Creighton’s two road wins last week have them at 6-2 in the Big East. They’re 3-0 at home in league play, and 3-2 on the road, with five of their 10 road games already in the rearview mirror including the games at UConn and Marquette. They’ve played the 3rd-hardest league schedule to this point, while the other three teams at the top of the standings with them have played the three easiest.
The upside to that uneven schedule so far? Seven of their 12 remaining games will be in Omaha. As Greg McDermott’s teams typically do, they’ve improved steadily as the season has progressed — and the late January version of the Bluejays is barely recognizable compared to the one from early November.
One of the biggest reasons for that is Jamiya Neal. In 93 games over the previous three seasons at Arizona State, he had five assists in a game just one time. He’s had six or more in a game six times this season, and is averaging 4.2 assists per game. He opened the season with 17 straight games of three assists or more; it was snapped last weekend at UConn, and all he did was score 24 points instead.
“Arizona State plays a different style of basketball,” McDermott said on Thursday. “Jamiya understood what he was looking for at the next stop, but that’s a small piece of it. The bigger part is trying to figure out how to adjust to a coach that’s asking him to do things that he hasn’t been asked to do before, and trusting that it’s going to help him. But once he tasted success I think it allowed him to buy in more. And his connection with his teammates is incredible to see; for a guy that hasn’t been here a long time, there’s eight or nine of them sitting up at night playing cards on the road. That’s part of it that our fans don’t get to see, and it’s an important part of why this team has connected and has been successful.”
“Mac’s the man,” Neal said. “He’s won all the games, he’s got the guys in the NBA, I mean he’s probably been coaching longer than I’ve been living. There’s been some back and forth sometimes, just a resistance where I’m like ‘Mac, I’m trying!’ but I know he’s only pushing me because he wants more out of me. He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.”
At the other end of the spectrum is Seton Hall. The Pirates sit at 6-13 overall and 1-7 in the Big East, staggering along in the basement of the league. They’ve won just twice since Thanksgiving, with neither win being terribly impressive — against NJIT (ranked 357th out of 364 D1 teams by KenPom) and against DePaul, with the latter taking overtime. But as bad as it’s been, things have bottomed out over the last week.
On Saturday, they were embarrassed 79-51 at home by St. John’s, with their former star Kadary Richmond scoring 12 points for the Red Storm. He was greeted with boos and signs picturing snakes and dollar signs by fans feeling he’d betrayed them by not just transferring within the conference, but transferring across the Hudson to their longtime rival. And then, to rub salt in the wound, Rick Pitino laid out the cold, honest truth about why Richmond was starring for him instead of at The Hall.
“Look, every one of those students and everybody in the building would have done the same thing he did (transferring),” Pitino said. “Believe me, if the money was the same, he would be playing for Shaheen (Holloway). If the money was close, he would be playing for Shaheen. He’s a free agent, just like all free agents. He loves Seton Hall, he loves Shaheen, playing for Shaheen, loved his teammates here. But it’s not a level playing field. I’m hoping revenue comes in for Seton Hall and everybody basically gets the same, and then you’ll see Seton Hall just as good as any team in the league. Right now they don’t have the revenue that most of the other teams have. Probably it’s the lowest in the league.”
Ouch. Thing is, Pitino isn’t wrong — Richmond was Seton Hall’s leading scorer a year ago, and he departed not for a bigger role, but for a significant bump in NIL money. Their second-leading scorer, Dre Davis, did the same and is at Ole Miss. Losing those two fifth-year seniors left Seton Hall to replace 30 points, 13 rebounds and seven assists per game. Easier said than done, especially with the NIL issues that led them to depart in the first place.
Then in their 76-59 home blowout loss to No. 10 Marquette this week, the Pirates drew less than 2,500 fans — believed to be their smallest crowd for a Big East game since SHU moved into the Prudential Center in 2007. The Pirates had 24 turnovers, including 14 in the first half alone, after 18 turnovers against St. John’s.
