[dropcap]Three[/dropcap] games in three days await the Bluejays in the Cayman Islands, starting Monday night with a game against Boise State (1-1, 137 KenPom, picked 4th in MWC). Next up is either St. Bonaventure (1-2, 129 KenPom, picked 9th of 14 in A10) or Georgia State (2-1, 103 KenPom, preseason favorite in Sun Belt, return four starters from an NCAA Tourney team a year ago). With a win, that game is at 6:30pm Tuesday night; with a loss, they play at 4:00pm Tuesday. On the other side of the bracket are the bigger names on paper — Clemson (picked 6th in the ACC), Georgia (picked 13th of 14 in the SEC under new coach Tom Crean), Illinois State (former MVC foe picked second in the MVC), and Akron (picked 5th in MAC East). The Jays will get one of those four on Wednesday.
Needless to say, it’s not a star-studded field but it’s a good field for this particular Creighton team — there’s plenty of great competition elsewhere on their non-conference slate, and a good-but-beatable field in the Caymans gives them a chance to pick up both wins and confidence.
First up is the Boise State Broncos, who have finished among the top three in the Mountain West standings four straight seasons, and have won 20 or more games in six straight. They were 23-9 (13-5 MWC) a year ago, but were shipped off to the NIT after a first round upset to Utah State in the conference tourney. The Broncos lost three starters from that team, including first-round NBA draft pick Chandler Hutchison, and have attempted to reload with a slew of JuCo transfers.
In their season opener, Boise State led in-state rival Idaho State by 18 in the second half and looked to be coasting to a blowout win. With 15 minutes left, KenPom’s win probability stat gave Idaho State a 0.9% chance of winning. But the Vandals outscored Boise State 35-15 the rest of the way, and pulled off a pretty shocking upset 72-70.
A win over one of the worst teams in D1, Jackson State out of the SWAC (ranked 352nd out of 354 teams), did little to erase the taste of that loss, especially since it will be three weeks before they play another home game. And now they face the Bluejays, a team they match up pretty poorly against. Boise State is almost entirely a man-to-man defensive team that prefers to operate in the half-court on both ends of the floor, but hasn’t done the types of things that typically allow a team like that to dictate tempo — they’re not great at grabbing offensive rebounds, they don’t share the basketball very well, and they’re a below average free throw shooting team. Granted, two games is a very small sample size to draw conclusions from, but if you’re looking at the film available on them and the advanced statistical metrics, those things jump out at you.
The Broncos have been led by RJ Williams, who’s averaging 16.5 points and 6.0 rebounds per contest while making 13-of-24 from the field. The 6’7″, 210-pound Williams is not really a threat to score beyond 12 feet — he’s attempted two pretty ugly three-pointers in two games as a Bronco — and will likely split his shot attempts between the paint and mid-range 2-point jumpers.
A JuCo transfer from East L.A. College, Williams had similar stats in two seasons there — 19.3 points and 6.6 rebounds a year ago, his scoring bolstered by attempting 224 free throws (eight per game) which he made 76% of the time.
Also averaging in double figures is 6’8″, 185-pound forward Derrick Alston, who has 11.5 points and 5.5 rebounds through two games. He’s been ice cold from the perimeter so far this year, making just 1-of-9 attempts, but is a player the Jays should be wary of — he can score from all three levels, and will shoot even if he’s having an off night.
6’11”, 235-pound senior Zach Haney is their third player averaging in double figures, at 11.5 points and 8.5 rebounds so far this year. Haney has both size and experience, starting all 32 games for the Broncos a year ago when he averaged 6.6 points and 5.5 rebounds (2.3 offensive) a game. He had big games against good teams, too — 17 points and 7 rebounds at Oregon, 11 points and 11 boards at UNLV, and 7 rebounds and 3 blocks at Nevada.
Pat Dembley, a 6’1″, 173-pound junior guard, is averaging 9.0 points and 3.5 assists through two games. A native of Minneapolis, Dembley spent the last two years at Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs where he was a NJCAA All-American as a sophomore after averaging 19.0 points and 4.0 assists.
