Creighton’s Big Three of Ryan Kalkbrenner, Baylor Scheierman and Trey Alexander have advanced to the Big East Tournament final and semifinal the last two seasons, respectively. That’s no small feat in a league as good as the Big East, but Creighton would love to break down the door by finally cutting down the nets in NYC.
“I think that the Big East this year is the best conference in the country,” Trey Alexander said on Monday. “To play in this type of tournament and to have just these type of teams in it, I think it’s a blessing for everybody and I think that for those teams that are kind of in the bubble area it gives them that ‘win or go home’ type of mentality. That also makes the stakes even higher for everybody else.”
Their side of the bracket this year features a Marquette team without their starting point in Tyler Kolek, a Villanova squad that needed a buzzer-beater to avoid a historic upset to DePaul in the opening round…and Providence, who’s very definitely one of those bubble teams Alexander mentioned. The Friars stumbled into the tourney losers of three of their last four to fall onto the bubble, if not out of the tourney entirely; as of Thursday morning they appear in just five of 98 brackets tracked by BracketMatrix. The Friars have work to do to hear their name called on Sunday, even after a 74-56 win over Georgetown in the opening round. Don’t be fooled by the 18-point margin of victory: the Hoyas forced them to play a full 40-minute game to win. And had Georgetown not set a Big East Tournament record for futility at the line (they “made” 4-of-19 from the free throw line, with Jayden Epps going 3-of-11 by himself) we might be previewing another team. As it was, Epps scored 30 points on 12-of-23 shooting — had he made those free throws, we might be talking about a Hoya win and a 40-point performance from one of their stars.
Providence got 20 points from Josh Oduro, 19 and nine rebounds from Devin Carter, and 15 and seven boards from Ticket Gaines in the win. Carter was named the Big East Player of the Year earlier in the day, and then turned around a few hours later to play a game.
“Dev had such a career-defining moment earlier today, winning the Player of the Year award,” Providence coach Kim English said. “And as I was sitting there I was like, usually the Player of the Year probably (isn’t) playing on Wednesday. But he was up since 9:30, shooting around, then went straight to the Garden for the press conference. I was just sitting in the back of our Uber and I had to tell him, I want you to enjoy these moments, but sorry, you’re going to have to relish that moment after the seasons done because we have business to attend to.”
The Friars had 16 assists on 24 made baskets in the win, making a bad Hoyas defense look even worse. They looked like a desperate, veteran team who knows it’s ‘Win or NIT’, but for CU the hope is the Jays’ brutal — and wildly successful — closing stretch has prepared them for such a moment. Creighton won seven of eight to end the season, including home wins over #1 UConn and #5 Marquette and road wins at Xavier, Butler and Villanova, historically three of the harder venues to win at in the Big East.
Over those eight games — six of them Quad 1 games — Creighton shot 50.6 percent from the field, made 11.4 three-pointers per game, and drained 79.1 percent of its free throw attempts. Individually, Ryan Kalkbrenner (18.6 ppg.), Trey Alexander (18.5) and Baylor Scheierman (18.3) all averaged at least 18 points per game during that stretch.
Creighton and Providence split two games this season that were decided by a total of 13 points. In each game, the winning team saw their stars outperform their counterparts: in Creighton’s 69-60 win in Omaha, Trey Alexander and Ryan Kalkbrenner combined for 43 of their 69 points, with Kalkbrenner logging a 22/12 double double.
Creighton led 29-28 with under four minutes left in the first half before a 19-2 run opened up a 48-30 lead. The early points in that run all came at the rim — a putback by Mason Miller, a dribble drive by Baylor Scheierman, and a lob to the rim for a layup by Ryan Kalkbrenner. But the Friars adjusted by sending help defenders to stop Kalkbrenner from burning them at the rim, and CU was unable to shoot them out of it by making the bevy of open threes that resulted.
Providence had two separate answers — a 12-2 run to cut the deficit to single digits, and an 11-2 run that pulled them to within one. But eventually the Jays got hot, and threes by Alexander and Steven Ashworth in the final minutes clinched the win.
In the rematch, Providence won 91-87 in overtime as the Friars’ stars flipped the script. Josh Oduro dominated Kalkbrenner to the tune of 32 points and 12 rebounds, with 29 of those points coming inside the arc and all 32 coming while Kalkbrenner was his primary defender. Meanwhile, Devin Carter had 28 points and 11 rebounds, with 21 of his points after halftime.
Both of them made huge plays to win the game, too: Carter’s (foolish, but admittedly impressive and undeniably gutsy) 40-foot three from the logo to tie the game in the final minute, and a contested three in overtime to give them the lead for good. Oduro scored 13 of their first 15 points to set an early tone, and then had six points in the final three minutes of regulation, including back-to-back buckets to answer back-to-back threes by Alexander and Ashworth.
