Five weeks ago when these teams first met, Creighton was four days removed from a home loss to Kansas State where they trailed by 18 at halftime. That game saw them blow the rotation up in a way Greg McDermott seldom has mid-season: he replaced 3/5 of the starting lineup. That switch didn’t pay immediate dividends, but by the time they got to Cincinnati they looked like a different team. The 98-57 win turned their season around, as they were 5-5 entering the night and are 6-3 since — and are a couple of possessions from being 8-1.
CU shot 58.1% in the first half (18-of-31) that night, making 8-of-15 from three-point range, and had 15 assists against just one turnover on those 18 baskets. Creighton also had a 10-0 advantage in fast break points and 12-3 in points off turnovers, and their bench outscored Xavier’s 17-4.
Then the Jays scored 11 of the first 12 points in the second half. It was a 36-5 run spanning both halves, and 9:55 of game time — and a mind-boggling 18 minutes of basketball where they outscored Xavier 54-13. With 18 minutes to go, the lead was 37.
Austin Swartz scored a career-high 27 points, making 7-of-13 from three-point range and 3-of-4 inside the arc. He also had seven rebounds, four assists and a steal in just 22 minutes.
“I think we caught them at the right time,” McDermott said on Tuesday. “They were playing really well, kind of coming off that Cincinnati game. We were able to make some shots early and get some stops and create some separation. They’re playing much better than they were then. Their transition game was concerning to us the first time around, and we held them to 11 transition points, and I think the last two games against Butler and Providence, they had 64 transition points. So we’re going to have to do a good job in that regard once again.”
Xavier has four players who average in double figures, led by Tre Carroll at 16.7 points per game, though he scored just seven in the first meeting on 3-of-7 shooting. Two players who were further down the scouting report in Cincinnati — Roddie Anderson III and Malik Moore — have emerged as more dangerous scoring threats since. Anderson is up to 12.8 points per game and has scored in double figures in seven straight games. He had 12 against the Jays in December, making 6-of-8 from two-point range. And Moore, who was mired in a slump when these teams first met, is not anymore.
Moore had made just 30.6% overall and 24.3% from three (9-of-37) before the first game with CU. Since then, he leads the team at 16.9 points per game while shooting 41.3% on 6.6 3-point attempts per game. Like Anderson, he’s scored in double figures in seven straight, and has made multiple three-pointers in all seven of those games. He had 14 points in the first meeting to the lead the team.
6’10” Jovan Milicevic averages 11.1 points while shooting 42.7% from three, but was scoreless in the first game, going 0-of-6 inside and 0-of-2 outside. 6’9” point forward Filip Borovicanin leads the team with 4.4 assists and 7.8 rebounds per game along with 9.8 points. He scored five in the first meeting, though he did have six assists and just three turnovers.
Xavier doesn’t turn it over much (13.3% of possessions, ninth fewest in D1) and has had an assist on an absurd 68.9% of their made shots, second most. They’re a decent three-point shooting team, making 35.8% from outside. But they’re only slightly better than Creighton at grabbing offensive rebounds (26.8% versus 26.5% in league games) and their 47.9% shooting percentage on two-pointers is one of the worst in the country.
Since they first met, Xavier beat Georgetown by three, lost three in a row (to UConn, DePaul, and Marquette), and posted double-digit wins over Butler and Providence. They scored 186 combined points in those two wins (97 against Providence, 89 against Butler).
That firepower is concerning as the Jays have given up 90, 83 and 93 points in their last three games. Their adjusted defensive efficiency, once as high as 42nd in the country on January 5 following the loss at Seton Hall (at 100.2), has dropped like a rock to 76th (104.6) in the 15 days since. Ouch.
“You just hope the daily repetition is going to show itself more and more on game day. We still make too many mistakes, especially the defensive end,” McDermott said on Tuesday. “Whether it’s just a positioning mistake or a communication mistake, things that are that are very correctable and don’t take a lot of effort, we’re making too many of those mistakes for the third week of January.”
