[dropcap]Three[/dropcap] years ago, a young Creighton team took a 7-3 record to Norman, Oklahoma for a mid-December battle with the Sooners. They’d been blown out on the road by a ranked Big Ten team (Indiana), lost to a solid power conference team at home (Arizona State), and lost a game they probably should have won after blowing a lead late (Loyola-Chicago). As such, OU was their last chance for a signature non-conference win before Big East play. They didn’t get it, and by late-February when that team had become dangerous enough to be squarely on the bubble for the NCAA Tournament, their resume suffered as a result. (And yes, they eventually played themselves out of NCAA Tournament discussion, but stick with me here.)
This year, a young Jays squad heads to Norman once again in mid-December with the same 7-3 record. They were blown out on the road by a ranked Big Ten team (Nebraska), lost to the #1 team in the country at home (Gonzaga), and lost a game they probably should have won after blowing a lead late (Ohio State). Though this year’s team owns a win over then-#16 Clemson, that win may or may not hold up over the course of the season; Clemson is also 7-3 and hasn’t looked as impressive as once thought. So we’re more or less back at the same point that 2015-16 team was in — on the road against Oklahoma in need of a signature non-conference win. Much like that team, Creighton will almost certainly be a lot better in two months than they are today, but in order for that to matter in terms of the Big Dance, they need a marquee win for their resume outside of the Big East.
They need to beat Oklahoma.
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The 2018-19 Oklahoma Sooners are an entirely different team than the 2017-18 version, with head coach Lon Kruger reinventing their style of play to better suit this year’s roster instead of forcing a round peg into a square hole. A year ago, they were an up-tempo, high-scoring team built around Trae Young, a sensational talent who led the nation in both scoring and assists. They scored an average of 84.9 points per game, fifth most in the country, and their adjusted tempo was second fastest among power conference teams (with an average possession length of 14.0 seconds). Because of the faster pace, they gave up an average of 81.7 points on defense.
This year, they’re a slower-tempo, defensive minded team that has held opponents to 64.9 points — a nearly 17-point drop! — by using their length and athleticism to deny shots early in the shot clock and force teams into longer possessions. They’re allowing opponents to shoot just 36.3% from the floor, including an outstanding 38.4% mark on two-point shots.
The Sooners enter the game with a 9-1 mark built almost entirely away from home. Eight of their first 10 games have been somewhere else — they’ve traveled 7,300 miles so far, including a tourney in the Bahamas, a neutral-site game against Wichita State in Oklahoma City, and a neutral-site game against USC in Tulsa. They haven’t played at the Lloyd Noble Center on campus in nearly three weeks. Their average opponent NET rating is the second-best in college basketball, and they’re one of just three schools in the country without a “Quadrant 4″ game.
That’s a bold strategy, and it’s paid off. They beat both Wichita State and USC on those neutral floors, they beat Notre Dame at MSG in NYC, they beat Florida and Dayton in the Bahamas. And after this one, they’ll head on the road to play Northwestern and Kansas in true road games. It’s a low-major buy-game strategy of scheduling, except by a prestigious power conference team.
Lon Kruger believes he has a really good veteran team, in other words, and has challenged them. Kruger’s right — and they’ve responded.
They’re led in scoring by Christian James, a 6’4″ senior who averages 18.9 points, 6.5 rebounds, and two assists per game. James has scored at least 16 points in all but three games, and is a serious threat from the perimeter. Just under half of his shots — 56 of 114 — have been three-pointers. He’s made 39% of them, or around three 3-pointers per game, on average.
James is the reigning Big 12 Player of the Week after averaging 19.5 points and 11.5 rebounds in a pair of off-campus wins over Notre Dame and Wichita State. He had 25 points and 10 rebounds against Notre Dame followed by 14 points with a career-high 13 boards against Wichita State. Against USC over the weekend, he had a helluva game despite not shooting all that well — 16 points and 15 (!) rebounds, while shooting 0-for-6 from behind the arc, in 36 minutes. Even when he’s off, or when your defense forces him into tough shots, he’s still able to leave his mark on a game.
Miles Reynolds, a 6’3″ senior, is second on the team in scoring at 10.7 points, and averages 2.6 rebounds a game. His normal role is a super-sub, sixth-man type of player, as he’s come off the bench in seven of their 10 games. He’s started the last three with Jamuni McNeace out with an ankle injury. And he’s made the most of the bigger role — he scored a team-high 20 points (thanks to 6-of-8 shooting on two-pointers) against USC.
Reynolds has scored at least 14 points in four of his last five games and is averaging 15.4 points during that stretch. A prolific free throw shooter, Reynolds led the Big XII in free throw shooting (42-of-51, 82%) before a rough night against USC (5-of-10) knocked his percentage down.
