Over a 12-minute stretch of the first half Tuesday afternoon, Creighton buried Nebraska-Omaha with a 27-3 run, holding the Mavericks to just 1-for-18 shooting over that period.
“I know the guys were disappointed in Sunday’s game,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio interview on 1620AM, “but I also know they were surprised when they watched the film. The lack of integrity that our defense had — from our pressure on the basketball, to what’s behind the ball, where you’re at and knowing where your help is, to how we got back in transition and built that wall to stop them from getting into their transition offense easily. Especially the first 15 minutes of the game, we were much closer to where we needed to be defensively. Hopefully we can make another step forward on Friday.”
They were just as locked in offensively, with eight different players scoring during that decisive run. Among them were Denzel Mahoney, who sat out Sunday’s opener but returned to the starting lineup on Tuesday and wasted little time getting onto the stat sheet. He cleared a rebound on UNO’s first missed shot 11 seconds into the game, and got CU’s first three points of the game a minute later. He sank a second 3-pointer shortly afterward, with his shot looking in midseason form.
McDermott noted that having Mahoney back was a boost not only because of what he brings to the table, but because having another rotational player let them get other guys off the floor more than they were able to on Sunday.
No Bluejay played more than 29 minutes, and the stat sheet reflected it — six players scored in double figures. Among them were a pair of newcomers. Antwann Jones scored 12 on 4-of-7 shooting, and added six rebounds and four assists to another impressive line. And freshman Ryan Kalkbrenner had 10 points, four boards and a block in 15 minutes.
“Our best lineup is going to depend on the game,” McDermott said. “We’re still in search of who our go-to defender is. Now, we haven’t had Denzel in practice for quite some time, and Marcus missed a bunch of time, too, so we really haven’t been able to experiment in practice to the level we’d like to, to where we’d feel good about where we’re at by this point. We’re experimenting in games because we have to. You saw it today where we had different guys rotating on to (Marlon) Ruffin — we needed to see who was the best at guarding their go-to guy.”
Marcus Zegarowski had a double-double with 11 points and a career-high 11 assists. He had the assist on each of Creighton’s first four made baskets, and have five by the time Antwann Jones’ transition bucket opened up a 16-7 lead less than seven minutes in to the game. After the game, he was out on the floor taking shots with one of the team managers, leading his coach to quip on the postgame show that “he missed a free throw and he wouldn’t sleep tonight unless he fixed that.” Getting serious, McDermott continued. “He’s got a routine. He’s a winner, he’s a worker, and you want good things to happen to a kid like that because he’s invested so much into our team.”
With big improvements on both ends of the floor in game two of opening week, Creighton now heads into their final tuneup before the schedule gets tougher. A Friday afternoon game with Kennesaw State is next, with a road game at Kansas (probably) and a home game with Nebraska to follow. As with all things in 2020, that’s subject to change.
The Owls went 1-28 last year under first-year head coach Amir Abdur-Rahim, losing eight straight to begin the year and 20 straight to end it, with one lonely win over Gardner-Webb in between. They lost 81-55 to the Bluejays in the season opener in Omaha and things only got worse from there.
This year, Kennesaw State is ranked 351st out of 357 teams in D1 by KenPom, owning a pair of wins over National Christian College Athletic Association, or NCCAA, schools Carver College and Toccoa Falls and a 73-48 loss at UAB. Even against that competition, they’ve struggled. Their adjusted offensive efficiency is 85.0 — 353rd in D1 — because their effective field goal percentage is just 34.2%, they’ve turned it over on 27.6% of their possessions, and because they’ve taken a lot of threes (35.1% of their total shots) without making many (shooting just 15.0% from long range).
Defensively, they’ve been a mess. Their opponents have an adjusted efficiency of 107.2 (which, YIKES) with an effective field goal percentage of 46.9% (double yikes).
But Abdur-Rahim remade the roster from last year’s 1-28 disaster, and it has promise. Individually, KSU is led by 6’4″ junior college transfer Spencer Rodgers. He torched their two NCCAA opponents, making 75% of his shots including 6-of-7 from long range against Toccoa Falls. Against UAB he scored 17, but was nowhere near as efficient and was shut down by UAB’s longer D1 athletes on the perimeter — Rodgers made 6-of-14 overall and just 1-of-6 from three point range.
