Creighton’s had three distinct eras of success during Greg McDermott’s 11 seasons as head coach, and as he enters year 12, a fourth era is set to begin. The first, featuring Grant Gibbs, Jahenns Manigat, Doug McDermott and Ethan Wragge, combined for 107 wins in four years, with one regular season MVC title, two MVC Tourney titles, and wins in three consecutive NCAA Tournaments. The second era, featuring Mo Watson, Marcus Foster, Khyri Thomas and Justin Patton, won 66 games over three seasons and lost in the first round of the NCAA Tourney twice. The third era, headlined by Ty-Shon Alexander, Mitch Ballock, Damien Jefferson, Denzel Mahoney and Marcus Zegarowski, won 87 games in four years, won the Big East regular season title, and advanced to the Sweet 16.
As the fourth era begins, most fans will likely need to keep the photo roster from the inside cover of the media guide handy as a cheat-sheet while they learn who’s who. There’s a whopping 10 players on the roster who have yet to log a minute in a regular season game for the Bluejays. Creighton’s 18.0 percent of minutes returning ranks third-lowest among all teams nationally, and is the least among all teams from power conferences. And this season will mark the first time since at least 1980-81 that the Jays won’t return a single starter from the year before.
The debut years of the first three eras under McDermott have been roller-coaster rides. It’s easy to forget now given how it ended, but the most recent one finished the 2018-19 regular season 18-14 with a 9-9 record in conference play. They had two separate four-game losing streaks, but ended the season winning five straight. They were criticized for repeatedly blowing leads late in game or failing to close, and then grew into a team of assassins a year later who spent the better part of two years closing out tight games time after time, including on the sport’s biggest stage.
How will the fourth begin? No one knows for sure, except that the Jays will be young, talented, and ready to build on the foundation laid by the other three.
Armed with the #7 recruiting class in the country, CU seems well-positioned to take on the roller coaster ride to come. One of the big keys in these first two games this week? Getting used to the speed of Division 1 basketball.
“We were really sped up. It’s a freshman thing right now with all of our young guys,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show last weekend. “Like, we want to play fast, yes, but you have to slow your mind down at the same time so you can make good decisions. We just got sped up tonight. And there was probably some nervous energy too, for all the freshmen.”
Freshman point guard Ryan Nembhard settled in quickly, which is no surprise. He gives them a player who seems tailor-made for the “Let it Fly”, pace-and-space Jays.
“I’m gonna have fun coaching (Ryan) and I think our fans are gonna enjoy watching him grow in front of their eyes,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show after the exhibition game last weekend. “R2’s been great from the moment he walked on campus. And I don’t know if you could hand-pick a point guard and have him fit our system as well as he does. He plays with pace, sees the floor, does a solid job defensively, and he’s really a good leader. He needs to become more vocal, and he knows that. But he’s going to be a really, really good player for us.”
Another of their prized freshmen, Arthur Kaluma, impressed in the exhibition game despite falling victim to the speed of the game as McDermott called it.
“He’s physical, he draws a lot of contact, he got nine rebounds,” his coach said. “And you didn’t see a lot of it tonight, but I think he’s capable of being a really good distributor — getting into the paint, drawing the defense and finding shots for other people. He’s going to need to do that for us.”
Trey Alexander, Mason Miller, and John Christofolis also showed flashes of what they bring to the team. Ditto for grad transfer KeyShawn Feazell. But the key addition might wind up being the oldest player on the team — Ryan Hawkins, the grad transfer from Northwest Missouri State.
“Hawk understands what it takes to win. He’s more concerned with trying to get the rest of the guys to understand how important communication is, and how important being a great teammate is,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show after last weekend’s exhibition game. “He’s really a godsend for our program. For what this team needed, he’s perfect.”
McDermott said that he and his staff knew Hawkins could play, but they’ve been surprised by the rest of the package. Comparing his intangibles to those of Jahenns Manigat — McDermott said Hawkins is the most vocal practice player he’s had since the Canadian Red Bull — his new coach said his ability to lead by example is as important as his ability to knock down jump shots.
“I think some of the growth in our team over the course of the year, when we look back in April it’s going to be directly attributable to Hawk because of his leadership. He impacts our team in a lot of ways without ever making a basket.”
Hawkins’ experience is invaluable on a team that could start two and perhaps three freshmen on opening night for the first time in 30 years.
