Believe it or not, the non-conference portion of the 2021-22 season wraps up already on Tuesday night, when Creighton hosts Arizona State. Bobby Hurley’s Sun Devils are 4-6, with a roster featuring 10 newcomers after their top three scorers (Remy Martin, Alonzo Verge and Josh Christopher) all transferred out.
The Sun Devils added graduate transfer Marreon Jackson from Toledo (2020-21 MAC Player of the Year in his fifth year of college hoops), along with DI transfers DJ Horne (Illinois State) and Jay Heath (Boston College), plus junior college transfer Alonzo Gaffney, who started his career at Ohio State. And Luther Muhammad sat last year to get his shoulder healthy after transferring from Ohio State. Add in two freshmen, and it’s a roster that has been almost totally transformed.
In the season’s second game, they lost at home to UC Riverside on a 75-foot desperation heave at the buzzer … after going ahead on a layup with 1.7 seconds left. And things have only gotten worse from there, with things spiraling to the point CBS Sports called them one of the three most disappointing teams in America last week.
They’ve played a non-conference schedule ranked 23rd toughest in D1, with the meat of that slate planned when Hurley was counting on Martin, Verge and Christopher being on the roster. They dropped games at San Diego State (#46 in KenPom) followed by all three games in the Battle 4 Atlantis (Baylor, #1), Syracuse (#68) and Loyola-Chicago (#23).
The streak grew to five when they dropped the Pac-12 opener to Washington State, an ugly 51-29 affair that had people across the country doing a double-take when they saw the score on their phones. Remarkably, they scored 10 first half points in that game, shooting 16.7% from the floor (4-for-24) with nine turnovers. And it didn’t get any better after halftime. Hurley called it “dreadful. Really dreadful…I’ve had a lot of teams here that could put some points on the board and tonight this was as ineffective an offensive performance as I’ve been a part of ever, as a player or a coach. It was disappointing, epically bad.”
They come into Omaha riding a little momentum, winning two straight over defending league champs — 67-62 over Grand Canyon (the reigning WAC champ) and 69-67 at Oregon (the reigning PAC-12 champ). Senior forward Kimani Lawrence told the Arizona Republic this week that the team feels the win over Oregon will be a turning point in their season. Much like the Bluejays, a team with this many newcomers is likely to improve quite a bit over the course of the season and if the last two games are any indication, it certainly looks like the Sun Devils are a better team than they were two weeks ago.
Sophomore guard D.J. Horne, a transfer from Illinois State, leads the team in scoring at 13.2 points per game. He’s been terrific so far, making six 3-pointers against Baylor and 27-of-64 from long range overall (42.2%). He hit the game-tying three at Oregon with four seconds left to send that game into overtime, and had 23 points, six rebounds and three assists against the Ducks.
He’s almost exclusively a jump shooter, with 95% of his shots either two-point jumpers or three-pointers. Of his 101 shot attempts this year, just five (5!) have come at the rim. But don’t mistake that for a player who shies away from tough, guarded shots or one who’s mostly a spot-up shooter — Horne knows his strength is knocking down jumpers, doesn’t care how much space he has to get the shot off, and focuses his energy on those shots instead of on driving for what might be a higher-percentage shot for other players. That makes him a tough player to guard, because running him off the perimeter doesn’t accomplish what it might with other players.
6’6” forward Kimani Lawrence, a fifth-year senior and one of just three returnees on the roster, has assumed the leadership role on the team and plays nearly 31 minutes a game. He’s also been really, really good — Lawrence is second on the team in scoring at 11.4 points per game, and leads the team with 8.5 rebounds per game. He has more than twice as many boards as anyone else on the team, and is especially dangerous on the offensive glass. 32 of his 85 rebounds have been offensive; 11 of his 32 made baskets at the rim are the result of an offensive board and putback. He operates as a sort of undersized-big, and is the polar opposite of Horne — he has yet to attempt a three-pointer this year, and 54% of his shot attempts have been at or near the rim.
6’8” sophomore Marcus Bagley averaged 10.0 points through the first three games before going down with a knee injury; he’s still out and won’t play again tonight. Losing Bagley has been tough to overcome — he made 38% of his threes before the injury and stretched the floor in a way no one else on the roster does. A pair of 6’9” juniors, Jalen Graham and Alonzo Gaffney, have took turns starting in his place but neither gives them the same skillset. Graham averages 5.6 points and 3.0 rebounds a game, and while he has a nice midrange game (he’s made 42.3% on two-point jumpers) he has zero perimeter game (literally; he’s 0-for-5 on threes). Gaffney averages 4.8 points and 3.9 rebounds a game and is more perimeter-orientated, with about one-third of his shots coming from behind the arc. He’s a 30% shooter on threes.