Injuries to a pair of senior leaders in Dylan Addae-Wusu (foot injury) and Chaunce Jenkins (hamstring injury) leave them without an experienced ballhandler or offensive initiator. They’re questionable for Saturday, and if they can’t go, Seton Hall will once again have just 10 scholarship players available. Addae-Wusu had been averaging 9.9 points, 3.7 rebounds and 3.1 assists for the season, and upped that average to 13.6 points per game in Big East play, including 24 points and seven assists at Butler. He was also their best defender. His loss is especially cruel to a roster that was struggling as it was. Meanwhile, Jenkins scored 21 with four assists in the Butler game, and is averaging 11.4 points per game for the season. He is their best three-point shooter by a fair margin, making 30-of-73 (41.1%) so far.
There’s a lot of season left, but things have gotten so bad that longtime beat writer Jerry Carino of the Asbury Park Press wrote this week that the rest of the schedule is basically an audition for who should be part of next year’s total rebuild.
Sophomore guard Garwey Dual has been thrown into the fire at point guard because there’s no other options. He’s averaging 3.8 points and 2.2 assists per game, but the scouting report on him is that he dribbles too much — something his coach attributes to a combination of inexperience and a lack of playmaking instincts.
“It’s a little frustrating because I want him to be super aggressive, which is strange to me because normally I have point guards who just go,” Holloway said. “But (against Marquette) he was a little bit more aggressive and he’s just got to play like that, because I’m not sure we’re getting those two guys (Addae-Wusu and Jenkins) back. The minutes are there. We need him to play-make a little bit more.”
Junior forward Prince Aligbe had 12 points and six rebounds against Marquette, and he’s scored in double figures in four of the last five games. The best of those was a 19-point performance at Providence where he made 7-of-13 from the floor and 5-of-6 from the line with seven rebounds. Sophomore wing Scotty Middleton, too, had been playing better recently, including scoring 12 points at Xavier with a pair of threes, and 14 points at Butler on 4-of-4 shooting from three-point range. But he scored zero points against Marquette on 0-of-5 shooting with five turnovers.
Junior center Manny Okorafor had been the starter at center, but struggled so badly in recent games that he not only lost his starting role, he got a DNP-CD (coaches’ decision) against Marquette. Redshirt freshman Gus Yalden played seven minutes against St. John’s and fouled out, and has become a fan favorite in a lost season because of how hard he plays every second he’s on the floor, sometimes to his own detriment. Pirate fans chanted “We want Gus!” late in the Marquette game in an effort to convince Holloway to put him in; when that didn’t work, some encouraged him to check himself in anyway.
It’s left 6’9” freshman Godswill Erheriene with a starting role ahead of schedule. He seems unsure of where to be at times, and had just one rebound in 17 minutes against Marquette.
“Godswill is a freshman who got thrown into the fire,” Holloway said. “We didn’t know what to expect coming from him, but he’s battling, he’s trying, and that’s all I ask.”
6’10” forward Yacine Toumi missed the St. John’s game with an illness, and returned against Marquette to log six points, six boards, three assists and three steals. He’s likely to see more time going forward. Equally likely is more of the small-ball lineup they employed against Marquette, attempting to make the best of a bad situation with awkward matchups for their opponents.
There has been one bright spot, and it’s a really bright one: sophomore Isaiah Coleman. The 6’5” guard is averaging 15.8 points, 5.1 rebounds and 1.6 assists while shooting 42.5% overall and 35.8% from three. In Big East play, he’s averaging 20.6 points per game, trailing only Villanova’s Eric Dixon, and ranks 10th in rebounds at 6.3 per game. He had 27 points on 9-of-14 shooting against Marquette, making 8-of-8 from the line with nine rebounds. Coleman is an 84% free throw shooter, which is even more impressive when you consider how often he gets there — he was 9-of-10 at the line against St. John’s, 8-of-8 against DePaul, 5-of-8 at Butler, 8-of-10 against Georgetown and 7-of-10 against Villanova.
