Prior to the Kansas State game last weekend, the Jays switched up their lineup as Greg McDermott said he was desperate to find a group that communicated better and played together as a unit.
“That group really talks, they really are connected,” McDermott said of the Davis/Swartz/Dix/Green/Traudt starting unit after Saturday’s win over Xavier. “I think the unintended consequence of doing that is the guys on the bench have had the opportunity to see how important that is and see how it impacts winning. So now they’re doing a better job of it. Sometimes you gotta take a step back before you take a step forward. We really showed signs the second half of the Kansas State game, and I think that gave them some belief of what’s possible.”
He added that he believes Nik Graves, Blake Harper and Owen Freeman have played their best basketball as Bluejays over the last week. “And they’re doing it off the bench, a spot that they probably didn’t like much,” McDermott said. “But they also enjoy winning a lot more than losing. I’m proud of them. I’m proud that this team has stuck with it.”
The offense has gotten most of the headlines through their recent resurgence, and rightfully so. But their adjusted defensive efficiency (100.0) has quietly risen to 42nd according to KenPom. They finished last season 44th with Ryan Kalkbrenner in the middle (albeit with a slightly better AdjDE number of 98.3).
Their shot block percentage has dropped, as you’d expect, from 10.5% of opponents shots a year ago to 7.3% this year. But they have significantly more steals (8.7% of opponent’s possessions, after just 5.3% a year ago to rank 4th from last in D1). And they’ve held steady in two-point defense (46.2% vs 46.8%) and three-point defense (32.6% vs 33.1%). There’s still a nearly full-slate of Big East games to play, but having a Top 50 defense heading into the final game of 2025 is not something anyone predicted for this group.
McDermott said they’ve tinkered with a lot of things to figure out what works best for this group. And because they were playing with such a lack of energy in early games, they tried to be more aggressive with their ball screen coverages.
“That can bring energy to your group,” McDermott explained. “But it also puts you in closeouts and in rotations. We made a living of staying out of rotations when Kalkbrenner was back there because we didn’t have to do any of that. We’ve switched more ball screens the last two games. That’s one way to keep yourself out of rotations if you can survive the mismatches, and we’ve done a decent job of understanding who we need to stretch out on, who we can sit in a gap and help, and we’ve done a better job of being in the gap. and getting out and still getting a late hand on some of those shooters. We’re understanding what we need to do better for this group to be successful.”
Since trailing K-State 51-33 at the half, Creighton has played five halves of basketball. They’ve outscored their opponents 225-152 in those five halves, an average of 45-30 in each half. They outscored K-State 43-32 in the second half, beat Xavier 98-57, and beat Marquette 84-63. It sure looks like they’ve turned the corner.
But they have one more game to go before Christmas break, and it’s a game they absolutely cannot stub their toe in. Fedor Zugic said that after Saturday’s win, McDermott sternly reminded his team that Christmas break does not begin until Tuesday morning. They have to get past Utah Tech first.
The Trailblazers come into Monday’s game at 7-6, with road wins at South Dakota and Weber State highlighting their resume. The latter of those came Saturday night, an 82-80 win where leading scorer Ethan Potter made the game-winning bucket as time expired.
2H | Potter with the game-winning layup in the final seconds! 🔥#UtahTechBlazers 🦬 | #WACmbb pic.twitter.com/eqv07HoqWp
— Utah Tech Men’s Basketball (@UtahTechMBB) December 21, 2025
The 6’8” Potter averages 16.9 points and 7.2 rebounds per game, and a team-high 13 blocked shots. It was the fifth 20-point performance of the season by Potter, who led the Trailblazers with 23 points on 9-of-17 shooting from the field and also added a team-high eight rebounds. He operates almost exclusively in the paint offensively, with 115 of his 122 shots coming from 10 feet or closer. Potter played three seasons at another WAC school, Utah Valley, before transferring to Utah Tech for his final year and after serving his two-year Mormon mission is one of the older players in college hoops.
Their second-leading scorer, Noah Balangna, is also 6’8”, but a different profile of player from Potter. He spends a lot of time on the perimeter, with 66 of his 110 shots coming from three-point range (though he’s made just 16-of-66, or 24.2%). A native of France, Balangna averages 11.9 points and 5.7 rebounds and was the WAC Player of the Week last week after a career-high 19 points in a 89-48 rout of Justice (a member of the NCCAA, or National Christian College Athletic Association). He went 7-of-15 from the field and set season highs in three-pointers made (5) and three pointers attempted (10), and matched his season high with eight rebounds and added three steals and a pair of assists. Back in the world of D1 NCAA hoops, Balangna scored 16 in the win over Weber State with four boards and two assists.
6’4” guard Chance Trujillo averages 11.1 points per game, and like Potter, took two years off for a Mormon mission between his freshman season in 2021-22 and last year. He also made headlines two weeks ago for sucker-punching an opposing player who posterized him at the rim on a dunk (though the punch was allegedly in response to something the opposing player said after the dunk, not the dunk itself). He was suspended for their game against Justice, and played 32 ineffective (though violence-free) minutes against Weber State.
Chance Trujillo of Utah Tech punches Allen Graves of Santa Clara after getting dunked on by him🫨
Graves need better teammates because how did not 1 of them even get in Trujillo’s face⁉️
Team Chemistry -100 pic.twitter.com/Yh0Pk9mcg9
— BetUS College Basketball 🏀 (@BetUS_NCAAHoops) December 4, 2025
6’7” guard Jusaun Holt averages 9.2 points, 3.4 rebounds and 2.8 assists. He began his collegiate career at a pair of SEC schools, first with Alabama in 2022 and then at Georgia the following year. He’s a pesky defender who was a part-time starter for Georgia in his lone season in Athens, and after transferring to Kennesaw State in search of more playing time, played well against high-major opponents. His best game came at Indiana, where he scored 19 points and added nine rebounds, three assists and two steals. He’s been Utah Tech’s best three-point shooter by percentage, making 12-of-27 (44.4%).
