In Greg McDermott’s 15 years as head coach at Creighton, the Bluejays have made the NCAA Tournament 10 times, including the last five in a row (a streak that would be at six if the 2019-20 season had been played to its completion). Coming into the season, they expected to be here — the only question was how high of a seed they could get, and how far they might be able to advance.
A 7-5 start to the season and the loss of their top scoring guard, Pop Isaacs, changed that. On the morning of December 19, the Jays were licking their wounds after a 24-point drubbing at Georgetown. Suddenly, finding enough wins to even get to the tournament felt like a tough ask.
“This team, our strength is in our togetherness. We’ve had a lot of adversity this year,” McDermott said after beating UConn last Friday. “We lost our second leading scorer eight games in, and here we are in the Big East championship game and finished second in the league. We had to retool things. Guys had to take on new roles, and they embraced that. We could have hung our heads and felt sorry for ourselves, but instead this group went to work. This has been a very rewarding season and an unbelievable team to coach.”
They finished second in the Big East with a 15-5 record, but that rough start is the reason they’re wearing road uniforms in an 8/9 matchup. As for why they’re playing a top-ten team in what is essentially a road game? Who knows. Louisville is significantly better than an 8 seed, with metrics and accomplishments that should have landed them as a 5 or a 6 — which is where almost every bracketologist had them. They were 23 in the NET, 23 in KenPom, 19 in KPI and 19 in T-Rank…but on the official NCAA seed list they were 29.
“I think you definitely can get a little riled up for it. For me personally, I know once you get to March, all you have to do is get in, and then it’s anyone’s game. So it didn’t rile me up too much,” Ryan Kalkbrenner said on Wednesday. “What is Louisville now in the AP poll? 10? So that was a little confusing to me how they ended up an 8 seed when they’re 10th in the AP poll. But once you get to this time of year, every team is really good anyway. It doesn’t matter who you play. You’ve got to go out there and win or go home. I try not to get too caught up in seeding, if you think you should be higher or lower or whatever.”
Lexington is roughly an hour from Louisville, and the Cardinals are familiar with Rupp Arena having played there in December against Kentucky. While CU fans travel well, there’s likely to be a lot of red in the building (though some UK fans who bought tickets because they’re the host school have said they’ll be there in Kentucky blue cheering for Creighton purely to spite their in-state rival.)
“The Big East championship was essentially a road game for us. So if we can play in that environment and get used to that, we can play in lots of environments,” Kalkbrenner said. “You just know with road games, they’re going to go on a run, the crowd is going to get into it. We know how to handle that and stay together. You obviously don’t want to plan for a 10-0 run, but that happens in college basketball. So you just handle it and move on. I don’t think there is anything special we have to do, especially with how close this team is. We don’t get rattled by all that stuff.”
“We essentially played a road game Friday night against UConn in the Garden and then Saturday against St. John’s. So we just did it twice. We fully expect to have a similar experience tomorrow,” McDermott added. “We’ve been in that environment. We were successful Friday night. We played great for about 30 minutes, 32 minutes against St. John’s and then let it get away. But you have to stick together. Your team unity is so critical when you are in a building where everybody is against you, and that’s going to be the case. We’ve got a blizzard going on in Omaha right now, so I don’t know how many people are going to get here. But hopefully we will have some folks in blue tomorrow.”
Louisville won 21 of their last 23 games, finished second in the ACC, and lost in the tournament championship game. They’re a veteran team, as six of their top seven players are seniors. They won eight games a year ago, but in Pat Kelsey’s first season as coach they won 27, including a 20-3 mark against ACC teams — with two of the losses against Duke.
Terrence Edwards Jr. leads the team in scoring at 16.6 points per game. The 6’6” senior played four years at James Madison before transferring for his final season, and scored 14 points in their first round upset win over Wisconsin in last year’s NCAA Tournament. He creates his own shots off the dribble, has creative ways to score at the rim, and is a really good one-on-one scorer. He draws an average of four fouls per 40 minutes, and 19% of his total points have come from the line. In the ACC Tournament, he was 5-of-9 at the line against Stanford and 8-of-8 against Clemson; just keeping him off the line doesn’t necessarily stop him from scoring, though. Duke held him to one attempt, and he scored 29 points on an absurd 29 shots (7-of-17 from two, 5-of-12 from three).