Coleman has scored in double-figures in 11 of his last 12 games, and five of those were 20-point performances against Big East foes. He’s one of only four Pirates since 1988 to score at least 15 points in the first five Big East games of the season, joining program giants Mark Bryant (1987-88), Terry Dehere (1992-93) and Myles Powell (2019-20).
- Tip: 12:30pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Kevin Kugler 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
- Cable Cutters: Available on all major streaming platforms
- Streaming on the Fox Sports app and website
- 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 161 or 201 as well as on the SiriusXM App
After struggling from the free throw line through the first month of the season, Seton Hall has bounced back since the start of conference play shooting 74 percent (133-of-181) from the stripe, good enough for fifth in the Big East. Their overall numbers are still rough, though: they’ve made 66.1% for the year, 331st in D1.
Seton Hall is making just 43.7% of their two-pointers this season, 351st in D1. Their effective field goal percentage is 46.3%, 324th, and they’ve committed a turnover on 19.7% of possessions, ranking 310th.
The Pirates rank second in the Big East in league play averaging 13.3 offensive rebounds per game.
The jersey auction for year’s Pink Out (the 15th annual edition of the event) raised $43,995.92 — the second-highest total, trailing only the 2013-14 edition which raised $48,247.11 thanks to a guy named Doug McDermott. Combined with additional fundraising on gameday, underwriting, matching donations and volleyball/women’s basketball jersey auctions, Creighton broke the million-dollar mark this year with a total of $1,000,074.65 raised for the American Cancer Society Hope Lodge.
Saturday’s game vs. Seton Hall is Creighton’s 20th contest of the season. Creighton will be .500 or better after 20 games for the 29th time in the last 30 seasons.
Saturday marks just the second time ever that Creighton will play men’s and women’s basketball at CHI Health Center Omaha on the same day since it opened in 2003. The only other time it happened? On Dec. 22, 2010, Creighton’s women faced Kansas at 5:30 p.m., followed by a Bluejay men’s basketball game at 8:05 p.m. The last time both the Creighton men’s and women’s basketball teams won home games in the same facility on the same day was Jan. 26, 2003 at the Omaha Civic Auditorium, which met a wrecking ball at 2016. CU’s women beat Drake at 4:45 p.m., after the Bluejay men rallied from 16 down to beat TCU 89-79 in a game that tipped at 2:05 p.m.
Seton Hall leads the all-time series with Creighton 16-14, but Creighton has won 7-of-11 meetings in Omaha. Creighton has won eight of the last 10 games in the series at all sites.
On January 25, 2012, Creighton beat Drake 77-69 in Des Moines following a familiar gameplan — getting an unexpected game from one of their native Iowans. Pierce Hibma was the patron saint of that, torching the Bulldogs two straight years in 2006 and 2007, but in the ’12 game, it was Will Artino. From WBR’s recap:
“The surprise of the night was the play of Waukee, Iowa native Will Artino against the Bulldogs. The freshman played 16 big minutes as Gregory Echenique was saddled with foul trouble. Artino’s line of 6 points, 8 rebounds and 2 assists may not seem like much, but it was instrumental down the stretch opening the floor a little more for McDermott to go on a streak scoring 12 of 13 points from the 5:59 mark until 52 seconds left in the game.”
Here’s the highlights from that win, edited from the Drake coaches’ film of a game that wasn’t televised. 2012 wasn’t that long ago. The MVC era doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, either. But look at these clips — which we all were GIDDY to watch because it was the only way to see the plays T. Scott Marr had described on the radio — compared to a decade-and-a-half later and the high-def broadcasts we watch every single night.
It’s wild.
The Bottom Line:
Creighton opened as 14.5 point favorites in Las Vegas; KenPom predicts a 16-point win. ESPN’s BPI gives Creighton 93.3% odds of victory. They should win fairly comfortably in this one.
Creighton 78, Seton Hall 62