Creighton opened themselves up to criticism and scrutiny with a surprising 15-point loss to UNLV on Wednesday, and their final exam before Big East play will begin to answer the questions observers now have about the Bluejays.
Alabama is the defending SEC champs, winning 31 games a year ago. But there’s no program in college hoops that had more turnover once the offseason began: they lost two players to the NBA Draft, and eight of their top 10 scorers — including three of the four members of last season’s freshman class — departed. All three of Nate Oats’ assistant coaches left for head coaching gigs.
And so despite the return of Mark Sears and the addition of three of the best mid-major players through the transfer portal, it’s perhaps not surprising that Alabama has struggled to find consistency through nine games. They’re 6-3 with wins over Indiana State (#13 in the NET) and Oregon (#51); their losses are to Ohio State (#34), Clemson (#11) and Purdue (#4). With the 36th-toughest non-conference schedule in D1, they’re battle-tested and will continue to be — after Saturday’s game in Omaha, they’ll play Arizona on a neutral court in Phoenix next Wednesday.
Still, they’re a handful because Alabama is a better, more physical, more athletic, more explosive version of the two Mountain West teams CU has been flattened by this year (Colorado State and UNLV). They boast the number one offense in D1, averaging 123.4 points per 100 possessions. If the season ended today, the 2023-24 Crimson Tide would have had the best offense from an SEC team since Missouri in 2012.
That powerful offense is built around playing fast and creating space. Their average possession lasts just 14.0 seconds, 4th fastest in D1 and three-and-a-half seconds faster than Creighton. Their average game has 73.3 possessions, five more than the Jays. And they’ve been successful at forcing opponents to run with them — Oregon and Purdue prefer to slow games down, yet both played games with nearly 80 possessions against Alabama. Oregon lost 99-91, and Purdue won 92-86. Ohio State and Clemson like a slower pace, too, and while they were able to get their games played a bit slower the final scores looked pretty similar — Ohio State won 92-81 and Clemson lost 85-77.
Much like Creighton, the Crimson Tide take a ton of three-point shots, with 46.2% of their overall shots coming from behind the arc (26th most in D1). And why not? They’re even better at making them than the Jays are, connecting at a 40.9% clip (5th best). For comparison, CU takes 51.1% of their shots from three-point range and makes 39.0% of them.
So how has a team with that offense managed to lose three times in nine games? Their defense is fairly pedestrian.
Yes, they’ve allowed 85 or more points in all four games against power conference opponents, but that’s deceiving for a team that plays games with as many possessions as they do — faster games are naturally going to have more points, even with a great or elite defense. But in this case, tempo-free stats tell a similar story, showing that Alabama’s adjusted defensive efficiency ranks 90th at 100.4 points per 100 possessions. It’s the worst defense among KenPom’s Top 25 teams and ranks as the #12 defense in the SEC – only ahead of bottom-feeders Ole Miss and Vanderbilt.
They’re particularly vulnerable on off-ball rotations and on shots at the rim; opponents make 59.4% of their shots at the rim thanks largely to a lack of rim protection (they block just 12% of shots taken there). While that’s roughly the same number as Creighton, Alabama’s opponents make 68% of their shots at the rim that aren’t blocked according to data from Hoop-Math.com. Creighton? 57.6%. That means that Alabama doesn’t change many shots beyond the ones they block. Another problem? Grant Nelson and Mohamed Wague, their primary ‘5’s, have struggled to defend without fouling. Nelson averages 4.3 fouls per 40 minutes, and Wague is an outrageous 8.0.
Nelson is a 6’11” senior transfer from North Dakota State who was a preseason First Team All-SEC pick. His numbers are understandably down from a year ago given the bump in competition (he averaged 19.9 points, 9.8 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.7 blocks and 1.1 steals per game in 2023), but he’s still having a big year. Nelson is scoring 13.7 points per game so far, third on the team, and leads them in rebounds at 6.3.
6’1” senior Mark Sears leads the Tide in scoring at 21.4 points per game, and is coming off a game where he hung 35 on Purdue thanks to making 8-of-16 from three point range. He’s made 51.0% from three this year (25-of-49), but he’s good at the rim too: he’s taken just over half of his shots at or near the rim, making 61.8%. And he draws an average of 6.4 fouls per 40 minutes, 57th most of all players in D1. Once at the line, he’s made 46-of-56 (82.1%) of his free throws.
6’3″ grad transfer Aaron Estrada averaged 20.2 points, 5.5 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 1.5 steals per game last season at Hofstra, and has been fantastic for the Crimson Tide through nine games. He’s averaging 15.1 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 3.0 assists per game while making 42.9% from long range (18-of-42.)
Omaha-native Latrell Wrightsell, Jr., son of the former Bluejay, averaged a team-high 16.3 points per game along with 4.5 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game last season at Cal State Fullerton. This year he’s averaging 6.3 points and 3.1 rebounds per game, and shooting 46.4% from outside (13-of-28). This will be his first game back in his hometown.
“We’ve got to navigate their ball screens really well, because (Kalkbrenner) can’t stay inside all night because of the pressure they can put on the rim,” Greg McDermott said on Friday. “So we’ll probably have to change it up a little and give them some different looks. They can hit you in a hurry from three-point range and you’ve got to get back in transition and get turned around. The issue is you you know while you prepare like I’m going to guard this guy and you’re going to guard that guy, you get crossmatched a lot because of their pace. Very similar to how we play, you don’t necessarily have the matchup you want in transition, so our guy’s ability to understand ‘okay, who am I guarding, what are they good at, and how’s it changed this possession?’ because they might be on somebody that they haven’t really prepared to guard.”
