Fresh off a big win over Nebraska in their first road test of the season, Creighton heads to the U.S. Virgin Islands for the Paradise Jam. It’s an event they won in 2016, in a similar situation — that team defeated #9 Wisconsin in an exhilarating Gavitt Games battle on Tuesday, and then opened up against Washington State three days later. This year, they’ll again play three games in four days, starting Friday afternoon with the Brown Bears.
Prior to last week, it had been a long time since Brown had taken the floor. The Ivy League decided to postpone sports during the 2020-21 academic year due to COVID, which was especially difficult for Brown because their returning roster was (and is) really talented. One of their opening week games was in Chapel Hill against #19 UNC, and they took the Tar Heels to the limit in a 94-87 loss.
Brown comes into the game 3-1, with two of those wins over fellow Rhode Island private schools — 89-59 against DIII Salve Regina, and 98-47 against DIII Johnson & Wales University. Their lone D1 win was against Central Connecticut, ranked 352 out of 358 teams by KenPom and coached by former Bluejay assistant Patrick Sellers.
The Bears have had a different leading scorer in all four games, and are led in scoring by freshman Kino Lilly Jr. who’s been their sixth man so far. The reigning Ivy League Rookie of the Week, Lilly Jr. averages a team-high 13.3 points with 3.8 assists while shooting 57.1% on three-pointers (12-of-21). He also has an excellent 15-to-2 assist-to-turnover ratio. At this point of his career Lilly Jr. is a classic spot-up shooter who doesn’t drive much and doesn’t even shoot very often inside the arc; two-thirds of his attempts have been three-pointers. He doesn’t create his own shot off the dribble, either, but can be deadly if you lose him on the perimeter.
Tamenang Choh was expected to be their leading scorer, but has missed all but one game so far with a hip injury suffered in their season-opening win over Salve Regina. A two-time All Ivy League selection, Choh opted to return for a fifth year as a graduate student this year and the Bears will look a lot different when he returns. It probably won’t be on Friday, though.
Loyola-Chicago transfer Paxson Wojcik, a 6’5” guard/forward, is averaging 11.8 points and 5.0 boards. A role player on the last two Ramblers’ teams, he’s taken the most shots on Brown’s roster through four games (41) and rarely left the floor, playing in 80% of the available minutes so far. Wojcik’s dad is former Tulsa head coach and current Michigan State assistant Doug Wojcik, and like many coaches’ kids his game is a reflection of a lifetime spent around the game. He rarely turns it over, his shot selection is really solid, and he makes lots of skilled plays that win games but don’t show up in box scores. Notable for Friday’s game, though, is that he’s not shot the ball very well from the perimeter so far this year — he’s 1-of-10 through four games.
Dan Friday is the closest thing Brown has to a slasher on the roster, though his best shot is pulling up for floating jumpers a few feet from the rim rather than attacking opposing bigs at the rim. Still, his ability to get into the lane off the dribble makes him a dangerous distributor all the same — he leads the team in assists (16) and steals (8). Just three of his 38 shot attempts have been three-pointers; he’s not looking to shoot from outside.
Inside, Nana Owusu-Anane is the tallest player in their rotation at 6’8”. While playing with CU point guard Ryan Nembhard on Canada’s U19 team this summer he looked more comfortable on the perimeter than in the paint, but just four of his 31 shot attempts have been three-pointers so far this year. With that said, he certainly has the ability to knock down jumpers, as this clip from the UNC game shows.
Once Jaylan Gainey, the reigning Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year, is back to full strength Owusu-Anane will probably get more chances to show off that jumper. Gainey is 6’9” with a seven-foot wingspan, and is one of the better shot blockers in America — two years ago he blocked an absurd 12.3% of the shots attempted when he was on the floor, and averaged over four blocks per 40 minutes. He’s been nursing his way back from a hamstring injury, and has only averaged 18 minutes of playing time through four games.
If the Jays win, they advance to play the winner of the Bradley/Colorado State game, and will play Sunday afternoon at 4:45pm Omaha time. With a loss, they would play Saturday at 2:15pm against the loser of the Bradley/Colorado State game.
- Tip: 2:15pm
- Venue: Sports and Fitness Center, University of the Virgin Islands in St. Thomas, USVI
- TV: None
- Webcast: ESPN3
- Announcers: Brad Wells, Kevin Lehman
- Click here for direct link to webcast
- Also streaming on the ESPN app on phones, tablets, and smart devices (such as Roku, Amazon Firestick, and Google Chromecast)
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcer: John Bishop
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Brown is first among Ivy League teams averaging 87.3 points per game. The Bears are also outscoring their opponents by the widest margin with their 64.3 points allowed per game (third among Ivies) leading to a 23.0 scoring margin. Princeton is second at 20.5.
