 90 points, and 1.18 points per possession. They had 13 turnovers and 22 assists on 34 made baskets.
CU’s offense was not a problem in Cincinnati, and you have to figure they’ll get plenty of good looks in the rematch, too. This game will be won and lost on defense — and the team who blinks first will likely be the one on the losing end. That was Creighton in the first game; they had a lapse midway through the second half, Xavier immediately took advantage, and the Jays never led again.
“As soon as you take breath, they’re going to punch you in the mouth,” McDermott said, summing up the key to beating Xavier. “We’re going to have to really be locked in for 40 minutes.”
- Tip: 11:00am
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: CBS (KMTV-3 in Omaha)
- Announcers: Andrew Catalon and Steve Lappas
- In Omaha: Cox channel 3 (SD), 1003 (HD); DirecTV channel 3; Dish Network channel 3
- Outside Omaha: Your local CBS affiliate, either over-the-air with an antenna or on cable/satellite/streaming
- Streaming on CBSSports.com
- Creighton Radio: 1620AM, 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Simulcast on SiriusXM channel 383 and on SXM app channel 973
- Xavier Radio: 55KRC
- Announcers: Joe Sunderman and Byron Larkin
- Simulcast on Sirius XM channel 134 or 201 and on SXM app channel 964
- National Radio: Westwood One
- Announcers: Kevin Kugler and Nick Bahe
- Airing in select markets (though not in Omaha)
- Streaming on WestwoodOne.com
- Xavier is 5-1 on the road this season, including 4-1 in Big East play.
- Xavier leads the nation in assists per game at 21.0 apg. In addition, XU is second in the Big East and fifth in the nation in overall field goal percentage (.503) and is first in the Big East and third in the nation in 3-point field goal percentage (.403). XU leads the Big East in scoring at 84.0 ppg., which ranks eighth in the nation.
- Souley Boum, XU’s leading scorer at 16.8 ppg. (tied for second in the Big East), is also second on the team and sixth in the Big East in assists at 5.0 apg. He leads the team and is fourth in the Big East in assist-to-turnover ratio at 2.7-to-1.0 for all games, and in league games only he leads the Big East in assist-to-turnover ratio at 4.1-to-1.0.
- This year will mark Creighton’s 13th Pink Out, which coincides with the arrival of head coach Greg McDermott. The Bluejays are 8-4 in the first 12 Pink Out games, while playing in front of an average of 17,898 fans per game (excluding 2021, when COVID limited attendance). Creighton has raised $413,399.18 since the start of the 2011-12 season.
- Baylor Scheierman has made a three-point basket in all 20 games he’s played this season, stretching his streak dating to last year to 30 in a row if you include the end of his time at South Dakota State. Ty-Shon Alexander owns the longest streak in Creighton history of 33, done from Feb. 27, 2018 – March 6, 2019.
- Creighton won 104-76 game vs. St. John’s on Wednesday, bringing up a bevy of numbers related to the century mark. Creighton has never scored 100 points in consecutive conference games, and last scored 100+ in consecutive contests on Nov. 18, 2016 (103 vs. Washington State) & Nov. 20, 2016 (110 vs. North Carolina State) at the Paradise Jam.
Xavier owns a 21-16 lead in the series with Creighton, but Creighton leads 7-6 in Omaha. Twenty-four of the 37 all-time meetings have been within five points in the final minute, including 10 of the last 16 games.
Last year in Omaha, Creighton led by 17 points at halftime after one of their best halves of basketball all season. The lead evaporated in just seven minutes of the second half after one of the biggest — and certainly quickest — collapses in program history.
Xavier’s Jack Nunge hit a pair of threes in the first 68 seconds, and missed a third moments later that rimmed out. Teammate Paul Scruggs didn’t miss, though, and after 2-1/2 minutes seconds the lead had already been halved. After a bucket at the rim by Zach Fremantle to make it 36-30, Greg McDermott called timeout to try and plug a leaking dam that had a rush of floodwater crashing into it.
The Jays couldn’t regain their composure despite the stoppage, and after eight more unanswered points gave Xavier the lead, McDermott called another timeout. It, too, did no good. CU got on the board with a pair of free throws, but then Xavier scored another 10 unanswered points before the Jays finally made their first basket of the second half, taking a 48-38 lead with 9:15 left. Combined with two media timeouts, there were four stoppages for the Jays to try and regroup, and none bore fruit.
“I needed 30 timeouts, not (two),” Greg McDermott said half-jokingly on the postgame radio show. Gallows humor was the only rational response after a loss like this.
Trey Alexander’s layup with 8:56 left finally ended the 29-2 Xavier run. At that point, Xavier had made more shots (14) than Creighton attempted (12) in the second half — and to add insult to injury, Xavier had rebounded three of their seven missed shots. Meanwhile, the Jays’ first 16 possessions ended with seven turnovers, two made free throws and eight missed shots.
To say the Bluejays owe these guys one is the understatement of the century.
On January 28, 2017 Creighton beat DePaul 83-66 in a pink-out game where this happened:
The Bottom Line:
ESPN’s BPI gives Creighton a 73.7% chance of victory, while Creighton is a four-point favorite in Vegas. KenPom predicts an 81-77 Bluejay victory. So the experts are in alignment on this one!
Creighton wins another high-scoring affair, and inserts themselves right back into the thick of the Big East title race.
Bluejays 87, Musketeers 82