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Pregame Primer: Creighton Looks For the Upset Against #3 Villanova Saturday

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Saturday afternoon, Creighton welcomes the four-time defending regular season Big East champion and third-ranked Villanova Wildcats to the CLink. They’re 25-3 on the season, 12-3 in the league, and have beaten the Jays eight consecutive times. They hung 98 points on CU three weeks ago in winning by 20. And they’re an unbelievable 154-20 since the Big East reconfigured at the start of the 2013-14 season, with 14 teams defeating them once and four teams doing it twice. Creighton’s part of the latter group, but hasn’t won against Villanova since Doug McDermott, Grant Gibbs, Ethan Wragge, and Jahenns Manigat were scoring buckets for the Bluejays.

Villanova is led by national player of the year candidate Jalen Brunson, one of the deepest (and most balanced) scoring offenses in college basketball in years, a hall-of-fame level coach, and the confidence that comes with sustained winning. The recipe for the Bluejays to pull off the upset, slim as those odds may be, is likely this: hitting shots early to get their sold-out home arena rocking, ensuring they stay engaged with enough defensive stops and buckets of their own to keep the score close, then riding that energy to a few key plays down the stretch.

“CenturyLink Center is one of the best environments in college basketball,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said on the league’s teleconference this week. “Once they get going, it’s tough to stem the emotion in that building. And it affects everybody on the court. You’re better off if you can keep them a little bit subdued early.”

Be that as it may, Villanova’s not intimidated by environments like they’ll see Saturday in Omaha. And they’re so good, they can withstand an opponent’s best punch and an opposing crowd’s wrath and still win going away. Look at last Saturday against a top-five Xavier team at Cintas Center in Cincinnati. The Musketeers made over half of their two-point shots, 35% of their threes, got to the line 22 times and made 19, and were incredibly efficient, scoring 79 points on 70 possessions. Trevon Bluiett made 7-13 shots and 9-10 at the line. They did a decent job defensively most of the day. And still, they trailed by as many as 19 points and lost by 16.

Chris Mack summed up the issue for opposing team’s trying to stop Villanova in his postgame remarks. “I think when you look at the first half, I don’t know what we could have done much better. If you could press pause on your DVRs, I’d say out of the 11 (threes) they made in the first half, eight of them were highly contested. So you tip your hat, you curse under your breath, and you try to change it (next time).”

But can you change it? Not really. No one’s been lucky enough to find out how, anyway. There’s far too many weapons, who are far too talented, to take everything away. Any two or three of them can beat you by themselves and usually do; if all six or seven of them get rolling together, you almost have no chance.

Brunson averages 19.2 points per game, shoots 42% from three-point range (61-145), 62% on two-pointers, and 80% from the line. Mikal Bridges averages 17.1 points, also shoots 42% on threes (66-158), and makes 59% of his two-pointers and 83% from the line. Donte DiVincenzo averages 14.0 points, makes 40% of his threes (60-151), 59.6% of his shots inside the arc, and is just as good at creating plays for his teammates as he is for himself — he had nine assists and nine rebounds against Xavier, to go along with 21 points (which included five made 3-pointers). Omari Spellman, their 6’8″ 255-pound freshman, averages 10.9 points and 7.6 rebounds a game. Even he’s a threat from outside, making 46% of his threes (42-91). Eric Paschall is the only player in their regular rotation who shoots worse than 40% from three-point range, but the 6’7″ junior carves you up other ways — he’s a 65% shooter inside the arc and has only missed 12 free throws all season (57-69).

And now you can add Phil Booth, their junior guard who missed significant time with a hand injury, back to the lineup (and to your list of players to worry about) as he returned on Wednesday. Booth averages 11.7 points a game, shoots 43% from three-point range, and gives them five players who are a legit threat to burn you behind the arc. Freshman Collin Gillespie can, too, as if that weren’t enough. He’s made 21-50 from long range this year (42%), taking advantage of all the attention defenses pay to everyone else on the floor.

Nearly half of their shots are three-pointers, and 38% of their total points come off of 3’s. Their effective field goal percentage of 60.5% is number one in college basketball, as is their adjusted efficiency of 129.1. They make 40.5% of their threes as a team (15th best), 60.3% of their two-pointers as a team (2nd best), and 76% of their free throws (40th). They rarely turn it over (just 14.6% of their possessions, 8th fewest). And they have an assist on over half of their made baskets. What a nightmare.