6’6″ junior Justinian Jessup started 25 games a year ago and 31 as a freshman, quickly asserting himself as a dangerous three-point threat. He made 50 threes as a freshman, though his percentage was pedestrian (50-141, 35.5%). Last year was anything but — he was 90-197 (45.7%), making him the ninth-best three point shooter in D1 by percentage. He had eight separate games where he made five or more 3’s, and the Broncos won all eight of those games. He’s 4-of-9 so far this year, and is coming off a 3-of-4 shooting performance from behind the arc on Friday night against Jackson State.
- Tip: 6:30pm
- Venue: John Gray Gymnasium (Capacity – 2,000), George Town, Cayman Islands
- TV: None
- Webcast: Stadium (via Facebook) — Click here for direct link to game webcast
- Announcers: Noah Coslov, Doug Gottlieb, Kristen Balboni and Tim Scarborough
- Click here to watch other games in the tourney
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Nick Bahe
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- This is the fifth exempt tourney for Boise State in Coach Leon Rice’s nine seasons at the helm. Their best finishes were runner-up in the 2013 Diamond Head Invitational and the 2017 Puerto Rico Tip-Off at Myrtle Beach, with both losses coming to Iowa State.
- JuCo transfer RJ Williams has led the Broncos in scoring in each of the first two games, tallying 15 against Idaho State (Nov. 10) and 18 against Jackson State (Nov. 16). Williams is currently eighth in the Mountain West in scoring at 16.5 points per game.
- After playing just 26 minutes over the course of the entire 2017-18 season, Derrick Alston has made a huge jump in 2018-19, scoring nine and 14 points against Idaho State and Jackson State, respectively, tallying career-high performances each time. The redshirt sophomore has started both games and played 63 minutes – the second most for any Bronco.
- In Greg McDermott’s tenure, CU is 25-5 in regular-season tournament action with four titles (most recently the 2016 Paradise Jam) in eight events. Going back to 2002-03, Creighton is 39-9 with seven titles in 14 tournaments. Creighton has lost the first game of a regular-season tournament just twice in the last 16 seasons, falling to Ole Miss in the 2014 Emerald Coast Classic and to Michigan in the 2009 Old Spice Classic.
- Creighton has allowed 67, 69 and 69 points in the first three contests this season. It marks the first time since 2012-13 that the Bluejays have held each of its first three opponents under 70 points. That team would go on to win the Missouri Valley Conference and reach the Third Round of the NCAA Tournament. CU has had seven teams in the last 30 years hold the first three opponents under 70 points. Five of them reached the NCAA Tournament, and those seven squads averaged 25 wins per season.
- There were 53 head coaches hired nationwide prior to the 2010-11 season, including Creighton’s Greg McDermott and Boise State’s Leon Rice. Only 17 of those men still remain in their current role, including fellow Cayman Islands Classic participating coach Brad Brownell of Clemson. McDermott is tied for first on that list in NCAA trips, and second on that list in wins trailing only his predecessor at Creighton, Dana Altman.
Creighton and Boise State have met just one time; it’s a game CU fans would love to forget, and Boise fans never will. Returning home from a Las Vegas Invitational title with wins over Wisconsin and Arizona State, Creighton ran into a buzzsaw. Sporting a #11 ranking after knocking off two power conference foes, they lost 83-70. As Matt DeMarinis wrote the next day,
“The Broncos (5-1), representing the MWC in the Mountain West-Missouri Valley Challenge, dominated in the paint, beyond the arc, at the charity stripe, and on the glass. They hustled more, worked harder, and executed better than the Jays (6-1) from the opening tip.
Senior guard Grant Gibbs nailed an uncontested three-pointer to give the Jays a 3-0 lead just 36 seconds into the game. Gibbs took the shot almost reluctantly as the Broncos practically dared him to do it. After hitting the triple Gibbs looked over at Boise State head coach, Leon Rice, and smiled as he made his way down the floor. Unfortunately for the nationally-ranked Bluejays that was the last time anyone in Creighton blue would smile the rest of the night as it was their one and only lead of the game.
Boise State entered the game shooting just over 34% from long range and averaged seven makes per game from beyond the arc. The Broncos surpassed both of those numbers in astonishing fashion after the first twenty minutes as they hit 9 of 13 from long range, including a ten minute stretch where they hit seven in a row.”
That remains the highest-ranked team Boise State has ever defeated in program history.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCCWXAp49So
The Bottom Line:
Barring a huge night from Justinian Jessup behind the arc, I think Creighton moves into the winners bracket after this one.
Bluejays 73, Broncos 65