Entering this weekend, eight games remain for each team in the Big East. Seton Hall is 9-1 and plays Saturday at second-place Villanova, who enters that game 7-3. Butler, Creighton, Marquette and Providence are tied for third at 6-4. Xavier is seventh at 4-6. Georgetown is eighth at 3-7. And the Jays’ next opponent, St. John’s, is in ninth place at 2-8.
Creighton is the only team in the Big East with five home games remaining, and according to Ken Pomeroy has 55% or better odds of winning in six of their final eight games — road games at Seton Hall and at Marquette being the only exceptions. It’s a favorable setup for the Jays to down the stretch, to say the least.
They’ll need to turn the page quickly after Wednesday night’s second-half debacle at Providence, however. The danger of one loss turning into two or three is very real in the 2019-20 Big East. It’s happened all over the league — Butler had a hangover after losing 78-70 to Seton Hall and dropped three straight in mid-January; Providence allowed the last-second heroics of Marcus Zegarowski to turn into three straight losses in late January; Xavier lost three straight and five of six; Marquette lost three of their first four; Georgetown lost three straight to end January and has lost four of five currently; Villanova has lost two straight heading into Saturday’s showdown with Seton Hall where they could very likely lose their third straight. St. John’s has lost three straight on two separate occasions, and is currently riding another two-game losing skid. And DePaul has officially turned back into a pumpkin at this point, with a horrendous 1-9 record in the league. That’s eight of the ten teams in the league with multi-game losing streaks in conference play — the only teams to avoid that trap have been Seton Hall and Creighton.
“You can’t celebrate too much after a win, and you can’t pout much after a loss in this league,” Greg McDermott said after the loss Wednesday night on his postgame radio show. You got that right, Coach.
The Red Storm enter Saturday’s game at just 2-8 in league play, with both wins coming over the hapless DePaul Blue Demons. But outside of the league, they own wins over two top-ten teams in the NET rankings — a 70-68 home win over #7 West Virginia, and a 70-67 neutral court win over #9 Arizona. That’s how thin the margin for error is in the Big East this year. A team good enough to knock off a pair of top ten opponents can’t get any traction in league play. They’ve been close, though — they had second half leads against both Seton Hall and Butler before losing. They blew a 17-point second half lead to Georgetown on Saturday and lost.
So while yes, they’re 2-8, they’re dangerous.
St. John’s is led by L.J. Figueroa, who averages 14.8 points and over two steals (48 in 23 games) per game. Figueroa can burn you from three-point range, as he’s 50-for-142 from deep this year (35.2%). But at 6’6″, 200 pounds, he’s athletic enough to put the ball on the floor and create shots inside the arc for himself too. Offensively, he’s their most versatile weapon. Defensively, he’s the catalyst for their press.
Mustapha Heron also averages in double figures at 13.9 points. The 6’5″ Heron was a matchup nightmare for the Bluejays a year ago; he made 12-of-17 shots inside the arc in two games, totaling 35 points. His ability to both post up and to drive aggressively at the rim were tough for the Jays to stop. The Red Storm experimented with bringing him off the bench on Saturday, starting 6’8″ freshman Julian Champagnie in his place, and were rewarded with two big performances — Heron scored 16 points in a sixth-man role, and Champagnie had a double-double with 14 points and 10 rebounds.
Cleveland State transfer Rasheem Dunn has scored 12.8 points per game in his first year with St. John’s, and actually leads the team in scoring during conference play with 14.1 points. The first thing you notice about Dunn is that he’s super quick — Jon Nyatawa of the Omaha World-Herald called him an “incredibly determined driver” in his excellent-as-always scouting report and that describes Dunn to a T. Sometimes that quickness leads to unforced errors, though, like the final possession of the Georgetown game over the weekend. Trying to make a move into the paint, he dribbled the ball off his foot and turned it over, costing them a chance at a game-winning shot in the 73-72 loss.
Point guard Nick Rutherford has 72 assists and 45 steals, putting up nice numbers as a graduate transfer from Monmouth. He’d started the first 22 games before joining Heron in coming off the bench against Georgetown; while Heron responded with a big game, Rutherford went scoreless in 13 minutes, though he did have six assists. Sophomore Greg Williams, Jr. took his starting spot and most of his minutes, scoring four points with three rebounds in 33 minutes.
6’9″ sophomore Josh Roberts isn’t a big scorer (5.6 points per game) or rebounder, but he’s had his moments. He had 16 points and eight rebounds against Seton Hall on January 18 (on 8-of-11 shooting), and 16 points and eight boards against UMASS (on 8-of-12 shooting). He’s capable. But his usual impact comes as a rim protector — he leads the team with 39 blocks.
