The first Primer of this, the 12th season of White & Blue Review, started off as a preview of Utah and the Crossover Classic. Then it morphed into a preview of South Dakota State when the Utes dropped out of that event and were replaced by SDSU. It was tossed into the trash bin when Creighton dropped out of that event and shut down temporarily due to COVID protocols. And it has now been fished out of the trash, straightened out, and morphed a third time into a preview of North Dakota State with the sudden and unexpected news that the Jays will open the 2020-21 season on Sunday against the Bison.
We knew the 2020-21 season would be wild and the schedule would be subject to change, but right off the bat we’re finding out exactly how wild and how subject to change it really is. Wednesday afternoon at 2:40pm, North Dakota State’s associate A.D. broke the news of Sunday’s game, catching almost everyone off guard:
The Bison will have been in the state since mid-week. They lost 62-48 to Nevada on Wednesday afternoon in the “Golden Window Classic”, and will play Nebraska at 11:00am Saturday morning in that same event. So adding them to the Jays’ schedule was just a matter of convincing them to stick around an extra day. Adding to the madness, though not for Creighton, is that NDSU bailed on games with Loyola Marymount and Minnesota scheduled for Sunday and Monday in Minneapolis in order to play the Jays.
A year ago, NDSU went 25-8 overall and won both the regular-season and tournament titles in the Summit League. But the top two scorers from that team are gone — Vinnie Shahid and his 18.4 points per game, and Tyson Ward with his 16.9 points per game. That’s a lot of production to replace. And as you’d figure, in their opening game NDSU had the look of a team struggling to replace two excellent players — returning players adjusting to being the focus of an opponent’s gameplan, to bigger roles, to not having those two alphas to lean on when they needed a basket. They scored just 48 points, making 29% of their two-pointers (10-of-34) and 28% of their threes (6-of-21).
That’s not to say the cupboard is totally bare for the Bison. The other three starters are back, and the coaches around the league think enough of those players to pick them to finish third in the Summit League preseason poll.
Their top returning scorer is Rocky Kreuser, a 6’10”, 245-pound senior. He averaged 10.0 points and 6.0 rebounds a game last year, and despite what you might think based on his size, Kreuser can stretch the floor — 51% of his shot attempts a year ago were three-pointer, and he connected on a respectable 33.3% of them. He had six points in their opener and had a rough day shooting; an ugly 2-for-9 line that’s hard to ignore and saw him make 1-of-6 inside the arc and 1-of-3 from behind it. On the plus side, he grabbed 10 rebounds against a big Nevada frontline.
Tyree Eady, a 6’5”, 210-pound junior, averaged 6.7 points and 3.9 rebounds a year ago. He led them with 11 points in the loss to Nevada, making 3-of-5 from three point range, but much like Kreuser, also struggled inside the arc — he was 1-of-5 on two-pointers.
Lincoln native Sam Griesel also returns after averaging 6.6 points and 5.5 rebounds per game a year ago. The 6’6” junior had nine points in the opener, thanks to an efficient 3-of-6 shooting effort.
For the Jays, the (subject to change) schedule now resembles a fairly normal slate, albeit a month late. They’ll have three buy-game tuneups at home in the span of six days — NDSU, Nebraska-Omaha on Tuesday, and Kennesaw State on Friday — before heading to Lawrence to play Kansas. Coming off of two weeks without practice after shutting down due to COVID protocols, and with practice before that being different than usual, those three games are crucial to knock the rust off of a team that returns almost everything from a year ago but hasn’t played together since March.
Among the things to look for, the biggest one in the minds of Bluejay fans is undoubtably how Marcus Zegarowski’s knee looks following last March’s injury. The preseason Big East Player of the Year has said that he’s 100% and feels ready to go, but with practices closed to media this will be first look at him post-surgery by anyone outside the program. For the Jays to be anywhere close to their potential, Zegarowski needs to be the player he was last year, and his every move will be scrutinized on Sunday.
Who takes Ty-Shon Alexander’s role as defensive stopper on the perimeter? It seems likely to be a combination of Damien Jefferson and Denzel Mahoney initially, with Memphis transfer Antwann Jones in the mix, too. Alexander’s shoes are considerable to fill, even if he was never recognized as the Big East Defensive Player of the Year as most around these parts believe he should have been. Mahoney will get the starters’ minutes in that role, meaning he will be a wing instead of a ‘4’ — probably a more natural fit for the 6’5” senior, but also one that will have guarding quicker players than he did a year ago, many of them more explosive scorers than the ones he guarded.
