Creighton’s opening stretch of four games in 10 days wraps up Thursday, against the team who appears to be the toughest of the group on paper: UC Riverside. They start two talented seniors, have pulled off recent upsets (including Arizona State a year ago just couple of weeks before the Sun Devils won in Omaha), and are never out of games because they’re so disciplined on both ends of the floor.
And they have the Jays’ full attention.
“I have to make sure we’re focused for Riverside, because there’s a lot of reasons human-nature wise to look past them. The plane ride to Hawai’i, the beach, the opponents — but we’ve got another game first,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show after Monday’s win over Holy Cross. “And it’ll be, I think, our toughest opponent so far.”
UC Riverside fell behind Colorado by 18 points in the season opener before rallying to make things interesting the second half, including a stretch where their defense held the Buffaloes scoreless for seven minutes. In their second game, they fell behind Loyola Marymount by 18 points, too, but rallied to win that one thanks to another long stretch where their defense locked down their opponent.
“I remember watching them when we were preparing for UC Santa Barbara (in the NCAA Tournament) two years ago, and I went back and watched all of their games against UCSB because I was so impressed with their plan both offensively and defensively,” McDermott said of the Highlanders. “Now, that brings up the obvious question, why the hell did you schedule them? I guess I’d forgotten about that (laughing)! It’ll be a good test for us. We gotta get ready and we gotta play hard.”
UC Riverside has earned a reputation as a stout defensive team, and the numbers back it up. A year ago, their defense allowed opponents a 47.1% effective field goal percentage, ranking 48th in D1. Opponents made just 30.2% of their three-pointers, 30th best in D1. They held San Diego State, Arizona State, Oregon, Washington and Saint Mary’s well below their season averages in eFG% and three-point shooting, controlling the tempo against good, high-level teams.
They’re led by senior point guard Zyon Pullin, a dynamic scorer and distributor who went through the NBA Draft process in the spring before opting to return for one more season. UC Riverside’s offensive plan, generally, is to run Pullin off of ball screens and pick-and-rolls, and surround him with as many shooters as possible. Then they let him go to work, either scoring himself or creating shots for teammates.
He’s a high-usage player — he took nearly one-quarter of his team’s shots when he was on the floor a year ago, and he was on the floor a LOT. Pullin played 84% of available minutes last year, a trend that has continued this year with 38 minutes played against Colorado and 35 against Loyola. He’s scored 40 points in those two games on 15-of-29 shooting, almost exclusively in the paint. He can score at the rim off the dribble or mid-range jumpers — but what makes him so tough to defend is that he also led the Big West Conference in assists (117) with just 62 turnovers.
And he’s clutch: trailing 77-76 with 29 seconds left, he nailed a three-pointer to give his team the lead. And then after Loyola had tied it, he hit the game-winning jumper with 1.6 seconds to go. Pullin’s a heckuva player who will be playing professionally somewhere at this time a year from now.
Their backcourt also features 6’7” junior Wil Tattersall and 6’5” senior Flynn Cameron, who both hail from Australia. They can both score effectively from multiple levels. The Jays have some first-hand knowledge of Cameron — he started his career at DePaul, and in a February 2019 game in Chicago he scored 11 points on 3-of-3 shooting from behind the arc. That’s his primary focus offensively, as nearly two-thirds of his shots have been threes the last two seasons. Tattersall is longer and plays inside more often; around half of his shots come at or near the rim, where he’s a 75% shooter.
Their bench is experienced, too. 5’10” senior Jamal Hartwell played four seasons for George Mason before transferring closer to home (he’s a native of Inglewood) to take advantage of his COVID season. He scored nine points in 12 minutes off the bench against Loyola last week.
In the frontcourt, they’re tasked with replacing 7’1”, 295-pound behemoth Callum McRae who transferred out for his senior year after anchoring the post for them the last three years. One of the players taking his minutes is 6’8” senior Kyle Owens, a three-year starter at Montana, who transferred in this spring and has scored in double figures in both games so far this year. They tend to mix and match the 4/5 spots in their lineup based on whether they’re going big or small, with 6’10” freshman Lachlan Olbrich (the third player on the roster from Australia), 6’11” sophomore Jhaylon Martinez, and Owens combining to try and replicate what McRae gave them.
It’s proved challenging through two games. UC Santa Barbara was the only team to score more than 75 points on them a year ago, and it took two overtimes. Colorado hung 82 on them, and Loyola scored 79, with interior scoring the problem both times. And now they’re set to face Ryan Kalkbrenner, likely the best big man they will see all year. How they defend him — and how well they defend him — could be the difference between a competitive 10-15 point Bluejay win and a 25-point blowout.
- Tip: 7:30pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Matt Schumacker 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
- Cable Cutters: Available on all major streaming platforms
- Streaming on the Fox Sports app and website
- Radio: 1620AM, 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
UCR won on the final shot a week ago against Loyola. It came one day shy of a year removed from JP Moorman II’s 75-foot buzzer beater at Arizona State last season, thus cementing another historic moment in program history 364 days apart.
Since moving to D1 in 2001, the Highlanders have had a winning record in the Big West twice. Both have come under head coach Mike Magpayo, the first Asian-American head coach in D1 basketball history.
- Ryan Kalkbrenner shot 10-for-10 from the field in Monday’s victory vs. Holy Cross, including five dunks and two other alley-oops he dropped in. He is the third Bluejay ever to shoot 100 percent from the field with a minimum of 10 attempts, joining Bob Harstad (13-13 vs. UTSA on Nov. 30, 1990) and Anthony Tolliver (11-11 vs. Illinois State on Jan. 1, 2007).
- Kalkbrenner made his last nine field goal attempts in last Thursday’s 10-for-11 performance vs. North Dakota, giving him 19 consecutive field goals made. The NCAA record for consecutive field goals made is 30 by Yale’s Brandon Sherrod in 2016.
- Ryan Nembhard’s 12 assists without a turnover vs. Holy Cross on Nov. 14 made him just the fourth player in Bluejay history to accomplish that feat. He’s the first to do it inside CHI Health Center Omaha and the first Bluejay to do it at any site since 2002.
Creighton and UC Riverside have never met. Greg McDermott is 1-0 all-time against the Highlanders, as he began his tenure in Iowa State with a 69-61 victory in Ames on Nov. 10, 2006.
In our postgame notebook from the Holy Cross win, we went more in depth on the “perfect games” that Kalkbrenner and Nembhard had Monday night, and talked about their chemistry on the court.
And in the premium podcast after the game, Matt DeMarinis and Joel Lorenzi answered your questions — including a segment talking about Shereef Mitchell’s impact and his role on the team.
The Jays have played five times on November 17, winning by an average of 29 points against opponents like Texas-Arlington, Mississippi Valley State, UTSA and Florida A&M.
Their game on November 17, 2002 was particularly noteworthy, as it was opening night and the first win of the magical 2002-03 season. In a sign of things to come that season, Creighton controlled the opening tip and scored 10 seconds later on a dunk by Larry House. On the next possession, Michael Lindeman followed a House miss with a putback, followed by consecutive Kyle Korver three-pointers just 2:10 into the game to make it 10-0. Korver led the Jays with 18 points in 21 minutes while converting 6-for-6 from three-point range, and moved into first place on the school’s all-time three point list with 248, passing the previous mark of 245 held by Ryan Sears.
The 56-point triumph remains the second-largest margin of victory in school history, surpassed only by a 63-6 win in 1925 over Midland College.
The Bottom Line:
KenPom favors the Jays by 18 in this one, and Vegas favors them by 18.5. I think both are slightly low.
#10 Creighton 82, UC Riverside 62