Their roster also includes a pretty impressive recruiting class of three freshmen who opted to stay in their homestate of Georgia and try to turn Kennesaw State’s program around, headlined by consensus 4-star recruit Chris Youngblood. 3-stars Brandon Stroud and Kasen Jennings give the Owls the top class in the ASUN and an enviable class for any school outside of the power leagues.
Youngblood has come off the bench in all three games so far, averaging 12.7 points while making 50% of his shots (13-for-26) overall and 8-of-20 from three-point range. At 6’4″, 215 pounds, he’s stronger than most top players from ASUN teams — or most freshmen in general — and has shown why he was one of the top 30 guards in the country coming out of high school.
In the Primer before last year’s meeting, I wrote this:
“Their new coach is Amir Abdur-Rahim, a highly-respected young coach who has been an assistant at Georgia, Texas A&M, College of Charleston and Murray State; he’s credited with helping recruit and develop a pair of NBA draft picks in Robert Williams III at A&M, and Isaiah Canaan at Murray State. The younger brother of 13-year NBA vet (and current NBA G-League President) Shareef Abdur-Rahim, he’s one of six siblings in the family to play college basketball. It’s impressive that KSU was able to hire a coach of his pedigree. They’re likely to get quite a bit better. But not this year.”
Their recruiting class is indicative of that momentum. It’s not far-fetched to see a day a year or two from now where Youngblood, Stroud and Jennings lead a KSU resurgence and an NCAA tourney berth. They’re significantly more talented than they were a year ago, but they’re young, inexperienced, and not there yet.
Friday’s game is not likely to be very competitive for very long, and as the third game in six days, that makes it just about perfect for the Jays — they can get some more reps for their front-line stars ahead of next week, and get extended minutes for the rest of the roster.
- Tip: 4:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Vince Welch and Nick Bahe
- 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 Brody Deren
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- UAB made six of their first 10 shots from the floor in their win over Kennesaw State earlier this week, converted 11 KSU turnovers into 13 points, and ended the first half on a 19-4 run to take control. And so while KSU’s defense was much improved in the second half, holding the Blazers to 30 points on 35% shooting and just 16% from the perimeter, it was too little too late.
- The Owls’ 30 made three-pointers is already more than the first eight games combined of the 2019-20 season. Five Owls have netted at least three treys on the year led by Spencer Rodgers with nine followed by Chris Youngblood with eight.
- Friday’s game marks KSU’s first game against a top-10 opponent since squaring off with No. 8 Missouri in 2011.
- Marcus Zegarowski had his first career double-double on Tuesday against UNO. He’s the first Bluejay with a point/assist double-double since Maurice Watson Jr. at Providence on Jan. 7, 2017.
- Christian Bishop has led Creighton in scoring during each of the first two games, the fifth Bluejay this century to do that. Each of the other four men would go on to earn First Team All-Conference accolades that season: Ty-Shon Alexander (2019-20), Marcus Foster (2017-18), Doug McDermott (2013-14) and Kyle Korver (2002-03). Korver is the last CU player to lead the team in scoring in each of the first three games.
- The Bluejays have not started a season with three straight double-figure victories since 2012-13 had six such wins to begin the year. That team would win the MVC and reach the Third Round of the NCAA Tournament.
Creighton leads the all-time series 2-0, winning 81-55 last November and 75-57 in 2010. Last year’s blowout is notable for the fact that the Jays averaged 12.9 seconds per possession, shot 50% overall and 54.8% from three in a clinic of efficient offense.
The last time Creighton played on December 4, Nebraska was whistled for a personal foul, a technical foul on a player, and a technical foul on their head coach…all on the same play. The Huskers had been trailing 46-45 in a back-and-forth game played at their pace; by the time Doug McDermott and Grant Gibbs combined to make five of six free throws, the Jays led 51-45, the home crowd had been whipped into a frenzy, Creighton was able to ride the momentum to push the pace faster, and the outcome was never in doubt again.
I didn’t quite realize how much I would miss being at Creighton games in person until this week. Three games, six days, watched on TV by Jays fans no matter where they are. Hearing the Dance Cam song from the Sugarhill Gang on satellite radio today only exasperated those feelings. Alas.
The Bottom Line:
Kennesaw probably hangs around for a little bit with a few three-pointers, but #9 Creighton will pull away fairly early.
Bluejays 92, Owls 63