And speaking of Jones, he adds a body the Jays didn’t have a year ago — at 6’6” and 220 pounds, he can play any position between one and five, giving them the ability to switch everything defensively when he’s on the floor. He’s a versatile player offensively, and how he carves out a role will be one of more interesting subplots.
How will the newcomers and the other players coming off injury look? Normally we’d have seen a scrimmage, summer league, and an exhibition by this point to have some sense of their progress. Not so in 2020. True freshman Ryan Kalkbrenner is expected to play meaningful minutes in the middle, giving them the shot-blocking presence they lacked a year ago. Jacob Epperson is back from injury and it’s hoped he can split time with Kalkbrenner and Christian Bishop in the middle. It’ll likely be a work in progress at least for a while to sort out their rotation of minutes.
- Tip: 3:30pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center, Omaha, NE
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Lane Grindle and Jess Settles
- 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
- Streaming on FoxSportsGO
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters
- Head coach David Richman has led the Bison to a mark of 121-75 through six seasons at the helm of the program. NDSU has claimed two Summit League regular season titles, three Summit League Tournament titles, and three NCAA Tournament berths in his six seasons.
- The Bison are 12-3 in the Summit League Tournament under Richman. NDSU has won five Summit League Tournament crowns in 12 seasons as a full member of the league — 2009, 2014, 2015, 2019 and 2020.
- NDSU has achieved seven 20-win seasons in its Division I era (since 2008-09). Last year was the third 20-win season under head coach David Richman, tying Saul Phillips (2007-14) for the second-most by a head coach in NDSU history. Richman also owns a pair of 19-win seasons.
- NDSU ranked No. 1 in the nation in free throw percentage last season, making 79.8 percent for the year — which surpassed the previous school-record mark of 77.7 percent set in 2018-19.
- The game vs. North Dakota State will mark Creighton’s first time it has opened the season on a Sunday since Nov. 16, 2008. Creighton won that game vs. New Mexico 82-75, but trailed by nine with 3:39 left before embarking on a 17-0 run. Creighton scored on each of its final 10 possessions, producing 23 points, in the scintillating comeback.
- Current Bluejay head coach Greg McDermott was the head coach at NDSU in 2000-01, where he went 15-11 in his lone season on the bench before returning to his alma mater, Northern Iowa.
- Mitch Ballock has played in 99 career games and owns 996 career points. He’s four points shy of becoming the 43rd Bluejay to reach 1,000 in his career, though one could make the argument that he’s already done so. Ballock scored nine points in the first half vs. St. John’s on March 12th, but those points were erased when the game was abandoned at halftime.
Creighton is 9-0 all-time against North Dakota State, including a 6-0 advantage in Omaha. The Bluejays and Bison have not met since a pair of meetings in 1975 that were decided by a total of seven points.
Greg McDermott is 2-0 in his career against North Dakota State, with both wins coming when he was coaching at Iowa State. McDermott is also 10-0 as Creighton head coach against teams from the Summit League.
Creighton beat Nebraska-Omaha 70-58 on this date in 1977 in front of 6,500 fans at the Civic. After leading 29-25 at the half, CU made six straight baskets to open the second and took a 41-29 edge. Senior forward Tim McConnell scored three baskets in the run, part of 14 second-half points.
But it was the return of David Wesely that energized the crowd and his teammates. Ineligible for the season opener, Wesely was slated to start against UNO but came down with a bronchial infection. Doctors refused to let him play until his temperature of 103 dropped; by halftime it had dropped a couple of degrees and they cleared him to play. When he checked in with 13:42 to play, the Civic crowd erupted. When he immediately scored on a twisting move along the baseline that led to a reverse layup, they erupted even louder. And when he exited after seven minutes of action that saw him collect four points, two rebounds and an assist, the appreciative crowd saluted his effort.
UNO coach Bob Hanson did not appreciate the officiating, and claimed in the next morning’s Omaha World-Herald that the free throw discrepancy cost his team the game. “They shot 24. We shot 13. They made (only) one more field goal than we did.”
Still can’t quite believe it a month later. R.I.P. Eddie.
The Bottom Line:
Don’t be surprised if NDSU jumps out to an early lead, given that they’ll have two games under their belt. But by the end of the day the Jays should be able to get a lot of players a lot of minutes as they prepare for a grueling season ahead. And the final score will not be indicative of how the game went.
Creighton 79, NDSU 63
