Following an 83-81 loss to Minnesota in an “unofficial” exhibition last Saturday, Creighton takes the floor this Saturday for an official exhibition in front of their fans at the CenturyLink…er, the CHI Health Center Omaha (CHIHCO). Their opponent is the Winona State Warriors, coached by former Bluejay player and assistant coach Todd Eisner.
For the Warriors, this will be their second exhibition, following a 82-52 loss at another former Bluejay’s program, Porter Moser’s Loyola-Chicago squad. That game was dedicated to Tony Barone, who coached both Eisner and Moser while he was on the bench at Creighton, making it a fitting bookend for Eisner to bring his squad to Omaha this weekend:
Picked to finish fourth in a very competitive Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) — four NSIC teams reached the second round of the NCAA DII Playoffs with two advancing to the Sweet Sixteen, and Northern State was the national DII runner-up — the Warriors should continue the upward trajectory Eisner has had them on.
They’re a good shooting group, with three players who shot 40% or better from three-point range a year ago (Caleb Wagner at 48%, Mason Domask at 45%, and Tommy Gathje at 40%). Wagner didn’t play on Tuesday, but a fourth — Kevion Taylor — had an explosive game with 33 points on 10-15 shooting and 5-7 from three-point range. Taylor also led them in rebounding with eight, and scored his team’s first 22 points, spanning the entire first half and five minutes of the second.
However, like most DII teams they don’t have much size; their roster is heavy on guards and boasts no player taller than 6’8″. They were beaten pretty handily on the glass by Loyola, and their lack of size figures to be an issue against the Bluejays too.
But ultimately exhibitions are far more interesting for your own team’s storylines versus how an opponent matches up. And there’s far more intrigue to this year’s exhibition because of the significant number of question marks surrounding Creighton’s roster. Look no further than the box score from Saturday’s scrimmage with Minnesota to get an idea of what we’re talking about — five of the 11 players who saw action have never played a single minute for the Bluejays. That number grows to six if you include Kaleb Joseph, who played sparingly last year in his first season on the Hilltop, and to seven if you include Jacob Epperson who was initially slated to redshirt until a January injury to Martin Krampelj changed plans. In total, there’s eight freshmen and sophomores on the roster.
And the four players with experience in a CU uniform include a pair of sophomores (Mitch Ballock and Ty-Shon Alexander) looking to build on promising but uneven frosh campaigns. The same could be said of Davion Mintz, who’s shown flashes of difference-making talent, but hasn’t been consistent on either end of the floor in nearly two years of playing time. And then there’s Martin Krampelj, an All-Big East caliber player when he’s healthy, but who has been snakebit by injury every year he’s been at CU.
For someone observing the Jays from afar, there’s a lot to be skeptical about. No Marcus Foster. No Khyri Thomas. No Ronnie Harrell. No Toby Hegner. No big-time four or five star recruits to replace them. It’s a roster full of unknowns, and in a league as tough as the Big East, that’s going to land you toward the bottom of preseason predictions. Sure enough, that’s what has happened.
Big East coaches picked them to finish ninth out of 10 teams. Nearly every major national publication has them pegged for either eighth, ninth, or tenth. Some went a step further, such as CBS’ Matt Norlander who picked them 71st overall and wrote this:
“The team’s best player seems to be Martin Krampelj, and this is nothing directly against him, but that slots Creighton as having the least impressive best player of any team in the Big East.”
OUCH.
To be fair, Creighton’s staff isn’t entirely sure what they have yet, either. “The closed scrimmage was more helpful this year than in recent years because we have so many guys that are similar,” assistant to the head coach Steve Merfeld noted on the WBR Scriptown Brewing Bluejay Bytes Podcast this week. “And we don’t have two all-conference wings returning that are going to get the majority of the minutes. We have a bunch of good players that are still trying to sort themselves out. We’re trying to sort out what combinations can allow us to be most successful and which combinations put the individual players in the best situation to get the most out of their ability.”
That’s what makes Saturday night so damn interesting.
It’s the first chance for Jays fans to get a look in person at freshman Samson Froling, who was very impressive this summer for his native Australia in the FIBA U18 Asian Championships. He was equally impressive in the Minnesota scrimmage, leading the team with 13 points on 5-8 from the floor, while grabbing five rebounds.
“Samson was able to score in the low post, which is great because we haven’t necessarily had a low post presence like him the last couple of years,” Merfeld told us. “We’re probably going to have to play through him at times, but we’re OK with that because he’s a good passer.
Merfeld went on to say that Froling is “not a typical freshman,” with his international experience giving him a maturity beyond his years.
“The crazy thing is that last week he had appeared to hit a wall, which all freshmen do at some point in preseason practice. The other freshmen certainly had before that, but we really hadn’t noticed it with Samson until last week. The way he played on Saturday didn’t back that up at all — he was ready to go, and he had a great day.”