Defensively, they’re no slouch, either. They hold opponents to an effective field goal percentage of 49.3% (87th best), and adjusted efficiency of 97.9 (37th best).

Facing Villanova is a daunting task, but it beats the hell out of playing Drake or Evansville on a regional cable television broadcast filled with commercials for Casey’s pizza and random “As Seen on TV” products. (No offense to Drake, Evansville, or Casey’s pizza. You all have a special place in my heart.)

  • Villanova’s Jay Wright owns more wins at his current school than any other current Big East coach, having led the Wildcats to 411 victories in 17 seasons. That’s an average of 24.18 wins per season (counting this season and this year’s wins) for Wright, and a .715 winning percentage in that time.
  • Villanova defeated DePaul 93-62 on Wednesday evening. Jalen Brunson scored the first six points of the game for the Wildcats and then set about getting the rest of his unit involved, finishing with 11 points, seven assists and just two turnovers.
  • This marks the fifth consecutive season during which the Wildcats have recorded 25 or more victories – and eighth since 2005-06. Villanova enters this action in second place in the Big East, one half game behind No. 4 Xavier (13-3 in league play with two games remaining on its slate). After Saturday, ‘Nova goes to Seton Hall on Wednesday, and wraps up the regular season at home against Georgetown.

  • Khyri Thomas has turned his offense up a notch or two since Martin Krampelj’s season-ending injury on January 17. In the nine full games without CU’s third-leading scorer, Thomas has averaged 16.7 points per game and shot 63.2 percent from the field (55-87), 50 percent from three-point range (21-42) and 82.6 percent at the line (19-23). Impressively for the guard, Thomas has shot 50 percent or better from the field in each of his last 10 contests. In the 18 full games with a healthy Krampelj, Thomas was averaging 14.2 points per game and shot 48.2 percent from the field, 35.6 percent from three-point range and 81.8 percent at the line.
  • Creighton has scored 2,377 points through 28 games, to rank 10th nationally with 84.9 points per contest. That puts the program on pace to approach the single-season points record. Last year’s team, which scored a school-record 2,864 points, owned 2,359 points after 28 games.
  • This will be Creighton’s 10th game of the season against a top-25 team, tying it with Oklahoma and Oklahoma State for second-most in the country (Baylor has 11). Creighton is currently 3-6 in those contests, including a 1-1 home mark and a 2-5 mark away from home.

Villanova leads the all-time series with Creighton, 11-2, including a 3-1 record in games played in Omaha. Creighton swept the regular-season series in 2013-14 with a pair of victories by 20+ points, but the Wildcats have won the last eight meetings.

Villanova won 98-78 in the first meeting this year.

  • We published “#Khyrifense Vol. 2” yesterday, a sequel to last year’s compilation of defensive highlights and assorted wizardry from Khyri Thomas with even more steals, blocks, on-ball defense, and screen-busting magic. Enjoy!
  • Greg McDermott joined 1620am’s Sharp and Benning on Thursday morning. His interview starts around the eight-minute mark of the embedded clip below.
  • NBA.com had a terrific profile of Justin Patton this week. Patton said he’s back to 100% and hopes to play without any minutes-restrictions after the All Star Game break.
  • And finally, Toby Hegner’s mom had surgery on Thursday and is thankfully in recovery. All of us at WBR send our prayers to Toby and his family!

On February 24, 2007, Creighton defeated Wichita State 71-54 in front of 17,110 fans on Senior Night for Nate Funk, Anthony Tolliver, Nick Porter, and Manny Gakou. They’d blown double-digit halftime leads in two straight games — losses to Drexel and Illinois State — and were determined not to do the same to the Shockers when they took an eight-point advantage into the break. The Bluejays doubled the lead to 16 in the first five minutes of the second half, then locked down defensively to close out the win.

Despite early foul trouble, Porter scored 13 of his 17 points in the second half. Funk scored 16, and also had a big second half, making 4 of 5 shots after halftime. Tolliver added 11 points, seven rebounds and three blocked shots, and even the little-used Gakou got on the board with a spin move in the first half that netted him two points.

The win moved the Jays to 19-10 overall and 13-5 in the Valley, good enough for sole possession of second place. They’d sweep three games in St. Louis a week later to take the league’s auto bid to the NCAA Tournament.

The Bottom Line:

KenPom predicts a seven-point spread in favor of Villanova, and that’s about right. I think the Jays hang around all afternoon and make it interesting, but the Wildcats make a couple of plays down the stretch to pull away.

#3 Villanova 89, Creighton 83

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