Following a 7-1 month of January where Creighton had winning streaks of four and three sandwiched around a road loss at #1 UConn, the Bluejays used the first of their two bye weeks to focus on themselves. Greg McDermott said that the grind of the season doesn’t allow for much practice time to work on big picture improvements, but after a week of analyzing themselves, he’s pleased with their progress.
“You’re so caught up in the next opponent that you can’t take a step back and really look at where your team has made progress. And we have,” he said. They’ve cleaned up some of their turnover issues, and their defense has grown to the 12th best in the country (and tops in the Big East) in adjusted efficiency, giving them a chance to win every night. And their offense is starting to click into gear, too, as we detailed yesterday.
“February is going to be a very difficult month for us. You’ve got six or seven or eight teams, nine teams maybe, that have an opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament based on how they play the last 10 games,” McDermott said of the Big East. “More times than not you’re going to be playing a team that’s fighting for their lives or fighting for a seed in the NCAA Tournament, so it’s going to have the feel of an NCAA tournament-type game every night.”
The Big East currently has three teams in the top 15 of the NET (UConn, Marquette and Creighton), two more in the top 50 (St. John’s and Xavier), and three between 51-56 (Villanova, Providence and Butler). Seton Hall isn’t far behind at 66. That puts nine of the league’s 11 teams either solidly in the tourney, on the bubble or in a spot where a strong month could move them there. What a league.
Butler, currently at 56 in the NET, is one of those teams on the periphery of the bracket discussion, hoping to play themselves into the tourney with a big February surge. They’ve won three straight, including a double-overtime win over Villanova last Saturday, to get back to even in the league at 5-5. They own wins over Marquette on the road and Texas Tech (#28 in the NET) at home, plus a neutral floor win over Boise State (#44). But three of their five Big East wins have come against DePaul and Georgetown, which is holding them back from serious tourney talk yet.
Over the next 15 days, the Bulldogs will face Creighton twice, play at UConn, and host Marquette and Providence at home. Suffice it to say, we’ll know a lot more about Butler’s tourney chances by the time that gauntlet is done.
That the Bulldogs are even in this discussion is kind of remarkable. They lost eight of their top nine players off of a team who went 14-18 a year ago in Thad Matta’s first year; the core of that team went 10-15 and 14-19 in LaVall Jordan’s final two seasons at the helm. But thanks to the transfer portal, Matta was able to quickly reshape the roster to fit his style.
The result is a Bulldog team that is unrecognizable from the grind-it-out, physical, methodical teams of the past. In terms of raw numbers, they come in averaging 80.8 points per game, the most since 1990-91, and have given up 72.7 points defensively, the most since 1991-92. That’s mostly because they’re playing at a faster pace, because in terms of tempo-free stats, their adjusted offensive efficiency is 115.1, ranking third in the Big East (and 47th best in D1). Jordan’s best teams, and Chris Holtmann and Brad Stevens before him, had similar numbers. But the Bulldogs’ adjusted tempo is 68.1, which at 153rd fastest in D1 doesn’t sound fast — until you remember that Jordan’s last three Bulldog teams ranked 334th, 326th and 341st in that stat, and last year’s team was 277th.
It’s only the second time they’ve been in the top 50% of D1 teams since KenPom started tracking that stat in 1997 (using 180 as an arbitrary cut-off, since there’s currently 362 teams in D1). And that one team barely made it, as Holtmann’s 2015-16 squad ranked 178th.
“We’ve been watching a lot of film on them,” Isaac Traudt said at Thursday’s media session. “They’re really physical, and they have a couple of guards that can really shoot.”
The guards he’s referring to are Pierre Brooks and Jahmyl Telfort, who can both hit from three-point range despite being very different players stylistically.
They’re led in scoring by Brooks, a 6’6″ transfer from Michigan State who’s averaging 16.6 points, 4.5 rebounds while making 43.2% from three-point range. He’s made multiple threes in a game 17 times this season, has scored in double-figures in all 20 games, and had a double-double with 20 points and 11 rebounds last week at Georgetown. Brooks is their highest-volume shooter, with 260 shot attempts this season. Just under half of his shots (49.8%) have been threes; he can put the ball on the floor and drive, but he’s deadliest from the arc.