Froling figures to split time with Krampelj, or play alongside him in larger lineups, giving the Bluejays an enviable one-two punch inside. Krampelj played 21 minutes in the scrimmage, and had some struggles in his first taste of live action in nearly a year with 10 points on 3-8 shooting, zero rebounds, four missed free throws, and four turnovers. The performance doesn’t concern his coaches one bit.
“The most important thing for Martin was that he played,” Merfeld said. “In practice he can kind of come and go based on what (trainer) Ben McNair wants him involved in. When you’re playing a game, you’re involved in everything. From a mental standpoint, to be able to get through that and know that the knee is fine is helpful moving forward.”
At the four, the Jays have some sorting out to do — there’s no true ‘four’, or at least not the type of four they’ve had in recent seasons. Mitch Ballock played there some a year ago, and figures to see minutes there again in smaller lineups; grad transfer Connor Cashaw can fit a similar role, though both are better suited on the wing. Newcomers Christian Bishop and Damien Jefferson are more perimeter than post, but both of whom played the four a little last Saturday and likely will this Saturday.
Among the guards, the most pressing question is where the points will come from, and who can run the point. Davion Mintz is the one player that could be the answer to both.
“Davion had his moments,” Merfeld said. “Obviously he’s going to have to score for us a little bit more than he did before. His mindset was certainly in that zone on Saturday, maybe too much at times, but that’s part of the process we’re trying to sort out as coaches too — where are the points going to come from with this team?”
Freshman Marcus Zegarowski didn’t make much of a dent in the stat sheet, logging five points on 2-5 shooting, two assists, and two boards in 18 minutes, but Merfeld viewed it as an invaluable experience.
“Early on in the scrimmage, Marcus Zegarowski was your typical freshman playing in his first college game — he was a little jittery and rushed, but once he settled in he did exactly what we asked him to do. He didn’t shoot particularly well, but we know he can shoot and he’ll make shots for us as we move forward. He went through some tough stretches as any freshman point guard would against a team like Minnesota who came after us pretty good defensively.”
That’s what will ultimately matter after Saturday’s game — getting the freshmen a game under their belts at the CHIHCO, getting Krampelj on the floor, and figuring out how all of the newcomers fit in with the returning players. It’s a big task, and it begins in earnest this weekend.
- Tip: 7:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: None, but a free webcast will be streamed at http://www.gocreighton.com/watch
- Radio: 1620AM and 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Josh Dotzler
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Winona State head coach Todd Eisner played at Creighton from 1986-91, where he scored 502 points and grabbed 218 rebounds in 98 games from 1986-91. He played in three NCAA Tournament games, including a game with 11 points and nine assists vs. No. 6 Missouri in 1989. He was head coach at Bellevue University from 2000-08, where he went 226-56, and later served as head coach at Midland University from 2001-15 where he went 96-39. A graduate manager during the 1991-92 season at Creighton, he later served under Rick Johnson as assistant from 1992-94. He returned in 2008 and spent two seasons as an assistant to Dana Altman.
- Six men averaged at least 9.0 points per game last season for the Warriors, and five of those men return. That group is led by 6-foot-8 senior forward Tommy Gathje (13.4 ppg., 4.7 rpg.) and junior guard Caleb Wagner (12.2 ppg., 4.7 apg.). Also back are Kevion Taylor (9.6 ppg., 4.9 rpg.), Devin Whitelow (9.4 ppg) and Mason Domask (9.0 ppg.).
- Last year’s WSU team averaged 78.8 points per game and shot 47.3 percent from the field, 40.4 percent from three-point range and 74.1 percent at the line. The Warriors outrebounded foes by 1.2 caroms per contest.
- Martin Krampelj was named Preseason All-Big East Honorable Mention at the conference’s media day on Thursday. He averaged 11.9 points and 8.1 rebounds per game before a season-ending injury in mid-January, and ranked second in the league in field goal percentage (.671) and third in the league in rebounds per game (8.1) before suffering his injury.
- Creighton is 50-6 since 1981 in fall exhibition games thanks to 18 straight victories. The only team since 1994 to beat Creighton in an exhibition setting has been Global Sports, which eventually merged and changed their name to EA Sports and had three victories.
- Of those 56 exhibitions, zero have taken place on a Saturday, which is kind of amazing. The most common day for an exhibition over that span? Sunday, with 14.
Creighton and Winona State have never met in either an exhibition or regular season setting. Greg McDermott has faced them six times as a head coach, however, owning a 3-3 record against them.
CU has only played one game, exhibition or otherwise, in the month of October — last October’s charity exhibition against UNO on October 26.
It’s been a long offseason — a second straight NCAA Tournament flop in the spring, a summer and early fall rocked by allegations in the Brian “Tugs” Bowen scandal, and predictions of a bottom-four finish for Year Nine of the Greg McDermott Era in the late fall. But now actual games are back, and there’s action on the court to talk about.
Here comes the sun.
The Bottom Line:
Creighton rolls in this one. Jays 87, Winona State 51