Fifth-year senior transfer Marreon Jackson, the MAC Player of the Year last season at Toledo, has been a good distributor while struggling to find the shooting form he had at Toledo because of a wrist injury. Running the point for the Sun Devils, he’s averaged 8.2 points, 4.2 rebounds and 4.2 assists a game with a nearly 3:1 assist to turnover ratio. But his effective field goal percentage is just 32.8%, and his real shooting percentage is even worse — 24-of-90, or 26.7%. He’s made 11-of-53 from three-point range (20.8%). His eFG% was north of 50% in all four seasons at Toledo, and he was a career 37% shooter from three-point range entering this season. The wrist is clearly a problem.
“If you can imagine being a right-handed player, the wrist (is important) to dribble and pass and shoot. And as a point guard, it’s an issue,” coach Bobby Hurley told the media this week. “But he’s a tough kid and he’s playing through it.”
There’s some things to be concerned about, schematically, with the matchup against ASU. This isn’t a team who makes a living driving to the rim, with only 26.6% of their shots coming at the rim. That’s the fifth-lowest percentage in all of D1. CU has done a good job of forcing jump shooters into the paint and funneling them toward Ryan Kalkbrenner, because they know the shot blocker will make things difficult for opposing shooters. That might not be effective here. So they’ll need to be better at guarding the perimeter and the mid-range jumpers that are inevitably coming.
ASU doesn’t come up with a ton of steals (8.6% of opponents possessions, 236th highest in D1) or force many turnovers (18.3%, 214th in D1). But their pace is typically in the high-60s, with an adjusted tempo of 68.5. They do a good job of getting back on defense, limiting transition opportunities, and slowing down the game. Fewer possessions means mistakes are magnified. CU can’t afford to be loose with the ball.
- Tip: 7:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Kevin Kugler and Bill Raftery
- 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
- Announcers: John Bishop and Ross Ferrarini
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- ASU’s backcourt of Marreon Jackson (23-of-24), DJ Horne (11-of-11), Jay Heath (21-of-23), Luther Muhammad (10-of-12) and Jamiya Neal (7-of-10) are a combined 72-of-80 (.900) at the free throw line.
- ASU is 8-3 in non-conference road games under Bobby Hurley.
- The Sun Devils have 19 wins in games decided by five points or less the last three seasons. That’s the second-most of any team in America over that span, trailing only Western Kentucky’s 18.
- After owning seven or more blocked shots in a game just nine times in Greg McDermott’s first 11 seasons on the Bluejay sideline, Creighton has five contests this winter with at least seven of them.
- Ryan Kalkbrenner ranks second in the Big East with 2.7 blocked shots per game, a figure that ranks as the best by a Bluejay since Benoit Benjamin averaged 5.06 blocks per game in 1984-85. Though he’s got an uphill climb to catch Big Ben, Kalkbrenner is still on track to become the first Bluejay to average more than 2.00 blocks per game since Chad Gallagher (2.19) in 1990-91.
- Creighton jumped 24 spots in the NET rankings after beating BYU on Saturday, up to 58 from their previous rank of 82.
Creighton leads the all-time series with Arizona State, 6-5, though the road team has won the past three meetings. The teams last met on Dec. 21, 2019, a 67-60 Bluejay win in Tempe. On that night, Denzel Mahoney and Mitch Ballock each had 14 points to lead CU to victory.
Greg McDermott is 4-1 in his career against ASU and 2-1 against Bobby Hurley.
On December 14, 1989, Creighton had a thrilling 86-83 win over Nebraska. In front of a smallish-but-rowdy crowd of 6,696 at the Civic Auditorium, and a national TV audience on ESPN, the Bluejays rallied from a nine-point deficit over the final six minutes to pull out the win.
Trailing 77-68, they rattled off an 11-0 run starting with a free throw from Chad Gallagher, and then a three from Matt Roggenburk. After a defensive stop, Duan Cole stuck a three-pointer, and moments later scored on a drive to the rim that tied the game at 77. Though Nebraska re-took the lead, Darin Plautz put the Jays on top 82-81 with a minute to play on a three-pointer. And then clinging to a 84-83 edge with just 17 seconds left, a controversial call went the Jays way to help clinch the win.
Cole was trying to ice the game at the line, but missed the front end of a one-and-one. NU’s Rich King grabbed the rebound, and Bob Harstad — who had 24 points and 13 rebounds in the win — knocked the ball loose. It flew out of bounds, but the officials ruled it had touched King last, and awarded CU the ball. Danny Nee went ballistic; King was more diplomatic, but disagreed with the call.
“I think I got fouled,” he said after the game. “I should have been shooting a one-and-one for a chance to win the game.”
Harstad disagreed. “I just hit it out of his hand,” he said. “It was just kind of a reaction. I hit the ball, and it was clean. Then he reached for the ball, and it hit his hand and it went out. I think the ref had a bird’s-eye view of the whole situation.”
The Bottom Line:
Two teams with a ton of newcomers are riding high — Arizona State has won two straight, and Creighton is coming off an upset of #24 BYU. Which team handles success better is an interesting subplot tonight.
KenPom picks the Jays, 71-65. I think it’ll be a little bigger than that.
Creighton 73, Arizona State 63