He’s been fairly adept at hitting 8-10 foot floaters in the lane like this one against Clemson in the ACC Tournament. That’s a tricky shot for Creighton to defend, because if he pulls Kalkbrenner away from the rim to contest it, someone has to watch his backside to make sure no one cuts to the rim where Edwards can fire a pass for an open shot.
Terrence Edwards hits a nice floater off the screen
He’s been on fire tonight for Louisville🔥 pic.twitter.com/jD1GED5sC6
— Mike O (@coolguy551_) March 16, 2025
Chucky Hepburn is second on the team in scoring at 16.2 points per game, and leads them in assists with 6.0 per game.
“Very talented guard. Most Omaha guards are,” Steven Ashworth said on Wednesday. “He’s going to be a lot of fun to go up against tomorrow, both offensively and defensively. ACC Defensive Player of the Year and has a similar feel to what Zakai Zeigler is able to do on defense. We matched up with them in the tournament last year. It’s definitely a great opportunity to be going up against a defender like that. And then offensively really efficient at getting to his spots and running the offense in a really well-oiled manner.”
Creighton recruited Hepburn twice; the first time CU ended up with Ryan Nembhard instead, and this past summer the starting guard spots were seemingly locked up by Isaacs and Ashworth, though they still reached out to him. Ashworth said the team played pickup with him several times over the summer, and got a firsthand look at how talented he is.
“I’ve known Chucky since 8th grade and know his family. It’s been fun to watch him from afar and incredible how he’s developed his game,” McDermott said. “I wasn’t sure he could add to it, leaving Wisconsin and coming to Louisville, but he has. That’s a credit to him and also credit to Coach Kelsey and his staff for how they put him in positions to really showcase all the things he can do in the game of basketball. I’ve only talked about the offensive end, but he’s incredibly disruptive on the defensive end as well.”
He’s the Cardinals facilitator on both ends of the floor. His verticality allows him to spray the ball around to wherever the open shot is around him, and creates dunks, alley-oops and three-pointers for his teammates. Stopping him from getting into the paint, where he can do all that damage, is key. Hepburn has the clutch gene, too, hitting a buzzer-beater on Thursday against Stanford in the ACC Quarterfinals:
Oh Chucky where do I even begin. If this post gets 1k likes I will create a 500+ word essay on why Chucky Hepburn saved my year. pic.twitter.com/VDU0UasDqS
— Hepburner (@CJUofLFan) March 14, 2025
Defensively, he was the ACC Defensive Player of the Year and is an elite on-ball defender. He had a steal on 4.1% of possessions when he was on the floor, 39th most in all of D1. CU’s seen that type of disruption before — Marquette’s Stevie Mitchell is even better at 5.03%, and San Diego State’s Miles Byrd (4.29%) and Seton Hall’s Dylan Addae-Wusu (4.19%) have similar numbers.
Reyne Smith missed most of the ACC Tournament due to injury, but is expected back for Thursday’s game. He’s their top three-point threat at 38.3%; Smith’s 277 three-point attempts are 90 more than anyone else on the team, and his 106 makes are nearly twice as many as anyone else. Smith is usually Hepburn’s first look when he gets into the paint and wants to spray the ball to the perimeter. His presence on the floor — even if he’s less than 100% — creates driving space for Hepburn and Edwards because defenses have to lock in on him at all times. Once he gets hot it’s too late to adjust. In January, he set the Louisville program record by making 10 threes in a game.
Reyne Smith was on fire tonight 🔥
His 🔟 triples set a @LouisvilleMBB record for 3-pointers made in a game 👏 pic.twitter.com/YU0v4dFYKc
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) January 22, 2025
J’Vonne Hadley is the “X” factor. The 6’6” senior does lots of little things to help the Cardinals win — scoring in transition, coming up with a steal, fighting for rebounds. And though it’s on significantly less volume, he’s just as good of a shooter as Smith (38.6% on 32-of-83). Most of his scoring comes inside the arc, though (118 of his 140 made baskets have been twos). Much like Jamiya Neal is for Creighton, Hadley is a good barometer for how well a game is going for Louisville. If Hepburn and Edwards are scoring close to their average, having to deal with Hadley being hot, too, makes the Cardinals awfully tough to defend.
