After snapping a four-game losing streak Monday night by winning in Washington, D.C., Creighton returns home for a three-game homestand where they have the opportunity to change the trajectory of their season in a dramatic way. Villanova sits atop the league standings at 6-0, and Marquette is second at 6-1. Everyone else has four losses — five teams are 3-4, and three are 2-4. In other words, with a win Friday night, Creighton would vault from last place to third place. And if they can hold serve at home and pick up three straight wins, they could begin to separate themselves from an eight-team pack that has not done much to distinguish themselves from one another.
First up is the Butler Bulldogs, who thoroughly dominated Creighton in Indianapolis three weeks ago and won 84-69. Will the rematch follow that same script, or will things be different in Omaha? The outcome of that game, and certainly the way it happened, give you pause.
But the Bulldogs have been a different team away from Hinkle Fieldhouse. In eight neutral or road games, they’ve averaged 67 points per game, made an average of 8.4 threes (shooting 34%), shot 42% overall, with 12.6 assists and 10.3 turnovers per game. At Hinkle? They’ve averaged 80 points per game, made an average of 10 threes (shooting 40%), shot 49.2% overall, with 15.2 assists and 11.5 turnovers per game. While just about every team will play (and shoot) worse on the road than they do at home, those are some pretty big splits for Butler.
If those trends are going to continue, there’s a few things Creighton can do to help.
Turnovers were a huge problem in the first meeting, especially in the first half as Butler turned 10 Bluejay turnovers into 20 points — that’s a point per minute just off of turnovers. Creighton simply has to be stronger with the basketball on their drives, and they have to make confident, decisive passes. In the first half of that game, the Jays did far too much standing around without the basketball. Instead of moving the ball around to force the defense to react to you, the defense was able to stay structured. That’s why so often it appeared like Butler had two defenders on the ball. They did.
That dovetails into another key, which is exploiting the inherent mismatches that will result defensively from Butler switching screens. That was their predominant strategy in the first game, and Creighton wasn’t patient enough to make them pay for it — or when they were, they didn’t make shots.
Individually, Kamar Baldwin still leads the team in most categories, from points (17.4 points per game overall, and 20.6 in Big East play) to rebounds (5.6). He’s second in assists (3.9). And he was damn near unstoppable in the first meeting, scoring 28 points on 11-of-18 shooting. The Jays couldn’t stop him from driving downhill toward the rim, they couldn’t stop him from hitting jump shots, and they couldn’t even stop him when he got rid of the ball as he had seven assists.
Sean McDermott was then and is now their best three-point shooter, making 53-of-121 (43.8%) on the season. He had been in a slump when the Jays last saw Butler, but as luck would have it he’s no longer slumping. Over his last four games, he’s 11-for-21 from three-point range. He’s scored in double figures twice in that span, and in one of the other games, he had double-digit rebounds to contribute even in a game where he wasn’t scoring as much.
Paul Jorgensen has gone the other way. He scored in double figures in each of the team’s first six games, and eight of their first nine. He’s only done it twice since then, and only once in Big East play (14 points at Xavier). He’s coming off of a game against Villanova where he scored three points, and a game at DePaul where he scored two, with a nine-point effort against St. John’s in between. He’s no longer a starter, and has seen his minutes drop, as well.
Henry Baddley, a 6’4″ junior, took his place in the starting lineup in the first meeting against CU and has started ever since. Statistically, he’s not much of a factor on offense — he averages 5.6 points and 0.6 assists per game, was held scoreless in each of the last two games (against St. John’s and Villanova) and didn’t even attempt a shot against the Wildcats. But he’s a significant part of their defense, with the ability to lock down opposing wings and force turnovers with his length.
6’2″ sophomore Aaron Thompson leads the team in assists at 4.2 per game, fifth-best in the league. And he’s coming off a team-high 15 points in their last game against ‘Nova. Joey Brunk scored 13 points the first time these teams met, and along with Baddley made his first career start in that game. The 6’11”, 230-pound Brunk had his first-ever double double the next game — 20 points and 10 rebounds — against Seton Hall. He’s not scored more than eight since, and has seen his usage drop, too. In the last four games he’s attempted 16 total shots, which is crazy for a player as efficient as Brunk is (he’s made 12-of-16 in those games). Keeping him from getting touches low on the block would seem to be important Friday night.
Perhaps the biggest difference between Butler on January 5 and Butler on January 25? Jordan Tucker, the 6’7″ transfer from Duke who became eligible at the end of the first semester, is fully up to speed now and doing significant damage as a sixth man. Over the last four games he’s scored 66 points (16.5 per game) and has been red-hot from three-point range (16-of-34, 47%). He had three points in 16 minutes in the first game, took just four shots, and was a fairly low-impact, low-usage player. That is certainly not the case now, and he’ll be a handful for Creighton’s defense.