“We had two really good games with Providence,” Greg McDermott said this week. “I’m glad we’re resting for a day waiting for that game.”
In both games, turnovers plagued Creighton; they had 13 in Omaha that led to 20 Providence points, and 12 in Rhode Island leading to 15 points. The Friars outscored CU 35-13 on second-chance points in the two games. In CU’s best games, they’ve limited those mistakes, and Providence’s coach noted after their win on Wednesday that counting on the Jays to turn it over that much again is a fools errand.
“They’re a very good opponent coming off a great win last Saturday at Nova where they got out to a huge lead, like 34-7,” English said. “It was a crazy lead. Them, UConn, Marquette, maybe the smartest teams in our league. The players are like coaches. They just play the right way, never make mistakes, don’t beat themselves. We’re going to have to have a very mature and great effort tomorrow night.”
There’s no doubt Kalkbrenner, fresh off winning his third-straight Big East Defensive Player of the Year award, is ready for another shot at Oduro. Few players have beaten Kalkbrenner that badly straight-up over the last three seasons. It’s the key matchup: in the Jays’ win, Oduro had nine points and three rebounds on 4-of-17 shooting, while in their loss Oduro had 32 points and 11 rebounds on 11-of-21 shooting. Carter was brilliant in both games, as you’d expect from a conference player of the year. No one else had performances wildly above their average game; Oduro going off for 32 tipped the scales.
- Tip: 6:00pm Omaha time
- Venue: Madison Square Garden, New York, NY
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Gus Johnson and Bill Raftery
- Sideline reporter: Kristina Pink
- 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
- Cable Cutters: Available on all major streaming platforms
- Streaming on the Fox Sports app and website
- Radio: 1620AM, 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Simulcast on SiriusXM channel 138 or 221 as well as on the SiriusXM App
- The Friars are now 19-2 this season when scoring 71 or more points.
- Providence out-rebounded Georgetown 37-35, and outscored the Hoyas in points off turnovers (12-6), second-chance points (9-6) and fast-break points (7-4). Both teams finished with 24 points in the paint.
- The Friars finished 24-56 (42.9%) from the field, 12-32 (37.5%) from three and 14-18 (77.8%) from the free throw line.
- Creighton is 10-9 all-time as it enters its 10th appearance at the Big East Tournament, which includes trips to the finals in 2014, 2017, 2021 and 2022. That doesn’t include the 2020 trip that was halted at halftime of the quarterfinal round game vs. St. John’s at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since joining the Big East, Creighton is 1-0 in the opening round, 5-4 in the quarterfinals, 4-1 in the semifinals and 0-4 in championship games.
- The No. 2 seed has reached the Big East Tournament final each of the previous three years, including No. 2 Villanova’s 2022 title game victory over Creighton. Creighton is 24-5 all-time in 11 previous conference tournament appearances as a No. 2 seed, including six titles as a member of the Missouri Valley Conference (1981, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2012). The Jays have are 4-2 all-time in two previous appearances as the No. 2 seed at the Big East Tournament (2014 and 2022).
- Creighton has won 13 of its last 15 conference tournament games decided by four points or less.
Providence leads the all-time series 20-15. Since the Jays joined PC in the Big East in 2013, the Friars have won 14-of-25 contests at all sites. But in their last meeting in the Big East Tournament, the Jays won 85-58 two years ago — a game that saw them rip off a 35-5 run where they held Providence to two field goals in 13 minutes.
Creighton hasn’t played on March 14 very often; that date usually fell during the quiet week in between the end of the MVC Tournament and the start of the NCAAs/NIT. But it is the date of one of a great March Madness memory: a 64-56 win in the NCAA Tournament over #15 New Mexico State in 1991, their first tourney win since 1974. The win came thanks to complete domination on the glass — they outrebounded the Aggies by 10 in the second half, and Bob Harstad and Chad Gallagher combined for 30 (THIRTY!) rebounds. Their guards also handled New Mexico State’s vaunted full-court press and quickness with little trouble, turning it over just 13 times. As Gallagher described to the media, “Coach Barone told us what we needed to do to win. For Bob and I, it was to rebound. For Duan and Latrell, it was to handle their press. Everybody on the team handled what our goals were really well.”
The win set up a matchup with Seton Hall, a game the Jays would lose to a Pirates team that was en route to the Elite 8.
The Bottom Line:
Creighton is favored by 7 on KenPom and by 8.5 in Vegas. ESPN’s BPI gives them 78.8% odds of victory. I think the Kalkbrenner is too proud of a defensive player to allow Oduro to torch him a second time in as many months; Carter won’t score enough on his own to win.
Creighton 78, Providence 70