The 2019-20 college basketball season tips off Tuesday night across America, and in Omaha, it begins at 8:00 local time when the Jays play host to Kennesaw State. The Owls are coming off of a brutal 6-26 record a year ago (including 3-13 in the Atlantic Sun, and 0-18 on the road) and haven’t had a winning record in 14 years. So they enter the season with a new coaching staff in hopes of turning things around.
That coach? Amir Abdur-Rahim, a highly-respected young coach who has been an assistant at Georgia, Texas A&M, College of Charleston and Murray State; he’s credited with helping recruit and develop a pair of NBA draft picks in Robert Williams III at A&M, and Isaiah Canaan at Murray State. The younger brother of 13-year NBA vet (and current NBA G-League President) Shareef Abdur-Rahim, he’s one of six siblings in the family to play college basketball. It’s impressive that KSU was able to hire a coach of his pedigree. They’re likely to get quite a bit better. But not this year.
One of two 300+ schedule anchors on the non-conference slate (KSU ranked 339 out of 351 teams on KenPom a year ago), Kennesaw is picked eighth out of nine teams in the ASUN this year. It’s an otherwise tough schedule for Creighton, though, so an opening night cakewalk can be excused. Their non-conference strength of schedule was ranked 21st toughest in the country by CBS Sports last week and features three games against Top 25 teams, three more against teams ranked 26-50, two true road games, and four games against 2019 NCAA Tourney teams.
Preseason All-ASUN guard Tyler Hooker leads the Owls after topping the club in points (19.0 ppg.) and assists (3.0 apg.) a year ago. A 5’10” player with a quick first step, he can be a headache if you allow him to dribble into the teeth of your defense. He’s not a great finisher, though. He made just 48.7% of his shots taken at the rim, which is REALLY inefficient. How inefficient? Every single player who took a shot for Creighton a year ago was better by at least 5%. And the only CU players to make 48% or lower of their shots at the rim in the last four years are Davion Mintz in 2017-18 and Kobe Paras in 2016-17.
His size is partially to blame for that inability to finish. But he’s also just not a terribly efficient shooter; he made 39.3% of his jump shots, and just 28.0% of his threes, all while taking twice as many shots as the next closest teammate. He is adept at drawing fouls, though, and led the ASUN with 153 free throw attempts last year (and made 83.2% of them).
Sophomore guard Danny Lewis is the only other player to average in double figures a year ago (11.0 points per game). He’s their top returning three-point shooter, making 35.4% of them a year ago, and is more than just a catch-and-shoot type player, with 40% of his three-point attempts created by himself off the dribble according to data from Hoop-Math.com.
Also of note: senior Bryson Lockley, who averaged 7.0 rebounds (2.7 offensive) per game a year ago. At 6’8″, 220 pounds, Lockley has good size, and he’s fared well against top tier foes — a year ago he snared seven offensive boards (and 11 total) against Georgia, and eight boards against Belmont, with solid games against K-State and Mizzou, as well.
Among the newcomers Abdur-Rahim has brought in is freshman Terrell Burden, a 5’10” point guard who averaged 10.5 points a game on Nike’s EYBL circuit a year ago. He’s just as quick and shifty as Hooker with better finishing ability, and is poised to develop into a really, really good player — and might show flashes of that immediately.
The Owls are not a great team. The composition of their roster presents some interesting matchups for the Jays, though — they boast four players who are 6’8″ or taller, and they averaged 12.1 offensive rebounds a game a year ago. If nothing else, their size will give Creighton a chance to get reps against the kind of height they can’t simulate in practice given their own lack of size.
And the Owls got 59% of their points inside the arc a year ago, which is the most in D1. Their style of play might change somewhat with the new pieces and with a new coaching staff, but the guys taking the bulk of KSU’s shots a year ago are the same guys taking the bulk of them this year. So new staff or not, it’s a fair guess KSU will do a lot of driving straight at Creighton’s defenders and dare them to either stop it or foul them. Both of those tactics should prove valuable to Creighton going forward.
Some things to watch for on Creighton’s side include whether or not they slow things down given their short-handed roster. Greg McDermott alluded to it in his postgame radio interview after Friday night’s exhibition win, saying that “It’s unrealistic to think we can play with the pace we want and also keep Marcus, Ty-Shon and Mitch out there for 35 minutes.” Our first sense of where the coaches’ heads are on that subject could come Tuesday night.
Also worth keeping an eye on is which of the freshmen get into the game — and which ones don’t, in particular Jalen Windham and walk-on big Nic Zeil. Decisions about redshirts haven’t been made public yet, and given the short-handedness of the roster, it could be that no one redshirts this season. They may not have the luxury of doing so. If Windham and/or Zeil get into Tuesday’s game, we can put an end to that bit of speculation.
And finally, watch how Marcus Zegarowski’s rehab is progressing. “Marcus is trying to get his timing back,” McDermott said in his postgame interview. “His body feels better than it ever has — that’s the good news. The bad news is he’s extremely frustrated because he wants it all back right now. When you sit out April through August, you’re not going to have it all back this soon. Think back to Martin last year, it was almost the first of the year before he was back to himself. He has to understand it’s a process, it’s going to take some time. I told him there’s a lot of things I’m losing sleep over, but he’s not one of them. He’s a terrific player and he’s going to have a great year for us.”
- Tip: 8:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FSN Regional
- Announcers: Steve Physioc and Nick Bahe
- In Omaha: Cox channel 47 (SD), 1047 (HD); CenturyLink Prism 748 (SD), 1748 (HD); DirecTV channel 671; Dish Network channel 418
- Outside Omaha: Varies depending on region.
