You know you want to watch Creighton Men’s Basketball with us at Scriptown Brewing Company this Wednesday night (2/13)!
We’ll make it worth your while, too, thanks to ** $2 OFF BEER ALL NIGHT **
Consider it an early Valentine’s Day gift to all the Jays fans we love! Check out details on our Facebook page.
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[dropcap]Two-thirds[/dropcap] of the way through what Greg McDermott called a season defining road trip, Creighton has blown late leads in both games and limps into Cincinnati with a 13-11 record, 4-7 in the Big East…and yet their postseason hopes remain about the same as they were when they left Omaha. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi still has them among his “Last Four Out” as of February 12. BracketMatrix, which tracks 108 top bracketologists, has them among their “Next Four Out” based on compiled data from those 108 brackets. And a prominent NIT prognosticator has them as a #1 seed in that tourney, should they miss the Big Dance.
In other words: despite everything that has transpired over the last six weeks, with seven games left in the regular season Creighton is in a decent spot — on the bubble, close enough to an at-large spot that while they don’t totally control their own destiny they have the opportunity to play their way into the field. Four of the seven games are at home, with 70% or better odds at winning in each according to KenPom. And they’re favored in two of the road games, at DePaul and at Xavier, again according to KenPom. Why are the metrics and the bracketologists higher on this team than their own fanbase?
Their monstrous strength of schedule, 10th toughest in college basketball, according to the latest NET ratings, continues to pay dividends, for one. 10 of their 11 losses are to teams projected to make the field of 68 — all except Nebraska. Yep, on February 13, the loss to the Huskers is now officially classified as a “bad loss” on the Jays’ resume, which is hilarious in a schadenfreude sort of way. The weakness of the Pac-12 helps, too; just two teams are projected to make the field, which opens up the at-large pool to teams who otherwise would be out of the conversation, such as Creighton.
The final seven-game stretch begins tonight against a Xavier team that has lost six straight, and has bottomed out (or at least they hope so): they led 51-46 with 10 minutes left over the weekend against DePaul, and were then outscored 29-11 over the final 10 minutes in a 12-point home loss. While DePaul is much improved, getting the tables turned on you like that at home is demoralizing.
That makes them dangerous if Creighton isn’t careful, though. The Musketeers will be hungry and urgent to break that streak, and they’ll certainly play with more energy at home — especially compared to a road game where they arrived less than 12 hours before tipoff. CU knows all about that, though. They played desperate teams in road games at Butler (who had lost two straight including a 34-point blowout), St. John’s (who had lost two straight before both meetings with CU), and Seton Hall (who had lost five of six before beating CU on Saturday).
CU’s coaches made sure the players had that top-of-mind in their prep for this one. Assistant Paul Lusk told the media on Tuesday that the staff told the team “think about when we lost at Butler, how they handled us, and when they came back to our place we had a high level of intensity and our sense of urgency was at an all-time high. It’s going to be the same thing [on Wednesday]. We were very good against Xavier the first time, and now we’re going into their place and I’m sure they’ll be ready to go.”
Creighton will be a bit deeper in this one than they were on the first two games of the road trip, at least, as everyone is back to full strength (or at least as much as they can be in February) — the only holdout is Marcus Zegarowski, who remains in a hard cast as WBR’s Matt DeMarinis reported in his practice report.
- Tip: 7:30pm
- Venue: Cintas Center, Cincinnati, OH
- TV: CBSSN
- Announcers: Carter Blackburn and Pete Gillen
- In Omaha: Cox channel 234 (SD), 1234 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 643 (SD), 1643 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: CBSSN Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 221; Dish Network channel 158
- Streaming info
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Nick Bahe
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters:
- Xavier has four players averaging in double-figures, a group led by sophomores Paul Scruggs (13.0 ppg., 4.9 rpg.) and Naji Marshall (13.4 ppg., 6.7 rpg.). Scruggs scored just five points in the first meeting, but has been much better in home games than he has been on the road — he’s shooting a fire-hot 60% on three-pointers at Cintas Center. Similarly, Marshall was held to just six points in the first meeting, and he’s been better at home too — he’s coming off a 22-point outing Saturday against DePaul.
- Tyrique Jones (10.9 ppg., 7.3 rpg.) made five of his seven shots in the first meeting, and when he got the ball on the block he was difficult for CU to stop. He leads the nation in offensive rebounding percentage (17.2), leads the team in rebounding (and fifth in the league at 7.3 rpg.) and offensive rebounding (first in the league and 18th in the nation at 3.3 rpg.). He’s one of the best rebounders in college basketball. Creighton has to — HAS TO — box out to keep him changing the game with offensive boards.
- Quentin Goodin scored 13 points with seven assists in the first meeting, creating shots for others with his ability to drive into the teeth of the defense. Those shots didn’t go in on that afternoon; they might at home, so Creighton has to try and force him into settling for his own shot. The further from the basket, the better.
- Martin Krampelj finished with 25 points and 11 rebounds at Seton Hall. The 25 points were a career-best effort, while the 11 boards were a season-best. Krampelj is the first Bluejay with 25 points and 10 rebounds in a game since Doug McDermott had 30 points and 12 rebounds on March 21, 2014 vs. Louisiana-Lafayette, and is the first Creighton player with 25+ points and 11+ rebounds in a Big East game, as McDermott never had such a game in his lone year in the league.
- In the last three games, a stretch that started with CU’s Feb. 3 over Xavier, Creighton has allowed 61.0 points per game while holding foes to 37.6 percent shooting from the field and 28.9 percent marksmanship from downtown. In CU’s first eight league contests, Creighton had allowed 82.5 points per game while the opposition shot 49.4 percent from the field and 41.1 percent from deep.
- Creighton owns 4,970 assists since Greg McDermott was hired in 2010, a figure that ranks fourth nationally, and just 30 shy of the 5,000 mark. The only schools above the Bluejays are North Carolina (5,589), Michigan State (5,298) and Kansas (4,999).
Xavier owns a 15-13 lead in the series with Creighton, and are 8-6 in Cincinnati. Nineteen of the 28 all-time meetings have been within five points in the final minute, including five of the last seven.
Not so in the last meeting. Creighton rolled 76-54 in Omaha two weeks ago, as Martin Krampelj matched his career-high with 23 points. He stuffed the stat sheet with six rebounds, two assists, four steals and a perfect 7-of-7 from the foul stripe in 24 minutes.
On February 13, 2014, Doug McDermott scored 10 of Creighton’s first 13 points, and 8 of their final 14. And with his team down by two with less than a minute to go, in front of a loud, hostile Hinkle Fieldhouse crowd, McDermott sank a three-pointer to silence them. Then Will Artino blocked not one but two shots on a final defensive stand, and the Jays defeated Butler.
The Bottom Line:
The last time Creighton played three consecutive conference games, all on the road, was during the 2012-13 season. That Bluejay team suffered narrow losses to Wichita State and Drake to open the road swing before closing the trip with an 81-51 win at Southern Illinois. The Jays shot 63 percent in the win over the Salukis, including 12-for-20 (60 percent) from three-point range.
In the game thread before that one, a WBR reader (“Angrydan” from the Bluejay Underground) suggested that great, great song from the Chambers Brothers as the theme song of the game. I used it in the Primer, and am reminded of it’s greatness so we’ll enjoy it again. And we’ll enjoy another losing-streak busting win to end a three-game road trip, too.
Creighton 80, Xavier 69