As conference play begins Wednesday night for the Creighton Bluejays, they bring a solid resume with them — an 11-2 record, wins over four teams inside the top 100 of the NET rankings (Louisiana Tech, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Arizona State), and find themselves with a NET ranking themselves of 24. It seems like a safe bet to say they’re one of the 35-40 or so best teams in the country, which means they should be a safe bet to go dancing in March.
The crazy thing is that the Big East has seven other teams that can basically say the same thing, and two others on the periphery of that discussion. Nine of the 10 teams are ranked 67 or higher in the latest NET. Seven are inside the top 50. Nine teams are listed as likely NCAA Tourney teams as of today on BracketMatrix.
That means there’s no such thing as a safe bet in the Big East in 2020.
Creighton begins the gauntlet with Marquette, a team that has won in Omaha four straight years. That puts them squarely in Southern Illinois territory in terms of annoyance and/or outright dislike — the Salukis are the only other team to win four straight times at Qwest Center/CenturyLink Center/CHI Health Center. And much like Marquette currently, SIU’s run between 2003-04 and 2006-07 featured strange games with odd twists and turns that never seemed to go Creighton’s way.
Last year’s 106-104 overtime loss saw the Jays survive Markus Howard going off…only to throw the inbounds pass away on the final possession, giving Marquette the chance to tie it. Which they did. And then Howard carried them to victory, ultimately scoring an absurd 53 points.
Much as it did a year ago, everything Marquette does begins with Howard. He already has two games where he’s scored 40 or more — he had 40 against Davidson and 51 against USC. When he’s rolling, they’re a handful. And they’re 10-0 in those games. When he’s not, they’re very beatable. And they’re 0-2 in those games. In their two losses, to Wisconsin and Maryland, Howard was a combined 7-of-33 shooting, and 2-of-13 from three-point range. He had eight turnovers in the games. And they lost by 16 to the Badgers and by 21 to the Terrapins.
Still, Howard leads the country in scoring at 26.3 points per game for good reason. He’s one of the best pure scorers in college basketball in some time. He kills you from three-point range (46-of-95, 49%). He has a good midrange game (38% on jumpers inside the arc). And he gets to the line more than anyone else in Division 1 hoops, drawing an average of 8.6 fouls per 40 minutes.
Creighton slowed Howard down somewhat (somewhat; he still hung 33 on them) in the second meeting a year ago, but the player who primarily guarded him — Davion Mintz — is not part of the active roster after deciding to shut things down for the rest of the season when his high ankle sprain didn’t heal as quickly as hoped. Who guards Howard, and how well they do in keeping him from challenging his arena record for most points in a game, may well be the defining story of this game. Howard averages nearly 27 a game, and he’s going to get that. Making sure 27 doesn’t turn into 54 is the key.
The Brothers Hauser are no longer around, meaning that for the most part the supporting cast for Howard looks quite a bit different than it did a year ago. Sacar Anim has been their second option offensively, and the combo of Howard and Anim have taken about 45% of the team’s total shots. Anim has taken advantage of opponent’s defensive focus on Howard, and can score in a variety of ways — he’ll drive to the basket (38% of his total shots have come at the rim, where he converts an excellent 66% of the time), and he can shoot the three (17-of-37 on the year, or 46%). Anim is not a very good jump shooter inside the arc, making just 29% of such shots. He doesn’t draw many fouls, and isn’t a very good free throw shooter when he gets to the line (19-of-34, 55%). But if he can get downhill, or pop open behind the arc when the defense focuses attention on Howard, he can beat you.
Koby McEwen has been their third scoring option, averaging 10.2 points per game largely on his ability to draw fouls and make nearly every single free throw he takes. McEwen is 43-of-46 at the line (93.5%) this year. After a hot start, he’s been in a shooting slump and is now making just 31% of his shots overall (27-of-85) and from three (15-of-47). He had a stretch of five straight games in December where he didn’t score more than seven points in any of them. And he missed their last game on Saturday with a thumb injury.
6’9″ Theo John is their enforcer, and gives them a true rim protector on defense. He ranks 31st in the nation in block percentage with 25, or just over two per game. While their other big men have better overall numbers (Brendan Bailey averages 6.9 points and 4.5 boards, Jamal Cain averages 6.3 and 5.3) it’s John who Creighton will have the most difficulty dealing with. They simply do not have anyone his size, and his ability to block and/or alter shots at the rim makes scoring around the basket tricky for smaller players. And while he’s not a very good foul shooter (25-of-45, 55%) he’s done a good job of getting opposing bigs in foul trouble. That’s bad news for a Creighton team with foul-prone big men — and not very many of them.