- Streaming on the Fox Sports app, with region restrictions
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Brody Deren
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Like a lot of schools at the ASUN level, Kennesaw State doesn’t have a home game until December 7, and only plays at home three times before league play. Unlike a lot of their peers, the schedule isn’t a murderer’s row of big name opponents — it’s a murderer’s row of mid major powers like Murray State, Belmont, and Wofford, all of whom won games in the NCAA’s a year ago, plus UNC Greensboro (a 1-seed in the NIT) and MVC regular season co-champ Drake. The only other power conference foe on their schedule is Iowa.
- Though Kennesaw State didn’t win many games last year, that doesn’t mean it didn’t have a few close calls against some traditional basketball powers. The Owls suffered narrow losses to Missouri (55-52) and eventual Big 12 co-champ Kansas State (56-41) last season in the opening 10 days of the season, trailing each team by four points at halftime. The Missouri game was tied with two minutes remaining.
- Abdur-Rahim has done a commendable job of recruiting in the short time he’s been in charge of the program, landing Armani Harris (a first team all-state player his senior year in Georgia), Terrell Burden (the player of year in Georgia’s Region 2-7A), and four transfers to bolster the roster.
- Kelvin Jones, a graduate transfer from Idaho State, had 12 points and 12 rebounds in 22 minutes in Friday’s exhibition win over McKendree. That’s notable because the last Bluejay with a double-double in their regular-season debut for Creighton is believed to be Cyril Baptiste (24 points, 17 rebounds) in 1969, though statistics beyond points are incomplete when you go that far back into the books. We do know that the last time any player did it in the regular-season opener was Will Artino with 14 points and 10 rebounds vs. Central Arkansas in 2014.
- Including last year’s win over Western Illinois, Creighton is 90-11 (.891) in home openers all-time. Creighton has won 24 straight home openers since a Dec. 3, 1994 setback against SMU.
- Greg McDermott has won each of the last 17 season openers he’s coached in, as he is 17-1 at the Division I level in season-openers. That includes double-digit victories in eight of nine games on the Creighton sideline.
Creighton won the only previous meeting between the two schools, 75-57, on November 26, 2011. In the first of two games in three days over Thanksgiving weekend, the Jays knocked off the Owls at home before traveling to Chicago for a road game at Northwestern (which they lost 65-52). From Ott’s Thoughts following that weekend of hoops:
“Five minutes into the Bluejays’ win against the Owls, the visitors held an 11-4 lead. A 32-13 run over the remaining 15 minutes of the first half allowed Creighton to take a 12-point lead into the break, keyed by 21 bench points. With only two starters (Darryl Ashford with 8 points, Doug McDermott with 7) scoring in the first stanza, non-starters Jahenns Manigat (10 points) and Wayne Runnels (7 points) made the most of their appearances off the pine.
Having lost to Iowa State a few nights earlier, the Owls seemed spent. They never mounted a serious challenge to the Bluejays, aside from that early but short lived lead. The teams exchanged baskets early in the second half, but then the Bluejays pulled away. The lead hovered around 20 points for much of the second 20 minutes, allowing walk-ons Taylor Stormberg, Derek Sebastian, Ross Ferrarini, and Matthew Dorwart a few minutes near the end of the game. And it was Sebastian who scored with just under 15 seconds to play, giving fans the Godfather’s Pizza prize they coveted all season.”
Nick Bahe may not be on the radio with a daily show anymore, but his podcast in between national TV gigs is off to a solid start — and his Creighton Basketball preview show is nothing short of a must-listen. It’s 90 minutes of X’s and O’s, personnel breakdowns, schedule analysis and more plus an interview with Greg McDermott.
This year’s opening game is the earliest regular season debut in program history; they’ve played a bunch of exhibitions on this date over the years, however. There was a 90-89 win over the Ukraine National Team in 1991, which is best remembered, if at all, as the unofficial debut of the ill-fated Rick Johnson Era. There was a 93-56 blowout of Lucenic-Slovenia in 1997 that you probably have little or no recollection of. There was a 82-74 loss to Global Sports in 2000 that you’ve likely blocked from memory, if it ever took up any space in the first place. And then there was a 75-72 win in 2002 over a pesky Nebraska-Omaha team coached by former Bluejay great (and former Dana Altman assistant) Kevin McKenna. This one is the most interesting in retrospect, as it served as a wake-up call for what would become the winningest team in school history.
With preseason accolades rolling in, Dana Altman and his staff were having trouble getting the team to focus. “Afterward, I wanted to say ‘I told ya so’,” Altman said in his postgame press conference. “”We’ve been saying that the last couple of weeks, and it hasn’t done much good. I hope this will help. Right now, we just don’t have a very good tone. A lot of guys are worried about themselves right now. That will change, I think, because they realize what can be accomplished as a team. Hopefully we can get it straightened out in the next couple of weeks. If not, we’re going to have some bumps until we do get straightened out.”
The Jays had all kinds of trouble with the Mavs, who used a 15-8 run to open the second half and take the lead. UNO eventually led by as many as five, and was up 55-50 when Kyle Korver scored the first of eight straight points to put CU back on top. But defensive miscues turned the final eight minutes into a back-and-forth affair with multiple lead changes. That Creighton closed the game by making six-of-eight from the line to seal a win was less important than what resulted from it: a team ready to focus on the message their coaches were trying to impart. A week later, they steamrolled Global Sports 83-61 in the second and final exhibition. A week after that, they opened the regular season with a 106-50 blitz of Texas-Arlington, the first of 10 straight wins to begin the season heading into a New Years Eve showdown of ranked opponents at Xavier.
It’s tradition around these parts. Opening Night. Motley Crue. Let’s go.
The Bottom Line:
Similar to last Friday’s exhibition, this one will be close for awhile before Creighton pulls away. KenPom predicts a 26-point win, 89-63. I’ll go a little higher.
Bluejays 93, Owls 61