Inside, James Scott and Noah Waterman get the bulk of the minutes. They’re both 6’11” and occasionally play side-by-side, though most of the time they take turns battling in the middle. How one or both defend Kalkbrenner will go a long way toward determining the outcome. Both struggle to defend without fouling — Waterman averages 5.1 fouls per 40 minutes and Scott averages 4.3 — so the Jays seem likely to have opportunities to score at the line.
Offensively, they’re polar opposites and good compliments to each other. Scott rarely if ever takes a three (1-of-6 this season), and gets the bulk of his points off pick-and-rolls, lob passes from their guards, and on second chance baskets off offensive boards. Waterman often wanders out to the perimeter and finds himself open (he’s 37-of-128, 28.9%). If he heats up from three it will pose problems for CU’s defense, as they’ll either have to drag Kalkbrenner out there to guard him, while leaving the rim unprotected, or switch a smaller player onto him. Waterman made six 3’s in three ACC Tournament games.
The key to the game could well be turnovers and how well (or poorly) Creighton plays against Louisville’s aggressive defense.
“They have kind of a sense of nastiness on them, especially on defense, in terms of how they play, being able to rake and speed teams up,” Neal said. “It’s definitely going to be a challenge, but I think the strength of our schedule has kind of prepared us for things like this, and now it’s time to just go out there and perform.”
Against St. John’s, Ashworth was 3-of-19 from the floor with four turnovers. He was 2-of-10 from three. Numbers like that again will probably doom Creighton. It’s concerning because he’s been in a slump for most of the last month — Ashworth was 3-of-16 against DePaul in the Big East Quarterfinal, 8-of-19 (and 7-of-15 from three) in the season finale against Butler, 3-of-12 at Xavier, 6-of-19 against Georgetown (and 3-of-11 from three) and 7-of-17 (and 4-of-12 from three) at St. John’s. He’s due for some regression to the mean.
If the Jays are careless with the ball and give up live-ball turnovers that Louisville converts into points, it’s going to be hard to win. Against a tough, scrappy defense they simply cannot afford to throw pick-six passes, get the ball ripped away, or allow themselves to get trapped on the baseline.
- Tip: 11:15am
- Venue: Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky
- TV: CBS (KMTV-3 in Omaha)
- Announcers: Brian Anderson, Jim Jackson and Allie LaForce
- In Omaha: Cox channel 3 (SD), 1003 (HD); DirecTV channel 3; Dish Network channel 3
- Streaming at http://ncaa.com/marchmadnesslive
- Creighton Radio: 1620AM, 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Ross Ferrarini
- Streaming on The Varsity Network app, Powered by Learfield
- National Radio: Westwood One
- Announcers: John Sadak and LaPhonso Ellis
- Simulcast on Sirius channel 208 or XM channel 201, and on the SXM App
- Streaming at WestwoodOneSports.com/Madness
- Louisville is making its 40th NCAA Tournament appearance in 2025. The Cards have reached the Sweet 16 on 17 occasions and have advanced to the Elite Eight 11 times. Louisville is seventh in NCAA Tournament appearances (40), 11th in tournament victories (61) and 10th in tournament games (102). UofL has a 61-41 overall NCAA Tournament record, reaching the Final Four eight times.
- UofL Coach Pat Kelsey holds an 0-4 record in his fifth NCAA Tournament appearance in stops at Winthrop and the College of Charleston. Kelsey won the regular season and conference titles twice at Winthrop (2016-17, 2020-21). The Eagles fell to Butler 76-64 in the 2017 NCAA Tournament and 73-63 to Villanova in 2021. After winning consecutive regular season and conference titles at the College of Charleston in 2022-23 and 2023-24), the Cougars dropped a 109-96 decision to Alabama last season and a 63-57 loss to San Diego State in 2023.
- Terrence Edwards Jr. led the Cardinals throughout the ACC Tournament in mid-March, averaging 25.0 ppg over the three contests. He shot 45% from the floor, netted eight 3-pointers, and pulled down an averaged of 5.3 rebounds per game. He scored 29 points against the Blue Devils in the Championship game, the most any opposing individual has scored against Duke all season. Chucky Hepburn also earned All-Tournament honors, averaging 15.3 points, 5.3 assists and 3.7 rebounds per game.