6’9″ sophomore Brady Manek is their third player to average in double figures, at 10.2 points per game, and also grabs an average of 8.0 rebounds a game. Manek averaged *only* 5.2 rebounds last season, but added 20 pounds to his frame over the summer and became a far more physical player on the interior. As a result, he’s had three double-doubles so far this year after having none a year ago.
Manek is a matchup problem for a lot of teams, because despite his size, over half of his shot attempts are three-pointers. Not only does that draw his defender away from the rim, opening up driving lanes for his guards, it hurts teams on the glass as their bigs are often out of position for rebounds because they’re standing 20 feet from the basket. He’s made 30% of his threes this year (13-of-43) which isn’t tremendous, but is good enough that you have to respect the shot.
Aaron Calixte, a 5’11” senior, averages 9.3 points, 3 assists, and 2.5 boards a game. Calixte is a slasher, with two-thirds of his shots coming inside the arc, and almost all of them created himself off the dribble. To wit: of his 16 made shots at the rim, just one was assisted by a teammate; of his eight made two-point jumpers, just one came off an assist.
6’10” senior Jamuni McNeace is second on the team in rebounds (6.5 per game), and averages 8.9 points. He’s missed time over the last week-plus with an ankle injury, forcing Reynolds into the starting lineup and robbing the Sooners of a bit of depth. It’s also robbed them of their best rim protector — in the last five games McNeace has played, he’s totaled 14 blocked shots (a total made even more impressive by having zero in his return to the floor against USC).
Offensively, McNeace is primarily a weapon around the rim; he hasn’t attempted a single three-pointer this year and rarely shoots a mid-range jumper, either. But he’s a good finisher at the rim, making nearly 60% of his shots from that range.
Other players to watch out for include junior forward Matt Freeman, who’s been shooting well from outside over the last two weeks. Freeman made three 3-pointers and scored 11 points against both Notre Dame and Wichita State, and hit a pair of threes against USC. This is just the second time in his career that he’s sunk multiple threes in consecutive games; while he ordinarily wouldn’t be a player defenses need to key on, he’s been hot.
And Freshman guard Jamal Bieniemy hasn’t been much of an offensive threat so far in his collegiate career, but he’s earned playing time through good defense — he has 16 steals in his first nine collegiate games.
- Tip: 8:00pm
- Venue: Lloyd Noble Center, Norman, OK
- TV: ESPNU
- Announcers: Anish Shroff and Bryndon Manzer
- In Omaha: Cox channel 220 (SD), 1220 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 605 (SD), 1605 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: Check your local listings
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 208, Dish Network channel 141
- Streaming on WatchESPN
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters:
- Oklahoma’s defense has been great all year, but has been especially disruptive late in the game. In OU’s nine wins, its opponents are shooting a combined 30.1 percent (20.5 percent from 3) in the final 15 minutes of the game.
- OU has held its opponent to 60 or fewer points in four of its last seven games. And the Sooners have held their opponents to 30 or fewer points in the first half on six occasions this season (after doing so zero times last season).
- Mitch Ballock made 7-of-10 three-pointers vs. Nebraska on Dec. 8, then sank 5-of-7 shots from downtown vs. Green Bay six days later. He’s the first Bluejay to do that while shooting 70 percent or better from downtown in each contest since Doug McDermott on March 8-13, 2014. Like Ballock, McDermott had a 7-for-10 game, as well as a 5-for-7 contest. To find the last Creighton player to make five (or more) three-pointers in three straight games, you’d have to go all the way back to Kyle Korver, who did it in four straight contests from Nov. 17-26, 2002.
- Creighton ranks first nationally in three-point percentage (.448), fifth in three-pointers made per game (11.7) and 15th in three-pointers made (117). CU and The Citadel are the only teams with nine or more made 3’s in every game this year; Creighton has seven straight games with 10 or more made threes.
- On the other hand, Creighton ranks 321st out of 351 teams in D1 hoops at the free throw line — they’ve made a ghastly 63.3% from the line. It hasn’t cost them yet, but it will certainly cost them a win or two if that continues.
Oklahoma has won three of the five all-time meetings, and the only previous one played in Norman. The series began in 1921 with a 27-16 Creighton victory, followed by losses in 1973 (73-70 in Omaha) and 1986 (106-89 in Oklahoma City). In 2014, Creighton rallied from an 18-point deficit to win 65-63 in Omaha, but dropped a 87-74 rematch in 2015.
That last meeting was closer than the final score looked; it had a chance to go Bluejays way, in fact. From our recap:
“When the second half began, a team maligned for their defense turned in a great stretch of play thanks to some halftime adjustments to their ball screen defense that rattled OU. From the 17-minute mark of the second half until 12:34 remained, the Sooners scored on just three of 12 possessions. The Jays converted on just two of 12, unfortunately, and the deficit remained just out of arms’ reach.
With 12:14 to go, James Milliken made a three-pointer to cut the deficit to 60-55. The defense got even more stiff, and held Oklahoma without a field goal for more than four minutes. Oklahoma’s defense was up to the challenge, holding Creighton to just one field goal of their own, plus a pair of free throws, and helped them cling to a 60-59 lead.