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The Jays’ opponent on opening night is Arkansas Pine-Bluff, a team who also lost all five starters from a year ago. In the case of the Golden Lions, however, that’s not necessarily a bad thing — they went 4-21 last season and lost 12 straight games between mid-January and March. Three of their four wins came against teams ranked among the four worst teams in America according to KenPom (once against Alabama State, ranked 354 out of 357, and twice against the team dead last in his rankings, Mississippi Valley State). Even by Pine Bluff standards, the 2020-21 team was horrible. They’ve had a winning record exactly twice since moving to D1 in 1998 but have generally been competitive in the SWAC after spending most of November and December on the road playing power conference teams for paychecks. They won just eight combined games the last two years, though, and it cost longtime coach George Ivory his job at the end of the season.
The scheduling strategy, and the hole it puts them in — they’re often still looking for their first win of the year when SWAC play begins around Christmas — remains a burden for UAPB for new coach Solomon Bozeman. Tuesday’s tilt in Omaha opens a stretch of seven road games in 18 days, a trip that also includes games at Colorado State, Wyoming, Portland, Seattle, UCSB and Pacific. A December road trip sees them travel to Iowa State, Baylor and Texas during a two-week stretch.
Bozeman comes to UAPB after being an assistant at Oral Roberts the last three years, where he helped build the team who upset both Ohio State and Florida in last year’s NCAA Tourney en route to the Sweet 16. The 33-year old Bozeman has tried to re-energize the program, literally, by participating in drills alongside his players in practice. A former starting point guard for Arkansas Little Rock, Bozeman has been described as almost a “player-coach” who demonstrates by example how he wants his players to execute. He’s also tried to re-energize the program the traditional way, by bringing in seven D1 transfers, four of them home state kids looking for a new start.
Among them is senior guard Shawn Williams, the 2018 American Athletic Conference Rookie of the Year at East Carolina where he averaged 12.4 points as a freshman. But a mass exodus from ECU in the summer of 2019 — seven scholarship players transferred out — saw Williams head to New Mexico State, where he was the sixth man for a team who went a perfect 16-0 in the WAC and was a popular Cinderella pick if there had been an NCAA Tournament. Looking for a bigger role, he transferred again, this time to Nicholls State; it didn’t work out as planned, with Williams appearing in just seven games and buried on the bench most of the year. Taking advantage of his extra COVID year, Williams is now at UAPB, his fourth team in four years.
A career 35% three-point shooter, the fifth-year senior told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last week that he came to UAPB for an opportunity to lead by example. “It’s been a pretty interesting journey,” Williams said. “Just trying to find the right fit, like my opportunity. I’ve (played) probably the most minutes in Division I on the team, so I feel like I know a lot more than some of our younger players, so I try to help them out and stuff like that.”
Williams is a capable scorer with good range, and he can create his own shot off the dribble, too. Can he do it as every opponent’s #1 target on their defensive scouting report? That’s the question, because he is absolutely the guy every opposing coach will point to as the top priority.
Trey Sampson, a 6’9” junior transfer, brings experience (albeit at lower levels) to UAPB’s front line. He averaged 13.9 points on 59.4% shooting last year for Northeastern State (Oklahoma), and the year before he set the single-season blocks record at North Iowa Area Community College. He’s not the fleetest of foot, as this first clip shows, but he can fly above the rim if you lose him in transition.
If that seems like a skinnier than usual Primer, it’s for good reason.
“We don’t really have any information on Arkansas-Pine Bluff. We’re kinda going into this game blind,” McDermott told the media this week. “They have a new coaching staff and new roster, and we’re their first game. So we just have to do what we do, and adjust on the fly.”
Indeed, UAPB didn’t play an exhibition game, so there’s no film on these guys as a group beyond that little two-minute video clip of their open practice that we shared above — and that’s a highly-edited package that only shows a few successful plays. Bozeman’s never been a head coach, so there’s no previous jobs to look back at for stylistic clues, either. McDermott and Co. probably know a little more than he let on in that press conference, but the reality is there isn’t much to know. For his staff or for us.
Game on.
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Lane Grindle and Jess Settles
- In Omaha: Cox channel 78 (SD), 1078 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 620 (SD), 1620 (HD)
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 219, Dish Network channel 150
- Streaming on the Fox Sports app and the Fox Sports website
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
The only way to watch the entire Creighton game is through the FOX Sports app on smartphones and devices, and on the web at FoxSports.com/live. FS1 will feature “Big East Opening Night Tip-Off”, an NFL RedZone-style telecast with whip-around coverage of all seven games, and occasional split-screen action to show multiple games at once. Rob Stone, Bill Raftery, Jim Jackson and Steve Lavin will host from Fox’s studios in Los Angeles.
