After dispatching with Louisville 89-75 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Creighton continues their tour of late 90s/early 2000s NCAA Tourney opponents who they haven’t met since. Next up is Auburn, who they last played in a 72-69 loss in 2000 at the Metrodome in Minneapolis.
Auburn has been arguably the best team in college basketball all season, and is led by National Player of the Year candidate Johni Broome. They were ranked #1 in KenPom from mid-November through mid-February, a stretch where they only lost to two teams — current KenPom #1 Duke, and #3 Florida. They stumbled a bit entering the tourney, losing three of four and exiting the SEC Tournament early after a semifinal loss to Tennessee. An uninspiring win over 16-seed Alabama State in the first round only added to the sense that they’re a team who may have peaked too soon.
Sure, they won by 20, and four players scored in double-figures. They also missed 14 free throws, had twice as many turnovers as their opponent, and blew a double-digit lead late in the first half.
“No, we won’t beat Creighton if we play like we did tonight,” coach Bruce Pearl said afterward. “No.”
“Creighton is going to play five or six guys who are in the best shape of their lives, and they’re going to go forever,” Pearl elaborated on Friday. “They play really, really hard. If we don’t match that, we’re not going to be successful.”
With that said, Auburn is the most complete team in the country on paper. They boast the second-most efficient offense in the country (an absurd 128.0) and rank 12th in adjusted defensive efficiency (93.5). The lineup features athletic and versatile wings, two talented centers and one of the nation’s best on-ball defenders.
Their roster has nine seniors, led by Broome. A 6’10”, 240-pound behemoth, Broome controls the paint on both ends. He’s capable of winning games for them as a scorer, as a passer, and on defense. He’s elite on the glass. And if you do manage to hold him down somewhat, senior guards Miles Kelly and Denver Jones are great jump shooters. Tahaad Pettiford and Chad Baker-Mazara are great iso-scorers who’ve never met a tough shot they didn’t like.
“Broome gets the basketball so quick inside. He sets it up with some shot fakes and head fakes that we’re going to need to stay disciplined on,” Greg McDermott said on Friday. “He’s one of the best offensive players in the country at his position, and I’ve got one of the best defensive players in the country in Ryan Kalkbrenner. We can’t let him beat us in multiple ways. If he’s going to score some points, then we have to take away his passing. If we’re going to take away his points and double team him, then he can’t get points. He’s just got to be able to get assists. So we can’t be in a situation where he’s beating us every which way. That maybe sounds easy. It’s very difficult to do. I think our guys understand the plan that we’re going to try to put into place and we’ll see if it works. If it doesn’t, we’ll adjust and try something else.”
“Obviously he’s a super talented player, he’s got good touch around the rim, and a really good passer, which makes it really hard to guard him because if you double him, he will pass out of it,” Kalkbrenner added. “But as a competitor and basketball player, you want to go up against the best guys in the game, and I get an opportunity to play against him. So I’m excited and I’m looking forward to it. As a competitor, that’s what you want.”
Guard Miles Kelly led them in scoring in the first round win over Alabama State with 23 points, making 7-of-15 from three. He was hot at the start of the game, making his first four 3-pointers. Like Jamiya Neal for Creighton on Thursday, every time Alabama State threatened to make the game closer, it was Kelly who had the answer. His seven 3-pointers tied Bryce Brown’s program NCAA Tournament single-game record. Notably, he is 16-of-29 from deep in two games played at Rupp Arena this season after making 9-of-14 3-pointers in Auburn’s win at Kentucky on March 1.
Tahaad Pettiford scored 16 points off the bench, making a pair of threes. He’s a shooter who has almost unlimited range, and stretches opponents’ defenses out. That makes it harder for whoever it guarding Pettiford to help on Broome — they’re almost too far away. And you have to respect his shot, as he made 37.4% (64-of-171) from three this season.
Though Denver Jones scored just eight points and was 1-of-5 from three on Thursday, he made 40.8% of his threes (58-of-142) for the season. Chad Baker-Mazara had five points and made just one 3-pointer, but he, too, was tremendous all season — he shot 38.3% (51-of-133) from outside. Jays fans will recognize that name, as he played them in the 2022 NCAA Tournament while he was at San Diego State. Baker-Mazara scored 17 in that game, making 4-of-6 inside the arc and 1-of-2 outside.