The 6’7″ Telfort, a transfer from Northeastern, is averaging 13.9 points, 5.0 rebounds and 2.8 assists, and is shooting 36.1% from three-point range. Like Brooks, he too had a double-double last week, with his coming in the 2OT win over Villanova (22 points, 11 rebounds). Unlike Brooks, Telfort does most of his damage inside the arc — 75.4% of his shot attempts have been two-pointers, with midrange jumpers comprising the bulk of those. He draws a lot of contact, and has attempted the most free throws on the team (70), making 87.1% from the line.
6’1″ DJ Davis, a transfer from UC Irvine, averages 13.6 points per game and scored 28 in the 2OT win over Villanova last weekend. Davis is a versatile scorer who’s made 34.5% from three-point range (38-of-110), 46-of-91 on twos (including 26-of-44 at the rim) and is second-best in the country from the free throw line (67-of-70, 95.7%).
And then there’s Posh Alexander, a familiar face who spent the last three years tormenting Big East foes at St. John’s. Alexander transferred when Rick Pitino took the job in Queens, and has picked right up where he left off — some might even say he’s played better this year than he did for the Johnnies. Alexander is averaging 11.4 points and 5.1 assists per game, and notched his first career triple-double (10 points, 11 assists, 10 rebounds) in a win over Texas Tech back in November. But as it was a St. John’s, Alexander’s game is more about defense than offense. He pressures the ball as good as anyone in the country with 2.4 steals per game (12th most in D1), and his steal rate of 4.3% ranks 29th.
“He was a great player at St. John’s and now he’s doing well at Butler,” Baylor Scheierman said. “And he’s doing a lot of the same things he did at St. John’s — pressuring the ball, getting down into the paint, bullying and stuff.”
Inside, 6’10” Jalen Thomas starts at the ‘5’ and gets the bulk of the minutes there, averaging 6.8 points, 6.8 rebounds and 1.4 blocks per game. He’s shooting 64.2% in Big East play, and has led them in rebounds 10 times.
- Tip: 8:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Connor Onion 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 Tyler Clement
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Simulcast on SiriusXM channel 106 or 201, as well as on the SiriusXM App
- The Bulldogs are not deep, with their bench getting just 23.9% of their total minutes (321st in D1) — for comparison, Creighton’s bench has played 21.4% of their total minutes (350th).
- Butler is coming off a double-overtime win over Villanova that included the Bulldogs leading for only 1:07 of the 50 minutes. Butler scored 40 points over the first 31:30 of the game before heating up for 48 over the final 18:30. The game’s first tie came at 64-64 at the end of regulation.
- With 88 points Saturday, Butler has 11 games this season scoring 80 or more (including six games of 90 or more points). Butler hit 80 only six times all of last season.
- CU has won 33 straight Friday home games and is 22-0 at CHI Health Center Omaha on Fridays. Creighton has won every Friday home game it’s played since a loss on Dec. 12, 1975, back when Greg McDermott was 11 years old, and more than 28 years before current Bluejay redshirt freshman Isaac Traudt was born.
- Trey Alexander has scored 23, 27 and 23 points in the last three games. In the last 25 seasons, he’s just the second Creighton player with three straight games of 23+ points, joining Doug McDermott (who did it eight — yes, EIGHT –different times).
- Speaking of Doug McDermott, Ryan Kalkbrenner has grabbed eight or more rebounds in each of the past eight games, scooping up caroms at a 9.4 rebounds per game clip in that time. In the last 20 seasons, the only Bluejay with a longer streak of games of eight or more rebounds is…Doug McDermott.
Creighton is 17-11 all-time vs. Butler, and the home team has won 11 of the last 12 meetings not played on a neutral site. CU is 11-2 all-time in Omaha against the Bulldogs, including a 9-1 mark since the schools became Big East rivals.
A year ago, Creighton posted a pair of 20-point wins over the Bulldogs, 73-52 in Indianapolis and 78-56 in Omaha.
Creighton hasn’t played on February 2 since moving to the Big East; their last game on this date came in 2013, when they beat Bradley 75-58 to move to 20-3 overall and 9-2 in the Valley. After trailing by three at the half, CU shot 69% in the second, outrebounding the Braves 18-4 in the process. Doug McDermott and Gregory Echenique (25 combined second half points) nearly outscored BU by themselves.
The Bottom Line:
Creighton is favored by 10.5 by Vegas oddsmakers, and KenPom predicts an 8-point Bluejay win. ESPN’s BPI gives the Jays 90.0% odds of winning.
10.5 is a lot of points, but I think CU takes care of business.
Creighton 81, Butler 70