Josh Dix said the team had a tough film session after the loss at Providence. “Our first possession defense has been good, but we haven’t been able to get the rebound as much as we’d like, Dix said. “But if we can do that and push the pace in transition, we can wear teams out and it’ll help our offensive game as well.”
Jasen Green said the main takeaway for him from that brutal film session was that their level of connection defensively is not good enough. “We spent a lot of time talking about that, like where certain players should be in during certain situations and stuff,” Green said. “Staying true to our game and playing how we play without letting the other teams beat us was also big point of emphasis.”
In eight Big East games, CU ranks fourth in the league in effective field goal percentage allowed and fifth in defensive efficiency, which — while lower than it was 15 days ago — is still probably better than expected. The problems start to show up deeper on the stat sheet. They’re last in block percentage (blocking just 6.1% of their opponent’s shot attempts) and 10th in opponent turnover percentage (13.3%).
“It’s been inconsistent, and it is what it is,” McDermott said about Creighton’s defense. “There’s only so much you can do without rim protection. I don’t like to play a lot of zone; we played some against Providence to try to get ourselves back in the game and keep them out of the paint, so we may have to do a little bit more of that at times. When you’re lacking rim protection, your ability to guard the paint is really challenging. We’ve gotten better. I think individual pieces have gotten better, but just the team part of our defensive schemes, there are still too many breakdowns. In basketball, when you one guy makes a mistake, you’re going to play for it.”
They were counting on Owen Freeman to provide that rim protection. Instead, an offseason knee injury derailed those plans. CU saw a player with a lot of talent — remember, he was the Big Ten Freshman of the Year two years ago — whose bad habits could be minimized in their system.
While obviously not as good of a defender overall as Ryan Kalkbrenner, they were similarly effective at blocking shots. As a freshman, Freeman blocked 8.0% of opponent’s shots compared to Kalkbrenner’s 7.6%; a year ago, Freeman blocked 6.5% compared to Kalkbrenner’s 7.3%.
Freeman was also a much better rebounder than Kalkbrenner, offsetting some of the areas where Kalkbrenner was superior. In two years at Iowa, Freeman’s defensive rebound rates were 20.2% and 20.6%. Kalkbrenner’s best season was 18.4%; his DR% was 15.2%, 12.1% and 12.9% in previous years. His offensive rebounding rate was similar to Kalkbrenner; Freeman grabbed an offensive board on 11.2% of missed shots two years ago and 9.0% last year. Kalkbrenner was at 8.8% a year ago and 9.3% and 9.6% in the two years before that.
Imagine what Creighton would look like with THAT version of Freeman. Even with everything that’s happened, his rebounding has been better than either season at Iowa. Freeman has grabbed a board on 22.6% of opponent’s misses and 15.4% of his own team’s missed shots.
So what happened?
Talking to people around the program, the injury kept him from working on his bad habits and weaknesses, and created new (albeit temporary, hopefully) physical limitations. Too often, he has no pop out of ball screens, with his feet seemingly stuck in cement. The injury also kept him from learning how to play with his teammates, and vice versa. It also kept the staff from seeing him in their own gym, instead of on film, to learn how best to use him. That lack of chemistry can only be gained through repetition, something that’s hard to do in-season when you’re also trying to win games.
It bottomed out with Freeman earning a DNP-CD in the road loss at Providence, and the Friar student section mock-serenading him with chants of “Ow-en-Free-man!” late in the game. He took it in stride, with FS1’s cameras catching him cracking a smile on the bench, but there’s no doubt it’s been frustrating for him and everyone around the program.
And the result has been playing a 6’8” player with a shoulder injury at center. While Green has exceeded just about any realistic expectations, he’s undersized and it’s unquestionably hurt them at times. With that said, he’s worked hard to find ways to neutralize that size disadvantage — boxing out so others can grab rebounds, walling up on defense to make himself play bigger than his size — and along with Dix he’s been the Jays’ most important player.
