White & Blue Review is hosting a viewing party at Scriptown Brewing Company on Monday (New Years Eve!) to cheer on the Jays in their Big East opener at Providence. Join us for:
~~ FREE PULLED PORK SANDWICHES (while supplies last)
~~ FUN JAYS-THEMED DRINK SPECIALS
~~ and, of course, CREIGHTON @ PROVIDENCE!
Join fellow CU fans and let’s paint the Blackstone District BLUE on NYE afternoon!
All the info is on the Facebook event page!
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Ed Cooley and Greg McDermott are great friends off the floor, and their teams appeared to be on parallel tracks on the floor entering this season as well. Providence lost their top three scorers — Rodney Bullock, Kyron Cartwright, and Jalen Lindsey — from an NCAA Tourney team a year ago, and has relied on a roster heavy on underclassmen this year. But the Friars were picked third in the preseason Big East poll, and the Bluejays ninth, for a couple of reasons. One, the Big East from three through 10 is utterly unpredictable this year, and remains so even after two months of non-conference action; Cooley gets the benefit of the doubt because the Friars added a pair of Top-60 recruits in the backcourt to help replace what they lost. And two, while the Friars no longer have those three stellar seniors, they return Emmitt Holt after a season away due to injury (Holt averaged 12.5 points and 5.4 rebounds as a sophomore two years ago, lest you forget).
They’re 10-3 entering Big East play, and don’t appear to have missed a beat. The names have (largely) changed, but this Friars team looks a lot like the teams Creighton has struggled to beat in years past — they’re long, athletic, extremely tough, they dictate tempo as well as any team in the country, they crash the offensive glass, and they play physical man-to-man defense. If you’re building a Creighton Kryptonite, a lot of the ingredients are present in Providence’s lineup.
No wonder CU has only beaten them four times since joining the league.
Alpha Diallo, a 6’7″ junior, leads the team in scoring (17.4 points per game), rebounding (8.5) and assists (3.3). In the two wins PC had versus the Jays a year ago, he had monster games — in Providence, he had 21 points, 10 rebounds and 4 assists, and in the Big East tourney he had 19/9/3. And though you’d probably like to forget it, it was his offensive rebound and put back that tied the BET game with 12 seconds to play and forced overtime.
Diallo is a terrific all-around player. He’s a good shooter from just about everywhere, making 45% of his two-pointers and 42% of his threes. He’s their top offensive option — he’s taken 34 shots in transition, most on the team, and has an effective field goal percentage of 52.9% when he does so; on the other end of the spectrum, he’s taken 29 shots with five seconds or less left on the shot clock, and has a similar 51.7% effective field goal percentage on those shots. He’s great at creating stops by grabbing defensive rebounds, and at creating second-chance opportunities through offensive boards. And he’s a good on-ball defender, too. He’s really darn good is what I’m saying.
Freshman A.J. Reeves has missed the last three games with an injury, and will miss this one as well. That looks like a rather gigantic loss on the surface, as Reeves was their second-leading scorer at 14.2 points per game, and had made 45% of his threes (24-of-53). And at least offensively, his loss is a big one. But according to data from Hoop Lens, they’re a FAR better team defensively without him. They’ve given up 1.14ppp with Reeves on the floor, and 0.83ppp with him on the bench, which is a massive, eye-opening difference. That’s interesting; freshmen often struggle with defense at the collegiate level initially, but that’s a steep dropoff that will be interesting to keep an eye on when he returns.
Maliek White has started in his place, and while his overall numbers don’t jump off the page (7.4 points and 1.9 rebounds per game) his numbers in the three games he’s started since Reeves’ injury are another story. In those three, he’s averaging 14.3 points, 5 assists and 3 rebounds — and the Friars have played better defensively, giving up 0.81ppp over those three games. It’s easy to dismiss that as a small sample size, or the product of two of those games coming against Central Connecticut and Albany, but it’s also consistent with their season-long numbers when Reeves was on the floor versus not, so maybe it shouldn’t be dismissed so easily. You could certainly make the case that White has basically equalled Reeves’ offensive firepower — because statistically, he has, in every category — with better defense.
Nate Watson averages 10.6 points and 5.4 rebounds per game, doing work primarily in the paint. Watson was more of a role player a year ago, starting roughly half of their games, playing between 15-20 minutes, and generally playing second fiddle to their terrific seniors. Asked to be the team’s sixth man this year, he’s played pretty well, averaging the third-most points and second-most rebounds on the team. He’s taken roughly two-thirds of his 86 shots at or near the rim, making an extremely efficient 63.6% of them. The rest of his shots have been mid-range jumpers, and he’s made 43% on those.
Isaiah Jackson has averaged 10.1 points and 5.0 boards a game so far this year. The 6’6” senior killed Creighton on the glass a year ago; in the league tourney he had nine points and nine rebounds, and at Providence he had 11 points and nine rebounds. He began the year as a starter, but has transitioned into coming off the bench with freshman Jimmy Nichols moving into the starting five. Nichols averages 4.5 points and 3.4 rebounds a game. Kalif Young (3.6 points, 4.4 rebounds) and David Duke (7.2 points, 2.2 boards) round out the starting five, and for the most part, the main rotational players.
