Last Friday, Creighton nearly doubled-up on Wayne State in a 95-48 exhibition win. Trey Alexander scored 22 points in 18 minutes, they made 16-of-38 from three-point range, and almost led wire-to-wire. But that was all to be expected. The biggest questions in search of answers were how Steven Ashworth would look in the Bluejay offense, and how the ‘4’ spot was sorting itself out after fall practice.
Ashworth scored 12 points on 4-of-6 shooting (and 2-of-3 from behind the arc), adding six assists against just one turnover in 20 minutes.
“I thought he stuck in the paint a few times where he probably could have kept his dribble, and instead he dribbled out of there,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show Friday night. “But you know, he’s he’s learning as well and he felt like we played pretty fast the first half. I told him at halftime it needs to be faster. He’s not accustomed to it yet. But you see how unselfish he is. I thought there was a couple he probably should have shot that he made an extra pass instead, but that’s kind of what he’s about.”
As for the ‘4’, Mason Miller got the start and went scoreless in 17 minutes, adding two rebounds. Isaac Traudt had seven points in 15 minutes off the bench and made a pair of threes. The position clearly remains a work in progress.
“That’s going to be our most inexperienced spot,” McDermott said. “We need both of those guys to rebound for us. This film will be really valuable for them on both ends of the floor, because I thought there was a couple opportunities to maybe do something different than what they did, and that’s why being in this uniform and playing under the lights is so valuable.”
Among the returnees, perhaps the biggest surprise was the subtle changes in Baylor Scheierman’s game. It’s clear that he made the most out of an offseason with trainer Jeremy Anderson to make himself a better, stronger version of the player we saw a year ago.
“He really attacked some things that he felt were weaknesses last year. One was his body and his strength,” McDermott said. “He’s worked at getting that shot off quicker. He took a lot more shots on the move in our offense than he did when he was at South Dakota State. And a lot of his three-point shots were off the dribble, where he had the ball in his hands behind a ball screen. He’s really worked at it. And defensively he’s done some good things and made some strides.”
And so now the regular season commences. The first opponent is Florida A&M out of the SWAC, a team who seems to be on the upswing after being downright bad a year ago. Their offense ranked 362nd out of 363 teams in D1 last year in adjusted efficiency. Their defense was only marginally better, ranking 285th, and they finished with a 7-22 record that featured just five wins over D1 teams. But finally free of recruiting sanctions levied by the NCAA for transgressions committed by the previous staff that limited them to just four official visits last offseason, they took advantage by signing eight newcomers this time around.
The highlight of that class is a pair of big transfers in Shannon Grant and Ja’Derryus Eatmon. The “big” is both literal and figurative in this case — Grant is 6’10” and 285 pounds, while Eatmon is 6’9″ and 250.
A senior this year, Grant played previously for Mercer, and in 19 games for them a year ago he made 40-of-78 shots from the floor (54.8%) while averaging 5.3 points and 3.3 rebounds per game. He has soft hands and better range on his jump shot than you’d expect from a 6’10” center at this level, as his junior year reel shows.
Eatmon, too, is a senior and played at Lawson State CC a year ago where he averaged 10 points and 6.8 rebounds a game while shooting 70.2% from the field. That gaudy shooting percentage comes courtesy of a ton of dunks; his reel from a year ago is primarily a collection of plays where he catches the ball under the rim and dunks with two hands.
5’11” Love Bettis made over 40% of his threes a year ago at North Carolina A&T, and his ability to shoot off the catch gives FAMU’s offense another wrinkle. But it’s his defense that has the staff excited. He has quick hands and good instincts, and can heat up opposing guards defensively.
6’6″ guard Dimingus Stevens is their leading returning scorer, averaging 8.4 points per game a year ago while shooting 43% from three-point range. Stevens began his career at Seton Hall in 2021-22, but only appeared in five games for the Pirates and didn’t see the floor in either matchup with Creighton that year. His best game at FAMU came against Mississippi Valley State where he hit seven 3-pointers; while there’s no easily accessible video of that performance, here he is making four of them a month later at Alabama A&M:
Coached by former Dana Altman assistant Robert McCullum, the Rattlers will show a ton of different looks to their opponents. They’ll play some full-court press, they’ll trap, they’ll switch into a zone to throw you off, and they’ll switch from playing up-tempo to a slower style, sometimes from one possession to the next. In other words, a lot like Altman’s teams do.
