Wednesday night, Creighton was embarrassed in Storrs against the nation’s #1 team, losing 62-48 to UConn in a game that was nowhere near as close as that score indicates.
“We’ve got to get our minds right,” Greg McDermott said at the end of his postgame radio interview after that game. “You know, we’re lacking a little swagger on the offensive end of the floor, and we need that back. This is a team that’s built on shot making, and we’re not making many shots right now.”
That’s true, as the Jays were 6-of-26 on three-pointers (23.1%), and missed more layups (9) than they made (7) en route to just 20 points in the paint. But the problem goes deeper than just missing shots. For most of the night, the offense was stagnant with four players standing still while the ball handler fought to create space. Faced with an opposing defense that hard-hedged ball screens, the Jays too often shied away from contact versus fighting fire with fire. When you combine aggressive on-ball defense, no one able to break the defense down one-on-one, and off-ball players not moving or screening to help create space, you get an offense that looks like it’s in quicksand.
For 19 minutes and 39 seconds spanning the last seven minutes of the first half and the first 13 of the second, Creighton was 3-of-24 from the floor and scored 11 points. They had nine turnovers during that stretch. It’s a miracle they didn’t trail by 40.
They didn’t because their first-shot defense was really, really good. Excellent, even.
- Just 27% of UConn’s shots were threes, the first time all season they’ve attempted less than 30% of their shots from outside — showing that the Jays’ drop coverage was successful in running them off the line.
- UConn made five 3-pointers, their second-fewest in a game this year. They shot 26.3% from three, their worst in a win this season and second-worst in any game (better only than their loss to Seton Hall, where they were 4-of-21 for 19.0%).
- UConn was 20-of-51 on two-pointers (39.2%) and 11-of-28 on layups. Both of those were their worst marks of the season.
It doesn’t mean much if you don’t clear the rebound, though, and of the 45 shots UConn missed they grabbed an offense rebound on 21 of them — or 44%. They turned those into 19 points, while CU only got five points off of their six offensive boards. Combined with 14 turnovers, which UConn turned into 15 points compared to the four points CU got off of seven Husky turnovers, UConn had 25 more extra-possession points than the Jays.
All totaled, 34 of UConn’s 62 points came on extra possessions. And now Creighton heads into Newark to take on a Seton Hall team who’s good at all of those same things — offensive rebounding, forcing turnovers, playing aggressive in-your-face defense — with the added motivation of playing with a chip on their shoulder.
Seton Hall has grabbed an offensive rebound on 39.2% of their missed shots this year, seventh most in the country — a number that has grown to 42.4% in conference play, tops in the Big East. And their second-chance conversion percentage of 8.44%, as tracked by HaslaMetrics, is eighth-best in D1.
It’s indicative of a style of play hyper-focused on the paint. 41.5% of Seton Hall’s total shots come on layups, dunks or tip-ins, second most in all of D1. Just 30.0% of of their shots are threes, ranking 326th out of 362 teams.
The Pirates are 6-1 in Big East play, having handed UConn their only loss — a 75-60 win where they made the Huskies uncomfortable enough to commit turnovers on 27.3% of their possessions, by far their most of the season. They ripped off an unfathomable 28-0 run in a double-digit win over St. John’s on Tuesday, have won five straight games and eight of nine.
But after being picked ninth in the Big East preseason coaches poll and dropping four non-conference games including double-digit losses to Iowa and Baylor, there’s still a sense nationally that the Pirates need to prove they’re for real. Of their seven Big East games, they were the underdog according to Vegas oddsmakers in six of them. Creighton’s favored by 1.5 on Saturday, which makes it seven of eight league games where the Pirates have been the underdog.
Computer metrics aren’t kind to them, either. They’re 54th in both KemPom and the NCAA’s NET ranking, and are right on the edge of the bubble for the NCAA Tournament. That us-against-the-world mentality is fueling a Pirates team that was already as tough as any in the country. It’s a potent recipe.
“We still want to be counted as the underdogs, because they didn’t believe we could be here,” Al-Amir Dawes said after their win over St. John’s. “Us together, we believed. We’re not acting like we’re the top dogs now. We still want to be the underdogs and play with that chip on our shoulder.”
Coach Shaheen Holloway was asked in that same press conference if their winning streak has changed the way he prepares his team.
“No. You gotta know me, big dog. If you know me, you’ll understand why we’re never gonna have that mindset,” he said while shaking his head demonstrably. “Our mindset is always gonna be the underdogs, our mindset is always gonna be we’ve got something to prove, we’ve got a chip on our shoulder, never get greedy, never get satisfied, stay humble, stay low-key.”
Kadary Richmond leads the Pirates in scoring (16.2 points per game) and assists (4.6), and is second in rebounds (6.7). He’s been named Big East Player of the Week two weeks in a row, with the latest award coming after averaging 22 points, 10 rebounds, 6.5 assists and 1.5 steals per game in two road wins last week. It’s been a heckuva senior season so far for Richmond, as four of his seven career 20-point games have come since conference play began.
