The annual Creighton-Nebraska rivalry renews on Saturday when the Huskers head 50 miles east on I-80 to Omaha. Fred Hoiberg’s first Nebraska squad began the season with two home losses to KenPom #228 UC Riverside (66-47) and #168 Southern Utah (79-78 in 2OT). They rebounded to win 90-73 over a South Dakota State team ranked #177, but then needed overtime to beat #336 Southern 93-86.
In the Cayman Islands the week of Thanksgiving, they made it three straight wins by rallying in the second half to beat Washington State 82-71. But then they got throttled by an extremely average George Mason squad 85-66. Upon their return stateside, they barely beat #134 South Florida 74-67, and then in their first true road game, were blown out 73-56 by Georgia Tech.
We ran through those eight games for a reason: they’ve yet to play a team who is likely to make any sort of postseason tourney without earning an auto bid, and despite that, they’ve been about as unimpressive as a power conference team can be in every one of those games.
They grab an offensive rebound on just 20.1% of their missed shots; only 14 teams in America are worse. On the opposite end of that coin, their opponents grab an offensive board 36.4% of the time; only six teams are worse. They’re an undersized, perimeter-based team who shoots below-average from three-point range (32.6%, ranking 176th; the national average is 33.0%). They do a really good job of drawing fouls — one free throw for every 2.65 field goal attempts, 76th best in the country — which would be amazing, except they’re one of the worst teams in America at making free throws. Their team free throw percentage of 56.3% ranks 348th out of 351 D1 teams!
Watching them in action, you come away with the distinct impression that this is a team yet to build any sort of chemistry. The numbers bare that out; 76.4 percent of the Huskers’ offense has come from players who were added in the offseason, including six of Nebraska’s top seven scorers. They have an assist on just over half of their made baskets (51.7%) to rank in the bottom half of D1.
While their fans salivated over Hoiberg and his staff overhauling the roster in a short amount of time, not all overhauls are created equal. This one is full of transitional players intended to move Nebraska into the style of play Hoiberg will build his program on — not necessarily the players who they hope to eventually win with.
It’s a roster with exactly one player who had high-level D1 experience entering the season (Haanif Cheatham). The rest is comprised of JuCo transfers adjusting to tougher D1 competition (Jervay Green and Cam Mack), low-to-mid major transfers (Dachon Burke from Robert Morris, Matej Kavas from Seattle U) and freshmen just months removed from high school (Kevin Cross, Yvan Ouedraogo, Samari Curtis).
They’re a work in progress, in other words. By late February, they’ll have developed some chemistry together, the young players and transfers will have more experience, and they’ll be a tougher opponent. But right now, they’re simply not a very good basketball team — on paper, one of the worst Creighton will play all year.
KenPom’s game-by-game prediction model says that Nebraska will win just two more times the rest of the season, with a whopping FIFTEEN games where they have less than a 20% of winning. One of those is Saturday against the Jays. Their projected record, which typically gives teams the benefit of an upset or two in games where the odds of winning are between 25-49%, adds just three wins to that total.
Ouch.
On an individual basis, their young guards have all shown flashes of success but they’re not consistent. Cam Mack is the one who typically comes up first in conversation, even if he’s not their best all-around guard, because the 6’2″, 175-pound lightning quick transfer from Western Nebraska CC best epitomizes the group — he’s explosive, but turnover and mistake prone. He somehow manages to both gamble too much on defense and stand around too much. He’s really good at getting to the rim off the dribble, but is merely average at scoring once he gets there (his shooting percentage at the rim is 48%). He’s attempted the most free throws on the team, but he shoots just 56% from the line. He takes a fair number of threes, and has not been good so far (7-for-25, 28%).
Dachon Burke’s breakdowns are similar — roughly half of his shots come at the rim, almost all created by himself off the dribble. He’s slightly better at converting them into points (51.7% field goal percentage on those shots) and slightly better from the line (22-37, 59%). And he’s been slightly better from three-point range, too (11-31, 35%).
Haanif Cheatham, by virtue of experience, is the player Nebraska has leaned on early this season. He’s led them in scoring each of the last two games, is tied for the team lead in scoring on the season (12.4 points per game) and is tied for the team lead in rebounds, too (5.3). Statistically he’s been their most consistent shooter — 70% of his shots have come at or near the rim, and he’s second on the team from that zone with a 70.5% field goal percentage there. And though he doesn’t take a lot of them, he’s also second on the team from three-point range at 35% (5-14). He hasn’t always been assertive, as Jays fans know from his time at Marquette, but he seems to have taken on the role of creating his own shot in recent games.
Jervay Green, a 6’3″ JuCo transfer, has made the most three-pointers on the team (14-45, 31%) and like Mack and Burke, does a good job of getting into the paint off the dribble. He has no midrange game to speak of — of his 79 total shot attempts, 32 have come at the rim, 45 have been threes, and just two — 2! — have been in between.
Their front court consists of a 17-year old and a 6’8″ freshman playing out of position. The 17-year old is Yvan Ouedraogo (which looks like it should be pronounced like Rocky villain Ivan Drago, but is not quite), a 6’9″ 260-pound native of France who does some nice things defensively and on the glass but is a liability on offense. Ouedraogo leads the team in rebounds with 42 (5.3 per game) and has 18 offensive boards. And he’s a capable shooter from close range, making 51.6% of his shots at or near the rim. The problem? Zero range. When he takes a two-point jumper, his shooting percentage drops all the way to 16%. He’s yet to attempt a three-pointer. And he’s a terrible free-throw shooter (9-20) which has led opponents to hack him when he catches the ball in the post instead of letting him shoot, which essentially negates his entire offensive repertoire.