As it typically is with Butler, they’ll defend well, not turn the ball over, and not make self-inflicted mistakes very often. They will probably shoot worse than they did at Hinkle — that’s been the case all season, regardless of opponent — so if Creighton can clean up their turnovers, they’re likely to be in the game.
Make a few more buckets than they did in Indy, and I think the Jays should be able to get the win.
- Tip: 7:30pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Vince Welch and Tarik Turner
- 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:
- Butler has had the advantage in bench scoring in six of the team’s seven Big East contests. In Butler’s last four games, that combined advantage has been 120-27. Jordan Tucker has led the bench in scoring in three straight games, particularly pacing the St. John’s and DePaul differentials with 24 and 19 points, respectively. The 30-3 advantage over Xavier Jan. 13 featured 14 points from Paul Jorgensen, who went 4-of-7 from behind the arc, his fifth time this season with four or more three-pointers.
- The Bulldogs have committed only 10.8 turnovers per game, a mark that is Top 20 nationally. The Villanova game Tuesday night marked the sixth time this season that Butler has committed single-digit turnovers. In two separate games this season, Butler has posted a season-low seven miscues.
- The Bulldogs limited St. John’s to 38-percent shooting Saturday. It was the seventh time this season that a Butler opponent had shot less than 40 percent from the field.
- This year will mark Creighton’s ninth annual Pink Out. The Bluejays are 6-2 in the first eight Pink Out games, raising $205,955.68 through the auction of the team’s jerseys and Greg McDermott’s shoes and tie. This year, the auction raised $19,595.
- After playing four of its first six Big East games on the road, Creighton will finish the league slate with seven of its final 12 contests at CHI Health Center Omaha.
- Monday’s win at Georgetown was Creighton’s first victory in six tries this season after trailing at halftime. It was CU’s first victory when down at halftime since winning over No. 3 Villanova on Feb. 23, 2018 in Omaha. Under Greg McDermott, Creighton is 164-30 when leading at half, 3-3 when tied, and 31-69 when trailing at the intermission.
Creighton is 10-8 all-time vs. Butler and 6-2 in Omaha, including a 4-1 mark since the schools became Big East rivals. Greg McDermott is 6-7 in his career vs. Butler, including a 6-5 mark on the Creighton sideline. He is 1-2 against LaVall Jordan.
Butler won the first meeting this season, 84-69 on January 5 in Indianapolis. From the Morning After:
“I thought the start of the game would be really critical,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “Had we been able to start the game like we started the second half, I think maybe some doubt starts to creep into their mind about what they’ve been dealing with. But instead the opposite happened.”
Just how bad was the start of the game? CU scored seven points over the game’s first nine minutes. At that moment, they had more turnovers (4) and fouls (4) than field goals (3). By the time the game was 12 minutes old, they had seven fouls, seven turnovers, and just six field goals — and trailed 27-13.
“I think some of the mistakes we made allowed them to get some easy baskets,” McDermott said. “And now they get their mojo back and swagger back a little bit, and they’re playing the way they usually play in this building.”
Davion Mintz agreed, saying on the postgame radio show that “they had a lot of fast-break points off of our turnovers, and that hurt us at the beginning. If we clean some of that up and try to cut that in half, it could have been a much closer game.”
Former Bluejay Marcus Foster had a great showing at last weekend’s All-Star Game in the Korean Basketball League: he won the slam dunk contest, scored 20 points in the game, and participated in an on-court quiz show during a timeout where he showed off his knowledge of K-Pop.
And WOWT did a feature on two Bluejays’ whose families have been directly impacted by cancer — Christian Bishop and Jordan Scurry.
On January 25, 2012, Creighton beat Drake 77-69 in Des Moines following a familiar gameplan — getting an unexpected game from one of their native Iowans. Pierce Hibma was the patron saint of that, torching the Bulldogs two straight years in 2006 and 2007, but in the ’12 game, it was Will Artino. From WBR’s recap:
“The surprise of the night was the play of Waukee, Iowa native Will Artino against the Bulldogs. The freshman played 16 big minutes as Gregory Echenique was saddled with foul trouble. Artino’s line of 6 points, 8 rebounds and 2 assists may not seem like much, but it was instrumental down the stretch opening the floor a little more for McDermott to go on a streak scoring 12 of 13 points from the 5:59 mark until 52 seconds left in the game.”
Here’s the highlights from that win, edited from the Drake coaches’ film of a game that wasn’t televised. 2012 wasn’t that long ago. The MVC era doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, either. But look at these clips — which we all were GIDDY to watch because it was the only way to see the plays T. Scott Marr had described on the radio — compared to seven years later and the high-def broadcasts we watch every single night.
It’s wild.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WAZ60xA9wo
The Bottom Line:
Creighton’s favored pretty much everywhere in this one — ESPN’s BPI has their winning percentage at 65%. KenPom predicts a two-point win. Vegas is in that same range.
I think late free throws push the spread a bit further than that. But it’ll be close, and it’ll be a Bluejay win.
Bluejays 76, Bulldogs 71