Creighton has yet to play a team like St. John’s. New coach Mike Anderson is a disciple of Hall of Fame coach Nolan Richardson — he was Richardson’s top assistant at Arkansas for 17 years, including their back-to-back Final Four teams and national title club in 1994. Much like his mentor’s teams, St. John’s under Anderson presses the entire game. It’s not quite the Razorbacks’ famed “40 Minutes of Hell” but the philosophy is the same: there’s an unwavering commitment to making whoever has the ball feel uncomfortable, and opponents never bring the ball up the floor uncontested. You have to be ready to take care of the ball every single second you’re on the floor, for all 94 feet.
Their steal rate of 13.9% is third-best in Division 1. In Big East games, it’s even better at 14.9%. No one else in the league is even close; DePaul (10.5%) and Providence (10.2%) are the only other teams with double-digit steal rates.
The aggression continues on offense. St. John’s loves to run in transition, with an average possession length of 15.3 seconds. That’s 15th fastest in D1. Creighton is a second-and-a-half SLOWER than St. John’s, with an average possession length of 16.7 by comparison. One-third — 32.1% — of St. John’s shot attempts have come in transition. Again, by way of comparison, 25.8% of Creighton’s shots this season have been in transition.
Their defense feeds the offense, in other words, as steals lead to transition opportunities. Limit your turnovers against their press, and you can limit those chances. Even when they’re not running after a steal, though, you have to get organized ASAP because St. John’s is going to take the first good look they good almost every single trip down the floor.
- Tip: 5:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: CBSSN
- Announcers: Rich Waltz and Dan Dickau
- In Omaha: Cox channel 234 (SD), 1234 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 643 (SD), 1643 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: CBSSN Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 221; Dish Network channel 158
- Streaming: On the CBS Sports Website or the CBS Sports App
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Nick Bahe
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters:
- The Red Storm rank 16th nationally by forcing 17.35 turnovers per game, and are seventh in the country with a +5.13 turnover margin per game. The Johnnies are also fourth in the country with 10.4 steals per game, and have 10 or more swipes in 8-of-10 league games to date. St. John’s has forced 13 turnovers or more in all 23 games this season, with a high of 24 (three times).
- Creighton’s Kelvin Jones St. John’s’ LJ Figueroa were teammates at Odessa (Texas) Junior College in 2017-18, where they helped the Wranglers go 28-5 under coach Tra Arnold.
Creighton has scored 70 or more points in 16 of its 17 victories this season, and is 16-1 when reaching that plateau this winter. Creighton is also 6-0 all-time in Big East games when scoring 70 or more points vs. St. John’s.
Creighton had nine Big East losses last season. This year’s team has played five of those same teams at the same site, and won three of them.
Since Greg McDermott was hired, Creighton has made 3,004 three-pointers in 339 games. The Bluejays became the second team to reach 3,000 trifectas since the start of the 2010-11 season, trailing only Belmont (3,172). Michigan is close behind with 2,959 and Villanova is right there, too, at 2,950.
Creighton is 10-9 all-time against St. John’s, and 8-4 since joining the Big East. Creighton’s six-game win streak in the series was snapped last season when the Johnnies posted their first ever sweep over CU with a 81-66 win in Queens, and a 83-67 win in Omaha.
The Bluejays are 7-1 all-time in Omaha against St. John’s. Greg McDermott is 8-4 against St. John’s. He is 2-6 against Mike Anderson, with all eight of those meetings coming when McDermott coached Iowa State and Anderson led Missouri. Four of those eight meetings were decided by six points or less, and two went to overtime.
On Nick Bahe’s latest podcast, the OWH’s Jon Nyatawa is his guest to talk Creighton hoops.
Creighton hasn’t played on February 8 since 2011, a 67-64 loss in Des Moines to Drake. That’s a game of bad memories, so let’s go back a bit further to the last time prior to 2011 that they played on this date — February 8, 2009 at Northern Iowa. The Jays won that game 77-71, snapping UNI’s 11-game winning streak.
Creighton’s top three scorers, Booker Woodfox, P’Allen Stinnett, and Cavel Witter, were all held scoreless in the first half by the Panthers’ defense. They were mostly held in check in the second, too. So other players stepped up — Justin Carter led the Jays with 17 points, Kenny Lawson had 12, Kaleb Korver had seven, Kenton Walker had five. It was Carter who carried them, though.
He scored six points in an 8-2 run that gave CU the lead, including a reverse layup with 10 minutes to play.
“He hit a big 3 when we were really struggling, and he finished some plays,” Dana Altman told the media after the game. “The two drives he had were big. They were pushed out so far on Book and P’Allen, and those two baskets were really important for us.”
The Bottom Line:
KenPom predicts a nine-point win and ESPN’s BPI gives Creighton an 84% chance of victory. If Creighton handles St. John’s press, they should be able to win this one at home.
#21 Creighton 82, St. John’s 73