“They have so many guys that can shoot it with range,” McDermott said. “Bruce has done a great job of surrounding a great interior player with the right kind of players on the perimeter to make that group work. We just have to…like we did yesterday, I thought a lot of Louisville’s three-point shots were challenged. And they’re still going to make some of those because they have guys that can really make tough shots, but we just can’t give ’em the easy ones, we can’t give ’em the step-in threes with nobody there. That will be our charge. Whether we can execute it, it’s yet to be seen.”
Auburn’s defense allowed opponents to shoot just 29.0% from three-point range this season, fifth best in the country. It’s unlikely Creighton will get the kinds of open looks they got against Louisville, so can they score enough in other ways?
On the flip side, Creighton’s defense — particularly Kalkbrenner inside, who is one of the few players in the country that can conceivably guard Broome one-on-one — will present some problems for Auburn. So will their ability to guard without fouling, which has become a trademark of Creighton’s program.
“Well, since our guys complain about getting fouled all the time, it’s going to be a tough one for us, because they’re not going to foul us,” Pearl joked. “You’ve just got to make shots. They do a good job with verticality and they do a good job working to not foul shooters. They don’t send a ton of people to the offensive glass because they take such good first shots, so there are not a lot of rebounding fouls. And the big fella does a good job of being vertical so they’re able to challenge shots at the rim with him sort of being down there. And their other players really don’t have to challenge shots because he challenges so many of them. It just means our first shot offense has got to be really, really good.”
As you can tell, there’s a lot of respect for each other between these two programs. Interestingly, both programs cited the excellence of their respective leagues as an important factor in being ready for what the other team throws at them.
“I think the SEC has helped us in our preparation,” Dylan Caldwell said. “We haven’t seen anybody as tall as (Kalkbrenner), but we have seen players as physical. And I think from a physicality standpoint, we’re prepared for it. But we haven’t seen anybody quite like him.”
“Like the SEC, the Big East prepares us for a lot of things you see in the NCAA Tournament,” McDermott said. “The physicality of St. John’s is going to serve us well, even though we didn’t win against St. John’s last Saturday. That will help us tomorrow because of what Auburn is going to throw at us from a physicality standpoint. We both play in great leagues. Obviously SEC had an unprecedented year with 14 teams in the tournament. You hope that the conference you play in shows you everything you need to know and helps you get ready for the NCAA Tournament.”
- Tip: 6:10pm
- Venue: Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky
- TV: TBS
- Announcers: Brian Anderson, Jim Jackson and Allie LaForce
- In Omaha: Cox channel 27/1027
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 247, Dish Network channel 139
- 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
- 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
- With Thursday’s win, Auburn is now 20-13 all-time in NCAA Tournament action including 8-5 under head coach Bruce Pearl. The Tigers have now won their opening-round game in 12 of their 14 appearances.
- The 20-point win is the second-largest margin of victory in an NCAA Tournament game in program history, trailing the Tigers’ 80-41 victory over Winthrop in the NCAA First Round in 1999.
- Broome set a new program single-season record on Thursday with his 19th double-double on the year with 14 points and 11 rebounds, breaking the mark set by Mike Mitchell during the 1974-75 season. He has recorded a double-double in three of his four NCAA Tournament games at Auburn. Broome’s three double-doubles in the NCAA Tournament are tied with Chuck Person for second-most in program history and two behind Jeff Moore’s school record of five. He moved up to 14th on Auburn’s single-season scoring list with 590 points, while his 234 field goals are tied with Aaron Swinson (1993-94) for 10th-most in a season in program history.
- Ryan Kalkbrenner owns 399 career blocked shots and can become the 29th player in NCAA history to get to 400. He’s also just 12 swats shy of Benoit Benjamin’s school-record 411. Kalkbrenner moved from 117th to 114th on the NCAA’s all-time scoring list on Thursday and has now scored 2,425 career points. Among those on the horizon that he can pass on Saturday may be Steve Alford (2,438), Omaha native Mike McGee (2,439), Chris Mullin (2,440), Glen Rice (2,442), Christian Laettner (2,460) and Tom Gola (2,461). Gola is 100th in NCAA history.
- Greg McDermott owns 499 career Division I wins (90 at Northern Iowa, 59 at Iowa State, 350 at Creighton). Thursday was McDermott’s 350th victory on the Bluejay sideline, which includes 175 non-conference wins and 175 conference victories. What better place than the NCAA Tournament to pick up his 500th career win?
