Dana Altman’s 16th and final season as head coach at Creighton ended in the 2010 CIT, a short-lived secondary postseason tournament. His last Bluejay team beat South Dakota and Fairfield in a pair of games contested at the Civic Auditorium seven years after they thought they’d ended their time in that venerable old building, then lost to MVC foe Missouri State in Springfield to end both the season and the Altman Era.
Greg McDermott’s 16th and final season as head coach at Creighton will end this weekend in the College Basketball Crown, a secondary tournament in its second year. How the final moments of the McDermott Era will play out are still to be determined, but I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the parallels between how those two coaches’ time on the Hilltop ended. It’s a little bit uncanny — and perhaps disappointing — that a pair of titans defined by extraordinary success in March ended their runs on a side stage, but the 2010 CIT was ultimately a basically-forgotten footnote in the story of the Altman Era. And whatever happens in the 2026 Crown, McDermott’s legacy is already secure.
Will we be talking about new coach Alan Huss’ tenure ending in a similar fashion in 2042? Jays fans certainly hope so, because if Huss is still around by then, that means the Creighton program will have had a half-century of success under just three leaders.
Huss has already taken over the off-court duties of his new role, but for however long the Jays’ stay alive in this tournament, McDermott will remain in charge of the on-court business. He’s been the one leading the practices leading up to it, which have been bittersweet knowing they’re the final practices of his coaching career.
“I think I’ll probably feel it later,” McDermott said Monday. “We’re trying to get ready to play a game, and obviously, I think they’ll still let me in this building once in a while. But it’ll probably be a little surreal tomorrow when we have the last one.”
Creighton enters The Crown having lost eight of their last 11 games, while Rutgers has won five of their last nine. Under normal circumstances you’d maybe consider this as a matchup of teams heading in different directions, or certainly one where momentum and confidence could play a factor.
But there’s no such thing as momentum when you haven’t played a game for three weeks. It’s been 21 days since these teams last played; Creighton exited the Big East tourney with a loss to Seton Hall on March 12 and Rutgers’ Big Ten tourney ended with a loss to UCLA the same day.
“It’s been kind of weird, I’m not going to lie, seeing all these other teams playing already, even the NIT has been going on,” Josh Dix said earlier this week. “I think it’s weird for the coaches too. They didn’t really know what to do, so they gave us some time off. We’ve been in the gym quite a bit with the GAs and assistants, so it’s definitely been weird.”
Second-tier tournaments are already weird by nature, because the teams who win often aren’t the ones with the most talent or the ones who had the best season — they’re simply the ones that are motivated to be there.
“It’s tricky in a tournament like this,” Greg McDermott said on Monday. “Number one, who’s available? Number two, what’s the level of motivation? I hope we can get ourselves ready before Thursday to just go in there and have a little bit of fun, fly around and see what happens.”
One of those not available is Austin Swartz, who missed time in February with an injury that never fully healed and has not practiced in the days leading up to the Crown. According to McDermott, the injury might require offseason surgery, and he’s out for however long Creighton stays alive in this tourney — Swartz isn’t even listed on the travel roster that the school released.
As for McDermott’s other point about motivation, future coach Alan Huss shared some insight into where the team is at in that regard. In an interview on 1620AM’s “Happer and Schaefer” last Thursday, Huss said the preparation ahead of the tournament has given him a chance to evaluate what he wants his roster to look like next season — with an invaluable data point that he wouldn’t have without this tourney.
“The practice sessions that we’ve been afforded in preparation for the Crown (are giving) us a great look at where guys’ mentalities are,” Huss said. “Are they in wind down mode right now, where they’re thinking, ‘OK, how do I just, how do I get through this next little period before we start back in June?’ Or are they in ramp-up mode? And I think guys in that second category are the ones that we want to gravitate towards. We’ve got a few guys in both categories. But those guys that really love basketball, that want to get better, that no matter the time of year, no matter what the situation with the team is, they’re thinking about getting better, they’re thinking about their craft, they’re thinking about our program? Those are the guys that do really well when they come back and we flip to the next season.”
As for the tournament itself, the 2026 College Basketball Crown has a field of eight teams: Oklahoma (41st in KenPom), Baylor (51st), Stanford (62nd), West Virginia (63rd), Colorado (72nd), Creighton (74th), Minnesota (76th) and Rutgers (122nd). The winner between Creighton and Rutgers will face the winner of Stanford/West Virginia on Friday night.
The Scarlet Knights under coach Steve Pikiell have historically brought a defense-first, bruising style to the floor. He took them to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments in 2021 and 2022, the first time they’d been in the tourney at all since 1991 and the first time they’d gone in consecutive years since 1976. They missed the postseason the last two years with identical 15-17 records, and come into the Crown with a 14-19 mark this year.
For most of this season, they struggled defensively and couldn’t score enough to make up the difference. The offense hasn’t gotten much better, but the defense has, and that’s how they won five of their last nine games.
Their adjusted defensive efficiency was 106.7 for the season (122nd in D1), but over the last ten games, they improved to 100.7 (45th). They forced more turnovers, and held opponents to four percentage points lower from three-point range (35.8% for the season, 31.8% over the last ten).
That’s important because as we noted, they are not very good offensively, especially in the halfcouft. They rank 326th in effective field goal percentage, and are equally putrid both inside the arc (46.6%, 337th) and from three-point range (32.8%, 242nd). Just 68 of their 1,250 two-point attempts have been dunks; 628 of those 1,250 attempts were from further than eight feet. Simply put, they don’t get much at the rim, which is why they often struggle to score when opponents stop the ball in transition.
And when they miss, Rutgers doesn’t often get the offensive board for a second chance; they’ve grabbed just 29.1% of their misses, 213th nationally.