Their best three-point shooter by volume is 6’4” point guard Madiba Owana, who’s made 14-of-39 (35.9%) mostly as a sixth man. Another native of France, Owana averages 10.1 points and 3.3 rebounds and is coming off an 18-point night against Weber State where he made 5-of-6 inside the arc.
6’6” freshman Tanner Davis rounds out the starting five. Davis averages 9.1 points per game, and he’s been a solid scorer off the dribble, making 34-of-54 inside the arc (63.0%). It’s been a different story outside the arc, as Davis has made 2-of-12 from three this year.
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In their seven wins, Utah Tech has led at half and shot 40% or better in all seven. And prior to the win over Weber State, they had also edged their opponents in assists and three-point percentage in every win.
Utah Tech had 25 assists on 32 made baskets against Justice, their most assists in a game since 2021.
Formerly known as Dixie State, the school is located in southwestern Utah, a region sometimes referred to as “Utah’s Dixie” due to a warmer climate, the importance of cotton in its economy, and the Southern origins of some early settlers. The school changed its name in 2021 to Utah Tech. They joined D1 in 2019 and the WAC in 2021. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because former Bluejay favorite Johnny Mathies played one year there before transferring to CU. Mathies scored 1,031 points with 207 assists and 157 steals for Creighton from 2003-06, spent his first year of college at Dixie State College when it was still in the JuCo ranks. Mathies became the second junior college transfer in Creighton history to reach 1,000 career points behind Northeastern Oklahoma A&M transfer Rod Mason (1,023 points from 1986-88). Mathies also made the first three-pointer in CHI Health Center Omaha history.
Creighton has scored 43 (at Xavier) and 41 (vs. Marquette) bench points in its past two games, a fact that’s even more incredible when you consider that the Bluejays had gone 147 straight Big East games without scoring 40+ points off the bench dating to Jan. 13, 2018. Creighton had not scored 40+ bench points in consecutive games (conference or otherwise) since doing it vs. Presbyterian (43) and Longwood (56) in November of 2012.
Creighton outscored Xavier by 41 and Marquette by 21 to open Big East Conference play. That +62 point differential is the largest in league history, outpacing the 1988-89 Providence team coached by Rick Barnes that was +50 after two conference contests. Remarkably, it’s also better than any of CU’s seasons in the Missouri Valley. The previous record was +57, set by the 1924-25 squad that helped the Jays defeat North Central Conference rivals Marquette (31-15) and Morningside (53-12).
Nik Graves finished Saturday’s win against Marquette with a +40 plus/minus rating, as Creighton outscored Marquette 66-26 with the senior guard on the floor. That +40 mark out-did the previous high by a Bluejay this season (Josh Dix was +37 vs. Maryland Eastern Shore) and was the top mark by a Creighton player since James Milliken was also +40 on Feb. 28, 2016.
This will be the first-ever meeting between Creighton and Utah Tech, the first time Utah Tech has played in the state of Nebraska, and Utah Tech’s first-ever meeting against anyone from the Big East.
The Trailblazers did play Nebraska-Kearney once, when then-Dixie State beat UNK 92-81 in a neutral site game played at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO.
On December 22, 2013, the Jays’ defense clamped down on a good Cal team and held them to 54 points in a 68-54 win.
“‘Creighton might be playing some of its best defense not of the season but in years.’ That’s a Sunday evening tweet from Omaha World-Herald reporter Steve Pivovar. He’d know; no one outside of the program has seen more Creighton men’s basketball games and practices than Piv since he started covering the CU beat. So, during the second half of Creighton’s 68-54 win over California, it was settling that Piv reconfirmed the collective assessment of Creighton’s defensive effort.
Speaking of which, Cal’s collective length gave Doug McDermott trouble, but he reached deep into his bag of tricks to lead the Jays yet again. Creighton’s All American missed six of his first seven shots and struggled to get on track offensively. He didn’t connect on a three-point attempt all night, just the second game all season in which he failed to score from behind the arc. But McDermott didn’t let his early inefficiency get the better of his all-around game, and eventually he did what Dougie does — get buckets.
It started innocently enough; an offensive rebound led to a foul, which led to a trip to the free throw line for two shots with about 4 minutes to play in the first half. McDermott toed the line, knocked in both shots to double his output from 2 points to 4. The final few minutes of the half would find McDermott connect on a point-blank attempt thanks to a nice pass from Austin Chatman; hit a jump shot off a feed from Devin Brooks; and tip-in a missed three-point attempt by Jahenns Manigat as the buzzer sounded. Just like that, Doug went into the tunnel with 10 points, leading all scorers on both teams.
He’d replicate his scoring output in the second half, displaying an array of step-back baseline fade-away jumpers and other finesse finishes en route to a game-high 20 points. Sure, McDermott forced a few things, but they came in the flow of the offense. Cal’s frontline combination of Richard Solomon, David Kravish, and Kameron Rooks made things difficult for McDermott at times. But having him on the floor alongside Ethan Wragge for extended minutes made defensive decisions an issue for Montgomery’s team.”
Creighton is 19.5 point favorites in Vegas, and has 97.2% odds of victory according to ESPN’s BPI. KenPom predicts a 19-point win.
Jays 85, Utah Tech 63