- This will be Creighton’s third straight game against a Top 10 team (No. 6 St. John’s, No. 10 Louisville, No. 4 Auburn), the first time it has ever played three Top 10 teams in a row. Prior to the games against St. John’s and Louisville within the past week, the only other time Creighton had played back-to-back Top 10 opponents came in March of 1975, when it lost to No. 5 Marquette and No. 4 Maryland consecutively. Saturday is Creighton’s seventh game of the year against a Top 10 team, two more than the previous high of five done last season.
Creighton is 1-1 all-time against Auburn. Creighton won Dec. 28, 1976 against the No. 20 Tigers in Louisville, one day before losing to the host Cardinals. The other meeting came in the 2000 NCAA Tournament in Minneapolis, where Auburn escaped with a 72-69 victory.
That game had one of the more bizarre endings you’ll see, with the Tigers nearly losing because they subbed out starters too soon. Auburn led by nine points with 12.7 seconds left and inserted manager Jimbo Tolbert into the game. Creighton would drain two three-pointers, force two Auburn turnovers and incredibly have a shot for a third three to tie the game at the buzzer, only to have it blocked.
Greg McDermott has never coached against Auburn. And incredibly, though McDermott has been a head coach for 31 years and Auburn’s Bruce Pearl for 30, they’ve never faced each other.
“I’ve known Greg McDermott for a long time dating back to my days as an assistant for Dr. Tom Davis at the University of Iowa,” Pearl said on Friday. “I’ve been a big fan of his and the way he runs his program and how competitive they are, particularly in postseason. The fact that Creighton has been to the Sweet 16 four of the last five years speaks volumes about what kind of program they have, what kind of coach they have, and their culture. I would love to have a week to get ready for them, because they do so much good stuff that I think I would enjoy learning. We will be excited about trying to guard it and seeing if we can put our defensive system in place against a very unique offense with a 7’2″ center and a dynamic point guard and the different pieces around them.”
McDermott shared those sentiments. “I’ve known him a long time. I grew up in Iowa, when he was with Tom Davis. We both started at the Division II level as coaches. At that point in time, there weren’t a lot of guys making the jump from Division II to Division I, so when somebody does you follow their progress. He’s been good wherever he’s been and his teams play disciplined, physical basketball. I’m not surprised they have had the season that they’ve had.”
On March 22, 2021 Creighton finally chopped down the door to the Sweet 16 after decades of heartache in the NCAA Tournament. But it didn’t come easy. Creighton’s once-commanding 21-point lead over Ohio was teetering on the brink. They’d gone cold at the wrong time, and with just over two minutes to play, Ohio had cut it to single digits. Panic was setting in among a fanbase conditioned to expect the worst in March Madness. At that precise moment, Marcus Zegarowski stabbed a stake into the heart of those demons of March past. He split a double-team with a dribble drive and nailed a jumper to end a three minute scoring drought. Then as Ohio’s Jason Preston tried to score quickly in transition, Zegarowski picked him up at halfcourt and shadowed him all the way to the rim, where he blocked the shot.
In the biggest moment of the biggest game of the season (so far), Creighton’s best player put the team on his back and carried them across the finish line. Zegarowski has long talked about being aware of CU’s history of heartbreak in March, and his desire to be on the first Bluejay team to make a deep run. This was him making sure that run continued for another day.
“Everybody’s talking about a lot of good guards. You know, McLaughlin Saturday and Preston today and how good they are and what they mean to their team,” Greg McDermott said. “They’re missing the boat on the guy we’ve got on our team…He wins, and he won when he was in high school, he won in AAU, and he’s won in college. He’s got a grit and a toughness about him that you don’t see often.”
As the final horn sounded, Zegarowski jumped onto the scorer’s table to point to the crowd of Bluejay fans in attendance at Hinkle Fieldhouse, his screams of joy echoed by CU fans around the globe who have been waiting decades for this moment. 14 CU teams had made the NCAA tournament since the field’s expansion in 1985. Every single one of them were eliminated before the end of the first weekend, including six times where they won in the First Round only to lose in the Second.
Teams that were among the most decorated in CU lore — the 2002-03 squad led by senior Kyle Korver, the 2006-07 MVC title team with seniors Nate Funk and Anthony Tolliver, the 2013-14 team with seniors Doug McDermott, Grant Gibbs, Ethan Wragge and Jahenns Manigat — none of them could break through. This one did.
The Bottom Line:
Auburn is favored by 9.5 in Vegas, and KenPom predicts a 10-point Tiger win.