Through five years of battles with Providence in the Big East, one thing has been a constant: the Friars force Creighton to play their style, and usually beat them at it. If this is a slower-pace, rough-and-tumble game, Creighton cannot turn the ball over at anywhere close to the rate they have in recent games this season — it goes without saying that the fewer the number of possessions in a game, the less you can afford to give away 8-10 empty possessions by turning it over. The errant passes to no one, the stepping on out of bounds lines, the poor decisions to dribble by big men that CU has gotten away with against lesser opponents will bite them on the road in the Big East.
Cleaning up a few of those miscues might be the key to this game, honestly.
- Tip: 3:00pm
- Venue: Dunkin’ Donuts Center, Providence, R.I.
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Dave O’Brien and Andy Katz
- In Omaha: Cox channel 78 (SD), 1078 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 620 (SD), 1620 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: FS1 Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 219, Dish Network channel 150
- Streaming on FoxSportsGO
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters:
- Freshman David Duke has started all 13 games this season, while freshman Jimmy Nichols, Jr. has started the last ten games. Those two, along with fellow freshman AJ Reeves, who is injured, have accounted for 31 percent of all the points scored. Reeves ranks second on the team in scoring (14.2 ppg) and he leads the team in three-point shooting (45.3 percent). Duke is fifth on the team in scoring (7.2 ppg) and sixth in three-point shooting (33.3 percent). Nichols is first on the team in blocks with 12.
- Duke posted his first career 20-point game when he led the Friars to a 76-67 victory over South Carolina on November 17 at the Hall of Fame Tip Off. Duke led the Friars to a comeback after they trailed by eight points at half time. The freshman guard was 8-15 from the field, including 2-4 from three-point territory in the win.
- A select team of men’s basketball standouts from the Big East Conference will represent the United States at the 2019 Pan American Games, coached by Ed Cooley. This represents the first time a team from a single Division l conference will represent the U.S. in the sport of men’s basketball in Pan American Games competition.
- Creighton was +32 on the glass last week versus Coe, outrebounding the Kohawks 46-14. It was Creighton’s best rebound differential since Nov. 30, 1990, when Creighton outrebounded Texas-San Antonio 53-21 in a 93-47 victory. Coe did not record an offensive rebound, the first Bluejay opponent without an offensive rebound since No. 16 Villanova on Jan. 2, 2016. Here’s hoping that kind of offensive rebounding transfers to this one.
- Creighton shot 60 percent or better for the third time in the last 30 days, and second straight contest, by making 61.8% of their shots against UMKC. Creighton’s three games of 60 percent or better shooting trails only Dayton (4) nationally in 2018-19, and its 23 games of 60 percent or better in the last nine seasons (coinciding with Greg McDermott’s hiring in 2010) is tied with Gonzaga for the most such gams nationally
- Ty-Shon Alexander has made a three-pointer in 17 straight games dating to last season and is one of four players in the Big East with a trey in every contest this season.
Providence leads the all-time series 15-8, and has a 8-2 advantage in games in Rhode Island. The Friars have won nine of the 13 meetings since Creighton joined the Big East, including two straight.
The last time they met, PC ended the Jays’ stay in the Big East Tourney with a 72-68 overtime win. The Friars grabbed 45 rebounds in that game, including 16 offensive boards. Gross. The less we talk about that game, the better.
With conference play beginning, lots of media outlets are taking stock of the Big East, with varying degrees of critiques for the Jays. CBS says Creighton is the most overrated team in the league, writing:
I’m not yet a believer that this is a top-50 team in college hoops. It has one top-100 win and has fallen to the four toughest teams it’s faced by an average of 13.0 points. In order to feel secure in making the NCAA Tournament, I think every Big East team needs to target at least 12 wins in the league — conference tournament play included — and I don’t see Creighton reaching that threshold.
Their experts pick them to finish between fifth and seventh. Ouch.
NBC is more optimistic. They predict the league gets six teams into the NCAA tourney, and that Creighton will be one of them. To wit:
Entering conference play, the Big East has seven teams within the 18 to 61 range on KenPom’s rankings. A lot of teams are lumped together in the middle. Villanova, Butler and Marquette have the only top-30 rankings among the conference. But a lot of the league is right in the mix in the next 30 or so spots.
The key for some of these next-tier teams like Creighton, St. John’s, Providence and Seton Hall will be earning wins over one another while avoiding bad losses to non-tournament teams. If these teams keep beating each other and piling up good wins, it will be hard to keep them out of the tournament with the Pac-12 having such a down year.
It’s interesting that both of them, even CBS who calls the Jays “overrated”, are far more optimistic than a lot of Bluejay fans on the Underground and social media — there’s a lot more doom and gloom in their predictions than there is from national media. A lot more. We’ll find out who’s right starting Monday!
Last NYE, Creighton defeated Providence in Omaha. Let’s enjoy some highlights from that one, shall we?
The Bottom Line:
KenPom predicts a one-point Providence win. That sounds painful. But the Jays have struggled in Providence, and against the Friars in general, and have not fared well against teams built like the Friars this season. They’ll pick off a few on the road in the next two months, but this doesn’t seem like one of them.
Providence 71, Creighton 68