The freshman is 6’8″, 240-pound Kevin Cross, who is more or less the opposite — he’s shown flashes of offensive skill, but is a liability defensively. Cross can score from all three levels at a decent clip (72% at the rim, 37% on two-point jumpers, 30% on threes).
On paper, Creighton is the far better team, and has the benefit of homecourt. But in rivalry games like this, that means far less than it would against another opponent. Remember 2014, when Creighton went to Lincoln in a similar situation — minus the trio of Doug McDermott, Grant Gibbs and Jahenns Manigat — to take on a ranked Nebraska team that everyone expected to win? Of course you do. We’ll watch highlights of that one below!
In order for the Jays to take care of business, it’s imperative they stop the ball in transition. Nebraska does most of their damage in the first 15 seconds of the shot clock — they shoot much better (61.2%) than they do in the half court (44.1%), and when they’re able to score in transition it raises their energy on defense.
When the Huskers are in transition they also draw a ton of fouls by driving into the teeth of the defense before the defense is set. While Nebraska has been atrocious from the line, they’ve gotten there a lot, with most of it happening early in the shot clock. Some teams might prefer to use their fouls and dare Nebraska to beat them at the line because it’s a great bet. With Creighton’s small rotation, they don’t have the fouls to spare.
CU’s best gameplan to stop both counts? Crash the boards, take care of the ball, and make shots of their own, so that there will be precious few opportunities for the Huskers to run. Do that, and the Jays’ chances of victory go up substantially.
- Tip: 1:30pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Vince Welch and Nick Bahe
- 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 Brody Deren
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters:
- Against Georgia Tech Wednesday night, the Huskers shot just 32 percent from the field – including 25 percent in the second half – and were 8-of-18 from the free throw line. Nebraska (4-4) also committed a season-high 18 turnovers which led to 18 Yellow Jacket points
- Thorir Thorbjarnarson is one of just two Huskers with experience in the Nebraska-Creighton series, as he played the final minute of last year’s win in Lincoln. Senior Haanif Cheatham has taken on Creighton four times, averaging 4.5 ppg and 4.0 rpg. Cheatham had his best game vs. Creighton in his last game in Omaha, scoring 11 points and grabbing seven rebounds in a 102-94 win over No. 7 Creighton during the 2016-17 season when he played for Marquette
- Saturday’s game is the middle of a three-game road trip. In all, NU will play six straight games away from Lincoln – the longest stretch since the 1997-98 season – before returning home to take on Purdue on Dec. 15, a span of 24 days between home games.
- Creighton held Oral Roberts to just 60 points on Tuesday, and that’s with the Golden Eagles scoring the final eight points long after the game had been decided. Creighton has now allowed 70.2 points per game this season, on pace for its best showing since surrendering only 66.9 points per game in 2014-15. Nebraska has scored more than 75 points against the Bluejays just once (in 2018) since 1998, averaging 62.38 points in that span while winning just five of those 21 games.
- Though he’ll be participating in it for the first time, freshman guard Shereef Mitchell is no stranger to the Nebraska/Creighton rivalry. The Omaha native is the son of Alvin Mitchell, who played at Nebraska in 1996-97. Alvin Mitchell had seven points, eight rebounds and three steals in NU’s win over Creighton in 1996.
- After going 1-3 last year in overtime, Creighton improved to 1-0 in overtime games this season with last Friday’s victory over No. 12 Texas Tech.
Creighton has won 16 of the past 20 regular-season match-ups, tying the all-time series at 26. Creighton has won 11 straight regular-season home games over Nebraska, and is 18-9 all-time at home against the Cornhuskers.
Greg McDermott is 13-4 all-time vs. Nebraska (7-2 as Creighton head coach). Those seven victories trail only Dana Altman (who was 10-7 against NU) among Bluejay head coaches all-time.
Creighton has led at halftime in 16 of the past 20 regular-season meetings (including 11 of the last 14 meetings), with seven double-digit leads at intermission in that span. Four of the five times that Creighton trailed it half, it came back to win the game anyway. Nebraska has led at halftime and beaten Creighton in the regular-season just once since Jan. 8, 1997, with that coming last December.
Also of note, Creighton has held Nebraska to 30 first half points or less in 14 of the last 16 regular-season meetings at all sites.
And lastly, Creighton has finished with more wins than Nebraska in 20 of the last 21 seasons since the 1998-99 campaign. Since the start of the 1998-99 season (including this winter), Creighton is 486-227, while Nebraska is 341-329 on the hardwood.
Nick Bahe took a deep dive into the series on his podcast this week, with his usual unparalleled level of analysis and breakdown of the X’s and O’s. He’s seriously the best at this. But it was his stories from playing in the rivalry that stuck with me after listening — particularly his anecdote about former coach Dana Altman after a ranked Jays team lost in 2006.
Altman was so upset he was in tears, and as he entered the bus he told the players that if anyone made a sound on the way home — not just talking, but a cough, a sneeze, anything — they would all be running in the gym the minute they got back to Omaha. And they knew he meant it. Altman took that game as dead serious as CU alums and fans do, maybe moreso, which was one of the dozens of reasons he was so beloved.
You gotta listen to Nick tell the story.
Creighton has beaten Nebraska on December 7 twice in recent years — 65-55 in Lincoln on December 7, 2014 and 77-62 in Lincoln on December 7, 2016. Let’s relive some fun moments, shall we?
The game against Nebraska gives me a great deal of anxiety and angst on an annual basis; a win offers more relief than enjoyment, a loss leads to unhappy encounters with neighbors and colleagues in red.
Old-school thrash metal soothes me in times like these. So let’s Seek And Destroy!
The Bottom Line:
Much like recent games, Creighton jumps out to an early lead and then hits a wall at some point in the second half. That makes the final score a bit closer, but does not change the result.
Creighton 80, Nebraska 66