“He quarterbacks our defense from that position,” McDermott said. “Obviously he’s become a much better facilitator this year as the season has gone on, and he scores the ball in a lot of different ways. Oh, and he’s, you know, doing it kind of with one arm. He hasn’t missed much practice time as a result and, you know, I’m just really proud of the way that he’s competed and has put us in a position to have chances to be successful.”
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Filip Borovićanin has recorded seven double-doubles in scoring-rebounding, which ranks second in the Big East and 26th in the nation. He just missed a double-double in scoring-assists with 14 points and a collegiate career-high nine assists vs. Butler.
Xavier has hit at least 10 3-point field goals in 10 games, including 12 in the Providence win on Jan. 10. Xavier is third in the Big East Conference in 3-pointers made per game at 9.8. XU is second in the Big East in 3-point percentage at 35.8% (176-492).
Since the start of the 2020-21 season, Xavier (21) and Creighton (20) lead the Big East in victories by three points or fewer. Marquette also has 20. No other league school has more than 15 such victories. Among Power 5 schools, Creighton’s .645 win percentage since 2020-21 in games decided by three points or less is tied for the second-best mark nationally with Oregon. Only Texas (.655) is better.
Providence made 25-of-35 free throw attempts on Friday, an unusually high figure against a Creighotn team that traditionally ranks among the national leaders in fewest fouls. It was the most free throws allowed by CU since a Rhode Island team coached by Dan Hurley made 28 foul shots on March 17, 2017 in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament. Combined with Creighton’s 24 free throws made on Friday, it was the first time both Creighton and its opponent both made 24+ free throws since Nov. 25, 2015 when Creighton made 28 and Massachusetts made 27. That UMass team was coached by current Creighton assistant coach Derek Kellogg.
Through Sunday, Creighton was one of four teams nationally that has not had a player foul out this season, a group that also includes Yale, Richmond and Michigan State. Last year Creighton was tied for 19th nationally with only four foul out disqualifications
Xavier owns a 23-21 lead in the series with Creighton, but the Jays own a 10-6 edge in Omaha. That Creighton advantage moves to 8-4 in Omaha in Big East games. Creighton won the conference opener for both teams 98-57, in Cincinnati, the first time these teams squared off this winter.
On January 21, 2012, Creighton rolled over Indiana State 75-49 in front of a national TV audience on ESPN2. From Ott’s recap:
“The afternoon set up well for star sophomore Doug McDermott to introduce his game to a national television audience. ESPN2 was in the house, ready to heap praise on McDermott. But the Sycamores decided to force Creighton players other than Dougie Fresh to beat them, hounding McDermott with double and triple teams. ISU held him to a season-low 12 points and forced him to commit 3 turnovers. But McDermott helped in other ways, by grabbing 11 rebounds for the second time in three games and swinging the ball away from him and toward open shooters. His teammates did the rest.
If casual basketball fans tuned in to watch McDermott and get a feel for how the sophomore All American candidate can take over a game, they instead saw the real reason the Bluejays might be a tough out come March. The Jays spread the ball around beautifully, assisting 17 times on 24 made field goals while turning it over just 10 times. Seven of Creighton’s 14 first half field goals came from beyond the three-point arc, as the Bluejays effectively buried the Sycamores in an avalanche of long-range shooting. Jahenns Manigat, Josh Jones, and Ethan Wragge each made two treys in the first half, while Grant Gibbs added one, and CU headed to the break up 42-25. An 8-minute dry spell late in the game cost Creighton a chance to truly decimate the Sycamores (the Jays only scored 7 points from the 8:40 mark until Taylor Stormberg hit a shot with less than a minute to play), but by then the afternoon had taken on the feel of an early season non-conference game against a cupcake opponent. It was anything but a trap; in fact, the outcome and the way the Bluejays got there probably serves as more frightening to opponents than would a career night by McDermott.”
Creighton is favored by 7.5 in Vegas, and has 81.9% odds of victory according to ESPN’s BPI. KenPom predicts an eight-point win with 76% odds.
The Jays’ pace and three-point shooting were too much for Xavier in the first meeting, and though this one will be closer, it should be another win.
Creighton 84, Xavier 75