Tariq Francis is their only player averaging in double-figures, scoring 16.9 points per game with 2.9 assists. Francis has made 35.7% of his threes, and 90.5% from the line, and is without a doubt the offensive engine of this team. He’s on the travel roster and is expected to play, but he did suffer a lower leg injury in practice last Friday so his mobility could be affected.
Francis scored 24.9% of Rutgers’ total points this season, so it’s not hyperbole to say he’s their most important offensive player. His biggest games have often come when opponents fail to defend him without fouling; four times this season he’s attempted double-digit free throws including an absurd 15-of-19 against Penn on December 20. He did it to Maryland twice, going 12-of-13 in Piscataway and 10-of-10 in College Park. And he went 10-of-11 from the line against Oregon in early January.
6’8” Dylan Grant averages 9.8 points and 4.3 rebounds per game, though he’s not terribly efficient (88-of-178 on two-pointers, 49.4%) because one-third of them are long two-point jumpers where he shoots just 39.0%. 6’7” Darren Buchanan averages 8.4 points and 3.8 rebounds per game, with an even more pronounced split: his 186 two-pointers are evenly split at 93 apiece between close-twos and far-twos. He’s made 55.9% of the former — and just 41.9% of the latter.
6’10”, 260-pound senior Emmanuel Ogbole is probably the biggest concern for Creighton on the scouting report. The Jays’ decimated front line has struggled to contain big, physical centers and Ogbole is both. He’s also been playing his best basketball of the season: over the last four games, he’s averaging 9.0 points, 4.1 rebounds and 1.8 blocks per game.
And if you’re looking for a dark-horse candidate who might surprise, it’s likely to be freshman Lino Mark. He averaged just 5.6 points for the season, but has scored 47 points in the last four — a number that would be bigger had Minnesota not held him scoreless in the Big Ten tournament. He hung 14 on Michigan State on March 5, 16 on Penn State three days later and 17 on UCLA in their most recent game. He’s more of a slasher than anyone else on the roster and gives them an element they don’t have otherwise — and could have a big day against a CU team without much rim protection.
While this weekend’s games are the finale for Greg McDermott, they’re also the curtain call for seniors Josh Dix and Nik Graves.
“It’s kind of weird for Nik and me, we know that we’re done after this,” Dix said on Monday. “But just to play with these guys one more time, it means a lot. We’ve had a close bond all year long, and it’ll be exciting to get out there one more time in a tournament setting, and hopefully we win it. Everyone’s grateful for the opportunity that (Mac) gave them, and it’s special to be a part of his last year. It’s not the way that we wanted to end it for him, but he’s a selfless human being, and he never made it about himself. So it doesn’t surprise me that that he went out like that.”
Tip: 9:30pm
Venue: MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, NV
TV: FS1
Announcers: Tim Brando and Jim Jackson on the call and Allison Williams on the sidelines
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Announcers: John Bishop and Connor Happer
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Junior point guard Jamichael Davis is the most tenured Scarlet Knight. Davis is averaging 7.2 points per game, 2.5 assists, and 2.9 rebounds per game while shooting 38.5 percent from the field. He is shooting a career-high 36.3 percent from three-point range and is playing a career-high 26.3 minutes per game, which leads the team
Freshman Kaden Powers started 12 of the last 15 games for the Scarlet Knights after getting his first career start in the overtime win against Oregon in early January. Powers dropped a career-high 18 points all in the first half against UCLA on February 3, but struggled down the stretch and has come off the bench the last three games.
This marks Creighton’s 43rd all-time appearance in the postseason, and sixth different event. They’ve made 26 NCAA Tournament appearances, 12 trips to the NIT, two trips to an event named the National Catholic Invitational Tournament in the 1950s and 60s, and one trip apiece to the CBI and CIT. Greg McDermott is Creighton’s all-time wins leader in three of those events: the NCAA Tournament (12), NIT (4) and CBI (4).
This week is Creighton’s 11th trip ever to Las Vegas, the seventh since 2012, and fourth in the last four seasons. That doesn’t count a 2023 game against UNLV in nearby Henderson, Nev. The Bluejays are 11-9 all-time in Las Vegas, and 7-7 under Greg McDermott. Creighton is 3-2 all-time inside MGM Grand Garden Arena, beating Rutgers and UMass in 2015 and Notre Dame in 2024, but also losing to San Diego State and Texas A&M in 2024.
Creighton and Rutgers own three common opponents this season: Seton Hall, Oregon and Nebraska. Creighton is 2-3 against that trio (beating Seton Hall once in three tries, and winning vs Oregon), while Rutgers went 1-2 (with the lone win an 88-85 OT win over Oregon).
Creighton is 1-0 all-time against Rutgers, defeating the Scarlet Knights 85-75 on Nov. 23, 2015 at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas as part of the Men Who Speak Up Main Event.
Cole Huff had 26 points and seven rebounds to lead the Bluejays, who also got 10 points from James Milliken and 13 points and 10 assists from Maurice Watson Jr.
Thursday’s game will take place on April 2nd, marking the latest game on the Creighton Basketball calendar in program history. CU’s only previous game played in the month of April was on April 1, 2011, a 71-69 loss to Oregon in Game 3 of the Best-of-3 Finals in the CBI. That game capped Greg McDermott’s first season on The Hilltop.
Creighton’s favored by 4.5 with 71.5% odds of winning according to ESPN’s BPI. KenPom and T-Rank both favor the Jays, too. It’s not hard to see why — the Jays are literally playing to keep their coach’s career alive for one more game, and in a tournament like this where motivation often is enough to tip the scales, adding that level of desperation and energy to a team’s performance is a powerful formula.
I think the McDermott Era continues for at least one more day.
Creighton 77, Rutgers 70