On the next possession, Thomas came up with a steal but got sped up taking the ball across half court and turned it over, forcing Ronnie Harrell to foul to stop a fastbreak dunk. Two OU free throws later, Thomas exploded through three defenders, rose up at the rim, and converted 99% of a dunk of the year candidate. Problem was, the ball bounced off the back iron and out, OU ran in transition, and got a bucket to go up 64-59. The Jays missed two shots on their next possession, both in the paint, OU answered with a basket, and Greg McDermott called timeout to stop the momentum from swinging OU’s way permanently.
As they’d done in the first half, they refused to go away, and on the basis of three-pointers on three consecutive possessions, made it a 71-68 game with 4:57 to go. Then the decisive stretch of the game happened, most of it with Watson on the bench due to a key tactical miscalculation from McDermott. With Watson out of gas and in need of a breather, he opted to bring in a sub at the 4:38 mark so he could get an extra 40 seconds or so on the bench before the media timeout, rather than taking a timeout of his own to get Watson that break without coming out.
Isaiah Zierden took over at point, and the Sooners’ All-American guard Buddy Hield took advantage. He immediately got aggressive on Zierden, pressured him into turning it over, and raced to the other end for a dunk to make it 75-68. On the very next play, Zierden tried, for some inexplicable reason, to throw a half-court pass to Zach Hanson, but the Sooners intercepted it, Hield buried a jumper, and it was 77-68. Watson came right back in, even though the media timeout had not yet come, but the damage was done. Hield hit a three-pointer to make it 80-68, capping a personal 9-0 run that, for all intents and purposes, ended the game.”
On December 18, 2010 (eight years ago, already, if you can believe that!) Gregory Echenique made his long-awaited debut in a Bluejay uniform after sitting out the first semester because of a mid-season transfer from Rutgers the year before. Echenique was the 15th-rated overall prospect in the 2009 class by virtually every publication, and the #2 rated center. He was dominant as a freshman in the “old” Big East, and had a monster game against Providence at the tail end of the 2008-09 season — 14 points, 16 rebounds, 7 blocks, and 5 steals. Understandably, the game against Idaho State was almost a sideshow to the debut of one of the highest-profile newcomers for the Jays in years. Creighton’s marketing team ran huge ads in the Omaha World-Herald the entire week before the game that, while not explicitly promoting “Gregory Echenique’s Debut!”, did feature a giant picture of the giant player. The story was Echenique, not the opponent, as Ott wrote the next day:
“Before last night it had been slightly more than 12 months since Echenique played a collegiate basketball game; December 6, 2009, to be exact. Since that time he’s sustained a serious eye injury, transferred from Rutgers to Creighton, sat out the second semester of what would become the worst season of Creighton basketball in more than a decade, practice throughout the summer and fall of 2010, and cut more than 25 pounds while getting back into game shape.
The guy’s been through a lot. And, if you hadn’t noticed, things haven’t been so smooth around the Hilltop and its basketball program in the past year, either. Creighton fans suffered through a stomach-punch season in 2009-2010, one that seemed to try and overcorrect Bluejays backers’ expectations after nearly a decade of success in the Missouri Valley Conference. Creighton failed to make the NCAA or NIT Tournaments for the first time since 1997, then the coach who led the decorated decade took off for the Pacific Northwest, and then the school’s most talented player (P’Allen Stinnett) wasn’t asked back for his senior season. Throw in the introduction of a new coaching staff and a handful of players, and you can’t blame fans of the program for looking ahead to Echenique’s arrival.
To be sure, many of the die-hard Jays fans have placed enormous expectations on Echenique’s broad shoulders. Saturday night was merely the start to what CU backers hope will be break the Bluejays need to make the jump in status many around the program have expected since Dana Altman started taking CU to Big Dance after Big Dance.”
Here’s our (rather primitive) Highlight Reel from that game — this was one of the very first ones WBR produced, and the TV broadcast was a KMTV production which needs no further explanation — and though it’s a little clunky, it’s fun to watch!
While looking back in the WBR archives at our coverage of Echenique’s debut — and specifically at the Pregame Primer — I saw that this was the video. The note? “Billy Squier and the MTV Chorus from 1981! Hideous or rad? That’s for you to decide. Its no “The Stroke,” sure, but then, what is, really?”
Two things: I’ve been writing these Primers for a LONG DAMN TIME (since 2007!). And though a lot of the sections of those Primers have come and gone over the years, the one that’s remained is the video at the bottom.
For better or worse. Mostly worse.
The Bottom Line:
There’s a lot of similarities to the last time Creighton visited Norman in search of a win, as we talked about at the top. I think those similarities continue — CU will make this close, but down the stretch Oklahoma makes more plays and comes away with the win.
Sooners 78, Bluejays 73