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- Alabama enters Saturday with the nation’s top-ranked offense per KenPom with an adjusted offensive efficiency of 123.3. The Crimson Tide were ranked 20th in the category last year and 16th the season before that. In the last 30 seasons, only two teams have scored more than 100 points in regulation against Creighton in Omaha, Marquette (102 in 2017) and No. 1 Gonzaga (103 in 2018). No opponent has scored more than 103 in Omaha against CU since BYU put up 109 points in 1964.
- Alabama leads the nation with 1,457 three-pointers made and three-pointers attempted (4,280) in the last five seasons. Creighton is 12th in both three-pointers made (1,270) and three-point attempts (3,569) over that span. Since Nate Oats was hired prior to the 2019-20 season, Alabama ranks fourth nationally with 75 games of 10 or more three-pointers while Creighton is 10th with 61 such contests.
- Baylor Scheierman is the lone Bluejay that has played Alabama before, and what a game he had on Nov. 12, 2021 in Tuscaloosa. Scheierman had 10 points, six assists and a career-high 18 rebounds despite shooting 0-for-7 from three-point range. Meanwhile, Alabama has two players who have faced Creighton before. Mark Sears had eight points for Ohio in a 2021 NCAA Tournament Second Round game inside Hinkle Fieldhouse. Grant Nelson had 11 total points while playing in losses for North Dakota State in both 2020 and 2021, shooting a combined 3-for-12 from the field.
- In its last 14 games dating to last season, Creighton is 0-3 against teams from the Mountain West Conference and 11-0 in all other contests, as CU has dropped games against San Diego State, Colorado State and UNLV. The MWC teams have held Creighton to 56.0 points per game (168/3), 35.7 field goal shooting (61-171) and 21.3 percent marksmanship from deep (16-75). CU is also -3.0 (-9) on the glass in those contests and boasts a 1.17 (35/30) assist to turnover ratio. On the other hand, when facing all other opponents (including five Power 5 schools) CU is scoring 88.73 points per game, 53.3 field goal shooting (350-657) and 40.6 percent marksmanship from deep (130-320). CU is also +11.36 (+125) on the glass in those contests and boasts a 1.71 (200/117) assist to turnover ratio.
- Ryan Kalkbrenner swatted a season-high five shots on Wednesday at UNLV. It was the ninth time in his Bluejay career that he’s had five or more rejections. Kalkbrenner is the only Creighton player with multiple games of five or more swats since the Bluejays joined the Big East in 2013 as Fred King, Jacob Epperson and Justin Patton have each done it once. Kalkbrenner’s 221 career blocked shots rank third among the nation’s active players.
Creighton and Alabama have met twice, but never in the regular season — the Jays won 58-57 in the first round of the 2012 NCAA Tournament, and 72-54 in the first round of the 2016 NIT.
The NIT wasn’t particularly memorable, but that NCAA win in 2012 sure was. It had been 10 years since the Jays’ last NCAA Tournament win, and the appearances in between were rough. You had the inexplicableness of 2003 (when Creighton’s best team of the last 30 years fell behind by 35 points to Central Michigan, rallied to cut it to single digits, then lost), the heartbreak of 2005 (when the Jays blew an early 10-0 lead, traded blows with West Virginia, then had their potential game-winning shot blocked and turned into a fastbreak dunk at the buzzer), and the overtime defeat of 2007 (when they rallied late to tie Nevada, only to lose in the extra session).
The final play of that one was a master class in Greg McDermott’s ability to scout and gameplan for an opponent — he does it as good as anyone in college basketball, and that preparation allowed them to sniff out the potential game-winning play Alabama set out to run. From the Morning After on WBR the next day:
After a timeout, McDermott sent the Jays out showing man-to-man defense, and instructed his players to switch to a zone at the last possible second. When they did, it confused Alabama, who had called in a play to attack a man-to-man defense from the bench just before inbounding the ball.
Alabama coach Anthony Grant panicked, calling timeout to set up a play to attack the zone defense, but in doing so cost his team half of the 4 seconds they had to work with. The play they ran was familiar to the Jays. “We felt like we knew what play they were going to run from one of their earlier SEC games that we saw on the Internet, and thought we could cover it in the zone the best,” Greg McDermott commented afterward. “Josh Jones did a really good job of it. He got Releford’s right hand, and made him take a really tough shot.”
Trevor Releford’s off-balance shot was well short, Doug McDermott secured the rebound and then launched the ball into the rafters as the Jays celebrated their first NCAA Tournament win in 10 years. There were many big-time performances in the win — McDermott had 16 points and 10 rebounds, Grant Gibbs had 10 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists, Antoine Young played 31 minutes with only 2 turnovers against 5 assists — but much as he had been in the MVC title game, it was Josh Jones who came up with the giant play at the end. Instead of a steal and a fastbreak dunk to seal the victory this time, it was a clutch defensive stop, but the result was the same: a Jays victory.
December 16th is the 56th anniversary of Bob Portman scoring a single-game Creighton record 51 points against Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He also made a school-record 19-of-23 free throws in the 109-81 victory in 1967.
The Bottom Line:
KenPom predicts a three-point Bluejay win. Vegas opened with the Jays as five-point favorites, and some books have them as 7.5 point favorites as of Friday night. ESPN’s BPI shares in that confidence, giving Creighton 80.6% odds of winning.
It’s a critical game for the Jays after getting crushed on Wednesday. They’ll need to shoot well to get it. I think they will.
Creighton 87, Alabama 81