- Brown fell to then-No. 19 North Carolina 94-87 on Nov. 12 despite leading 50-47 at halftime. The Bears would continue to lead well into the second half and the Tar Heels would not take the lead for good until there was only 6:55 left in the game. The Bears gave UNC a run for its money even without Tamenang Choh suiting up for the game and with starters Jaylan Gainey and David Mitchell fouling out early in the second half.
- Five of the Ivy League’s eight teams received at least two first-place votes in the preseason poll; Brown was picked to finish fifth with a total of 79 points, and two first-place votes, finishing 36 points ahead of sixth-place Dartmouth.
- Creighton is seeking its fifth preseason tournament title under Greg McDermott, and second at the Paradise Jam. In McDermott’s tenure, CU is 32-6 in regular-season tournament action with five titles in 10 completed events.
- In 38 MTE games under Greg McDermott, the Bluejays have made 390-of-940 three-point attempts, connecting at a 41.5 percent clip while making 10.26 treys per contest.
- The last time Creighton was at the Paradise Jam in 2016, the Bluejays set 11 tournament records that still stand. Records set include:
- 13 Assists in a Game – Maurice Watson Jr.
- 40 Field Goals Made in a Game vs. Washington State
- 40 Field Goals Made in a Game vs. North Carolina State
- 25 Assists in a Game vs. Washington State
- 301 Points in a Tournament
- 100.3 Points Per Game in a Tournament
- 64 Assists in a Tournament
- 111 Field Goals Made in a Tournament
- 55.1 3FG% in a Tournament
- 56.5 FG% in a Tournament
- 44 3FG Made in a Tournament
Creighton is 0-1 all-time against Brown, losing 80-79 to the Bears on Dec. 28, 1991 in the Tribune Classic in Tempe, Arizoma during Rick Johnson’s first year as head coach. The Bears won the game when Rick Lloyd threw in an off-balance 13-foot shot with 0.1 seconds left, which came just nine seconds after Matt Petty had drained a three-pointer to give Creighton a 79-78 lead.
Duan Cole led Creighton with 22 points while Latrell Wrightsell contributed 16 points, eight assists and four steals. Chuck Savage led Brown with 23 points.
Some tweets from the Jays’ stay in the islands so far:
On November 19, 2014, Creighton rallied from an 18-point deficit in the second half to defeat #18 Oklahoma 65-63. From the Morning After:
“When Oklahoma scored the first seven points of the second half in 90 seconds to push the lead to 42-24, the arena fell deathly silent. The Jays were one or two bad possessions away from being run out of their own building, something that hasn’t happened very often in the CLink Era. Coach Greg McDermott called timeout, but instead of going over X’s and O’s, he used the break as a motivational opportunity. As he looked around the huddle, “We had a defeated look on our face,” McDermott said in the media room later. “The timeout wasn’t about X’s and O’s. It was about who we want to be.”
They came out of that timeout as a different team. Hegner knocked down a three to make it 42-27, and the crowd zapped back to life. TaShawn Thomas answered with a jumper to push the lead back to 44-27, but instead of going away, the crowd stayed alive, and over the next five minutes, the sold-out crowd of nearly 18,000 fans and the Bluejay players fed off one another. Each successful shot, each defensive stop, the lead shrank, and the noise level ratcheted up. First it was Zierden with a three to make it 44-30. Then Spangler missed a three for the Sooners, and Chatman hit one for the Jays, and it was 44-33. After another stop, Zach Hanson converted an old-fashioned three-point play to make it 44-36. Two more stops, alternated with jumpers from Devin Brooks and Austin Chatman, made it 44-40. It was a 16-2 run, and it wasn’t over yet.
Buddy Hield converted a jumper to end the run temporarily and push the lead back to 46-40, but less than 20 seconds later Hegner drilled a three to make it 46-43. A defensive stop and a Hanson jumper made it 46-45. And then another defensive stop, and a three from Zierden, made the comeback complete — it was 48-46 Creighton. It was a 24-4 run. It was…unbelievable.”
I jumped to some wild conclusions after that game that proved to be WILDLY inaccurate. WILDLY. But hey, in the aftermath of that comeback, things seemed a lot more optimistic than they should have been. Almost everyone felt that way. Reality soon set in, of course, but on the morning of November 20, 2014 things looked pretty good.
The Bottom Line:
Brown is no pushover. They’re a talented, veteran team who can absolutely win, especially if Creighton isn’t locked in 72 hours after an emotional win. Still, I like the Jays in this one.
Creighton 77, Brown 70