Dawes is second in scoring at 13.8 points per game, and has scored 20 or more in three of the last four games by drawing a ton of contact and being nearly perfect at the line — he made 8-of-9 free throws en route to 21 points versus St. John’s, 8-of-8 at the line on the way to 25 points against Georgetown, and 5-of-5 with 23 points against Marquette. He’s also the only player who takes three-pointers with any kind of regularity — of their 313 attempts from behind the arc, Dawes has taken 115 of them (42-of-115, 36.5%). He’s been hot from there lately, too, making 12-of-21 over his last four games.
Dre Davis is their third player to average in double figures, at 13.2 points per game, and has scored nine or more in all but two games this year. As their most consistent scorer, he’s been named by Holloway as the team’s most important player also because he can defend any position, giving their defense flexibility in switches.
Dylan Addae-Wusu transferred “to the correct side of the Hudson River” according to Seton Hall’s media notes, coming from St. John’s after three seasons with the Red Storm, and is averaging 8.8 points and 5.4 rebounds. Over the last eight games where the Pirates have gone 7-1, he’s averaging 11.3 points, 6.5 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.9 steals per game. He posted his second double-double of the season against his former team when he scored 16 points, grabbed 10 rebounds and dished five assists in the win over St. John’s earlier this week.
They’ve used the same starting five in all 18 games, with 6’10” senior Jaden Bediako completing the starting lineup. A transfer from Santa Clara, he’d scored in double figures 18 times in four seasons — and he’s done it 10 times already this season. More importantly, he’s been their top rebounder with 7.4 boards per game. Bediako ranks fifth in the Big East with 134 total rebounds and he paces the league averaging 4.3 offensive boards per game.
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- Freshman Isaiah Coleman is a two-time Big East Freshman of the Week award winner, the first Pirate to win that honor multiple times since Khadeen Carrington, Angel Delgado and Isaiah Whitehead all accomplished the feat in 2014-15. He’s crashed back to Earth in league play, however, scoring 17 total points across seven games and only making more than one basket once.
- Of the Pirates’ six wins in Big East play, three have come against ranked opponents (No. 5 UConn, No. 23 Providence, No. 7 Marquette). This season marks the 12th time in program history that the Pirates have beaten at least three ranked opponents; nine of those squads reached the NCAA Tournament.
- Seton Hall’s 6-1 start to Big East play is tied for the second-best start in program history.
- Creighton leads the Big East with 183 three-pointers this season and 10.2 made triples per game. Meanwhile, Seton Hall’s offense ranks last in the league with 103 three-pointers and 5.7 treys per contest. Defensively, Creighton has allowed a league-low 98 three-pointers and limited teams to a league-low 30.0 percent marksmanship from deep. Seton Hall ranks 10th in three-point percentage defense and has allowed a Big East-leading 147 three-pointers.
- Even after Wednesday’s result, Creighton has still outscored teams by 52 points in its seven true road games this season. That’s tied for the second-best mark in the nation, and better than all other “Power 6” schools.
- Creighton’s schedule is front-loaded with road games, and they’ll play their league-high fifth conference road game of the season on Saturday, breaking a tie with Seton Hall, St. John’s and Butler (all of whom are home on Saturday). But following the contest, CU will return for a rare three game homestand, a stretch that includes contests vs. Xavier, DePaul and Butler.
Seton Hall leads the all-time series with Creighton 16-12, and is 10-6 in home games. But Creighton has won six of the last eight games in the series at all sites, including a pair of double-digit wins last season.
Saturday, January 20th, marks the 10th anniversary of one of the greatest shooting displays in Creighton history. On that day, Creighton made a three-pointer on each of its first nine possessions in a 96-68 rout of No. 4 Villanova inside Wells Fargo Center. The Bluejays finished the game shooting 21-for-35 from three-point range, setting a Big East record for three-pointers made in a league game.
It’s otherwise known as “The #WraggeBombs Game.”
The Bottom Line:
Creighton is 1.5 point favorites in Vegas, and KenPom predicts a two-point Bluejay win. ESPN’s BPI gives the Jays 66.8% odds of victory.
After Wednesday’s loss, particularly in the way they lost, a win feels awfully important. It would not only salvage a split on this tough road trip, but achieve the goal of going 2-1 in a week that featured games with St. John’s, UConn and Seton Hall — and set them up to make a run with three home games with Xavier, DePaul and Butler up next.
They’ll need to be ready for a street fight against a group of Pirates intent on stealing their lunch money. They won that type of game a week ago against the Johnnies. They were embarrassed in that style of game on Wednesday. Which Jays team shows up in this one will probably go a long way toward deciding the outcome.
Bluejays 70, Pirates 65