“The non-conference portion of the schedule, you want to grow, you want to learn, you want to get better and you want to find out different areas that your team is exposed in by the teams that you play against,” Greg McDermott said last week. “Florida A&M is going to do some things that we’re going to see once conference play rolls around.”
Speaking of Altman, his Oregon Ducks will play a true road game at Florida A&M in two weeks as part of the Pac12-SWAC Legacy Series. Among other shared academic opportunities between the leagues, men’s and women’s basketball programs will pair up for home-and-home series. Playing power conference foes on the road is a reality of life in the SWAC; after Tuesday’s game here, Florida A&M will play at Nebraska, Florida, Iowa, Iowa State, UCF and South Carolina. For once they’ll get one of them at home in the Lawson Center.
- Tip: 8:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Kevin Kugler and Nick Bahe
- 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
- Cable Cutters: Available on all major streaming platforms
- Streaming on the Fox Sports app and website
- Radio: 1620AM, 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Three other returnees to keep an eye on are Hantz Louis-Jeune (5.6 ppg.), Jordan Chatman (5.5 ppg.) and Chase Barrs (3.9 ppg., 1.0 bpg.).
- FAMU averaged just 58.6 points per game last season, shooting 38.7% from the field, 31.3% from three-point land and 69.2% at the line. The Rattlers had 280 assists compared to 464 turnovers and were also outrebounded by 3.0 caroms per contest.
- Creighton has won 78 of its 80 regular-season November home games since 1990, falling only to Boise State in 2012 and Ohio State in 2018.
- With a win, Greg McDermott would improve to 22-1 as a Division I head coach in season-openers, including 22 straight wins, and 14-0 at Creighton. Creighton would improve to 91-15 all-time in season-opening games, including a 26-1 mark in the past 27 lid-lifters.
- Last Friday’s exhibition crowd of 17,132 was Creighton’s largest exhibition crowd ever, breaking the previous mark of 16,317 on Nov. 7, 2014 vs. Sioux Falls. CU’s largest crowd ever to open a regular-season was the 18,160 fans who gathered to watch the Bluejays dispatch Central Arkansas (104-77) on Nov. 14, 2014. That could be in peril Tuesday, as CU sold out of season tickets for the first time after selling 15,768 tickets.
Creighton is 2-0 all-time against Florida A&M, having defeated the Rattlers 74-70 on Dec. 22, 1993 at Ak-Sar-Ben Coliseum in Omaha, then again 78-53 on Nov. 17, 2009 at CHI Health Center Omaha. Greg McDermott is 1-0 against Florida A&M, having won 76-53 on Dec. 17, 2005 at the UNI-Dome when he was head coach at UNI.
That 1993 game is fascinating on several levels. It was the Jays’ first home game away from the Civic since the 1979-80 season, a test to see if playing games away from downtown would boost attendance. Their crowds had dropped 46.9% since the departure of Tony Barone at the end of the 1990-91 season, and the first three home games that season drew a total of 13,908, an average of 4,636. The year before, attendance at Creighton games dipped to a 25-year low when the Bluejays drew 48,513 for 15 home games, an average of 3,234.
Of course, the product on the court was the main culprit, not the venue.
“People who saw that game probably came away with the idea that A&M is not very good,” Creighton Coach Rick Johnson said. “But if you saw us play Missouri – Kansas City (an 82 – 57 season – opening loss), you’d probably say the same thing about our team.”
And when the game at Ak-Sar-Ben Coliseum drew even fewer fans that the preceding games downtown, it became harder and harder to ignore that fact. In the spring, Johnson would be out, Dana Altman would be in, and the rest was history.
Creighton has only played once before on November 6, a 78-67 win over Western Illinois in the season opener of the 2018-19 campaign. A mostly sputtering game where the Jays never managed to put away a middling team, it featured some outstanding debut performances. The biggest? Damien Jefferson, whose 12 rebounds were the most for a Bluejay in his first game since 1975.
The Bottom Line:
KenPom predicts an 83-53 Bluejay win, with a 99.7% probability of victory. ESPN’s BPI gives them similar 98.9% odds of winning. Vegas oddsmakers favor the Jays by 29, with an over/under of 140.5.
#8 Creighton 85, Florida A&M 54