CU’s best bet is to slow Marquette down in transition. The Golden Eagles have an effective field goal percentage of 63% in transition, which is elite. But when they run offense in a halfcourt set, it drops all the way to 49%. Creighton let Marquette run wild in transition last year in Omaha, and it cost them. The Jays slowed them down in Milwaukee and forced them to run offense against a set defense, and they won.
Ultimately, much as it has been in recent years, this is a toss-up game likely to come down to the final minutes. The Vegas and KenPom predictions reflect that. Get ready for a nail-biter.
- Tip: 8:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: CBSSN
- Announcers: Dave Ryan and Steve Lappas
- In Omaha: Cox channel 234 (SD), 1234 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 643 (SD), 1643 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: CBSSN Channel Finder [http://www.cbssportsnetwork.com/channel-finder]
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 221; Dish Network channel 158
- Streaming info
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Nick Bahe
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters
- MU is currently first in the Big East and third in the nation in 3-point field goal percentage (.427). Marquette has made a league-best 122 3-pointers on the season and four players rank among the league’s top players (Sacar Anim, Markus Howard, Greg Elliott and Brendan Bailey) in 3-point field goal percentage.
- Their defense has improved substantially. MU’s opponents are shooting just 37.5 percent from the floor overall (16th-best in country and second in the Big East) and 29.6 percent from behind the 3-point line. The Golden Eagles are ninth in all of NCAA Division I in defensive rebounds per outing (30.3 drpg.), the top average in the conference.
- In their last game, Marquette beat Central Arkansas 106-54, the sixth-largest winning margin in school history. The Bears shot just 31.1 percent from the floor overall and 20.0 percent from long distance, as Marquette turned 20 turnovers into 34 points.
- This is the first of four games CU will play on CBS Sports Network in 2020. Four of the five times they appeared on CBSSN last year, the game went overtime (vs Marquette, at Villanova, at Xavier, vs Providence), and in the fifth, there were three lead changes in the last two minutes (at Seton Hall).
- Creighton went 6-0 in the month of December, its first unbeaten December since the 2012-13 team. Each of CU’s last two teams (2008-09 and 2012-13) to go unbeaten in December also won their regular-season league title.
- During the Jays’ seven-game win streak, Marcus Zegarowski has averaged 20.4 points and 5.6 assists per game, making him one of five Bluejays averaging in double-figures. Christian Bishop tops CU with 7.6 rebounds per game in that time.
Marquette leads the series with Creighton by a 55-33 margin, and has a 23-20 lead in Omaha. Marquette leads the series 7-5 since the teams became Big East rivals, but the Bluejays snapped MU’s six-game win streak in the series with a 66-60 victory over the then-No. 10 Golden Eagles last March in Milwaukee.
In that win, they held Marquette to 60 points in a 70 possession game, for a points per possession mark of — gasp — 0.85. They forced more turnovers (22) than they made field goals (21). They held the league’s best three-point shooting team to just 34% (8-of-23) from behind the arc. They frustrated everyone not named Markus Howard for Marquette, and did a decent job of frustrating him at times, too. Howard was 11-of-21 shooting; the rest of the team combined to go 10-of-25.
They had 15 steals, with all five starters grabbing at least one. They had 10 offensive boards, securing a second chance on one-third of their missed shots. The Jays won largely by being the aggressor, and taking the battle to Marquette.
Creighton began the decade by losing in Terre Haute 70-64 to Indiana State on January 1, 2010. It was played in front of the typical Hulman Center crowd, i.e. subdued and miniature, and it was not televised. (The glitchy, expensive webcast doesn’t count).
Creighton begins the next decade in Omaha against old rival Marquette, in a game that will be played in front of 17,000 fans on national TV. It’s been just 10 years. It seems like a lifetime.
That 70-64 loss to the Sycamores dropped Creighton to 5-8 overall and 0-2 in the MVC. The season spiraled out of control from that point forward, as a talented roster — some thought it was Dana Altman’s most talented, at least in terms of recruiting stars and rankings — couldn’t jell. By March, a not insignificant number of CU fans were over the Altman Era. And he left for Oregon in April.
Greg McDermott came on board later that month, and then all of this awesome stuff happened.
We began the decade with this video at the bottom of the Primer for that Indiana State tussle. We begin the next decade with it, as well, because why not?
The Bottom Line:
Their Markus (Howard) scores 40. But Creighton holds the rest of the Golden Eagles in check, and wins a relatively high-scoring affair late thanks to clutch play from our Marcus (Zegarowski).
Creighton 83, Marquette 80