- Among the milestones that could happen on Thursday are: Steven Ashworth is 41 points shy of 2,000 in his career; he’s also attempted 279 three-pointers this season, 10 attempts shy of Baylor Scheierman’s school record of 289 from 2023-24. Ryan Kalkbrenner is five blocks away from 400 in his career and six three-pointers shy of 50. He is also 10 rebounds shy of 300 this season and 29 field goals short of 1,000. And Jackson McAndrew (62) is six three-pointers shy of Ethan Wragge’s (68) Creighton record by a freshman.
- Creighton is 6-8 against teams in the 2025 NCAA Tournament field, including two wins over UConn and one each against Kansas, St. John’s, Xavier, and Marquette. Louisville was 3-6 against the NCAA Tournament field, picking up two wins against Clemson and one over North Carolina.
- Creighton has won at least one game in 13 of its last 15 postseason appearances, a stretch that began in 2007-08. The only times they lost in the first game? The 2016-17 and 2017-18 NCAA Tournaments, where they lost to Rhode Island and Kansas State, respectively.
Creighton is 2-1 all-time against Louisville with a 2-0 record in NCAA Tournament action. The series began with Creighton’s 80-71 NCAA Tournament win in Tulsa, Okla., in 1974 in a Regional Consolation game. Louisville will be the first NCAA Tournament opponent that Creighton will play three times.
Most recently, Creighton won 62-58 in Orlando on March 11, 1999 in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament. Here’s a highlight package of that game we put together a few years back for WBR’s Bluejay Rewind series.
When Creighton left for the airport on Tuesday, Kalkbrenner was sporting a pair of authentic 1998-99 uniform shorts, likely left over from one of the big men on that team. A boss move.
Asked about it on Wednesday, Kalkbrenner said he got them from team administrative assistant John McKew. “I don’t know where he pulled them from. Honestly, I just thought they looked good with the jacket that we got yesterday,” Kalkbrenner said. “But it was cool to wear ’em. Obviously there’s a lot of history from that era. I thought it looked good and ended up being a good match.”
The last time Creighton played on March 20, I wrote this in the Primer:
Creighton has never won on March 20, and in fact, the only two games contested on this date rank among the worst losses in program history: Central Michigan’s 79-73 upset victory in the 2003 NCAA Tournament, and Miami’s controversial 53-52 win in the 2006 NIT.
Here’s hoping the next time Creighton plays on March 20, this section of the Primer has a better memory to look back on so that those two games can continue to wither and die in the annals of Bluejay history where they belong.
Ah, and now we do have a much better memory for this date! On March 20, 2021, Creighton beat UC Santa Barbara 63-62 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. With 16 seconds left in that game, the Jays found themselves down one, with the worst free throw shooter on a bad free throw shooting team at the line. Christian Bishop, he of the 57% shooting percentage from the line, prepared for the biggest shots of his career to this point. One to tie, two for the lead, in the crucible of the NCAA Tournament.
“I just took a step and smelled the roses, honestly, when I was out there. I knew I’d practiced it before. So I was ready to hit the shots,” Bishop said. “Yesterday when I was shooting free throws, I was like, why am I missing, why am I missing, and one of the coaches said, just tell yourself you’re going to make it, it’s a mental thing. So I just gave myself the confidence and I hit the shots.”
That it was Bishop who calmly sank the game-winning free throws was fitting: He was Creighton’s player of the game even before he swished both of them, notching a double double of 15 points and 11 rebounds against a UCSB frontline that came into the game much-hyped and ended with no answer for the Jays’ big man. And he played a key defensive role against UC Santa Barbara star JaQuori McLaughlin — the Jays double-teamed him on the perimeter in ball-screen situations. They wanted him to be a facilitator. And it worked most of the night. The explosive McLaughlin had 13 points and seven assists, good numbers but far from even his average game.
But it nearly blew up in their face on UCSB’s final trip down the floor. With Bishop doubling McLaughlin on the perimeter to force someone else to beat them, big man Amadou Sow became that someone. He got free for an open lay-up. Gasp. It had ‘One Shining Moment’, buzzer beater, all-time tourney moment written all over it. The 12 seeded Gauchos getting their second ever tourney win on that play? It would run in highlight clips forever.
That would-be game winner hit the back of the rim and bounced out. Shereef Mitchell grabbed the rebound, and CU escaped. Deep breath.
The Bottom Line:
Louisville is favored by 2.5 in Vegas, though ESPN’s BPI gives Creighton 52.4% odds of winning. KenPom predicts a three-point Louisville win.