UConn and Central Connecticut begin the event at 5:30pm Omaha time, and the six other games have staggered tip times so that FS1 can show the beginning of each game until approximately the first TV timeout.
This is a great concept and there’s no better time to experiment than Opening Night with a bunch of games unlikely to be super competitive. It’s also probably going to result in a lot of Big East fans being very upset at not being able to watch their team’s entire game on a TV channel, instead of on an app. For those of you with less-tech savvy relatives hoping to watch the Jays at home, be on standby for tech support Tuesday night.
- The last time Creighton started two true freshmen in a regular-season opener was 1991-92 (Eric Dantzler and Mike Amos). The last time Creighton started three true freshmen in a regular-season opener was 1987-88 (Chris Rodgers, Bob Harstad, Chad Gallagher).
- Creighton’s last true freshman to debut with 10 or more points came in 2015, when Khyri Thomas had 18 points vs. Texas Southern. Creighton’s last redshirt freshman to debut with 10 or more points came in 2016, when Justin Patton scored 12 points in 22 minutes. Patton also had eight rebounds in his debut. Patton and Martin Krampelj (8 in 2015) own the most boards in their freshman debut for CU since Joe Dabbert (9) in 2000.
- Creighton started three players with the first name of Ryan in its exhibition opener, as Ryan Nembhard, Ryan Hawkins and Ryan Kalkbrenner all got the nod vs. Upper Iowa on Oct. 30. Creighton has not started multiple players with the same first name in the same regular-season game since Nov. 18, 2006, when both Nick Porter and Nick Bahe started against Nebraska.
On the latest “Scurry and The Scrub” podcast, Jordan Scurry and Matt DeMarinis spent a little over an hour breaking down the entire roster with Coach Greg McDermott.
Topics touched on include what motivates him after reaching the Sweet 16, a player-by-player analysis, and some breaking news on a redshirt — freshman Mason Miller is planning to take the redshirt year to get stronger and add muscle.
The guys also recently spent an hour breaking down the women’s basketball roster and season with Coach Jim Flanery. Remember to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts to get the latest episodes as soon as they’re released!
Creighton is 5-0 all-time against Arkansas-Pine Bluff, with each contest taking place in Omaha. The five meetings have been decided by an average of 32.2 points, with none closer than 25. Creighton won 88-51 on Dec. 17, 2013 in the most recent meeting, a game that saw Doug McDermott score 25 points and grab nine rebounds.
On November 9, 2007, another extremely young group of Bluejays made their debut in a rousing 17-point comeback win over (then non-conference foe) DePaul.
Featuring nine players who had never suited up for the team before in a game, the 2007-08 Jays were the first CU team since 1985-86 to return just one starter. That lone returning starter, Dane Watts, averaged 9.9 points and 6.4 rebounds per game the prior season alongside Nate Funk, Anthony Tolliver, and Nick Porter. Among the other returnees were Pierce Hibma, Nick Bahe, and Josh Dotzler, the latter having started eight games in an injury-plagued 2006-07 season.
The nine newcomers included four players who’d redshirted during the 2006-07 year, chief among them Chad Millard, who’d transferred from Louisville, Kenny Lawson, Jr., who’d redshirted after knee trouble ended his freshman season before it began, and Casey Harriman. A pair of JuCo transfers, Booker Woodfox and Cavel Witter, joined them, along with three freshman: Kaleb Korver, Kenton Walker, and P’Allen Stinnett.
Bahe was still a player, but talking to the Omaha World-Herald’s Steve Pivovar the day before the game, he sounded an awful lot like the future television star he now is.
“The biggest thing that we’ve been trying to drive home to the new guys is that if they mess up in practice, Coach can stop things, bite them and start all over again. Come Friday night, we can’t say, ‘Hey, DePaul, can we have that possession back? We’ve been working to try to make sure everyone knows every possession counts and everything is for real. But emotionally and physically, I think we’re ready to go. And it’s going to be a real, real special environment. Energy-wise, if you’re not flying around, you’re probably flat-lining.”
Sounds like it could apply to Tuesday’s 2021 opener, too, doesn’t it?
The Bottom Line:
“There’s going to be nights where a couple are really good and a couple others struggle. The next game, it could be exactly the opposite,” McDermott said last Saturday on his postgame radio show. “It’s our job as coaches to figure out who has it going that night.”
Couple that reality with an opponent you know very little about, and you have a recipe for a game that could be tighter than expected for longer than expected. KenPom predicts a 34-point win, and ESPN’s BPI gives the Jays a 94% chance of victory. That should happen, but the road to get there — much like the early part of the season — will be bumpy.
Jays 80, UAPB 63
