Fresh off an 87-64 blowout of St. John’s, Creighton is scheduled to return to the floor to take on DePaul Saturday afternoon. If the game happens as planned — you can never be too sure as the Omicron wave of COVID-19 burns through the country — the Jays will be without head coach Greg McDermott due to health and safety protocols.
It’s assumed that assistant coach Alan Huss will take over head coaching duties, though it was not announced by the time we published. Huss was the interim coach last season during McDermott’s four-day suspension, and led them to a 93-73 win over Butler.
McDermott missed Monday’s practice for a minor medical procedure, and watched most of Tuesday’s practice from a chair on the side of the court. He coached Wednesday night, and complimented his assistants for getting the team ready to go.
“My staff always deserves a lot of credit, because they have a lot of input, but especially for this one where I was out, they were really on point,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “The responsibility fell on their shoulders and they got the guys ready.”
Those assistants will now be running the show, at least for one game, pending McDermott’s exit from COVID protocols ahead of next week’s game at Butler. If further positive tests come in, keep in mind the Big East’s rule for whether a game is played or not — if a team has seven healthy scholarship players and one healthy coach, they’re required to play.
The opponent is a DePaul team that the Jays were supposed to play in Chicago on December 20. But that coincided with a two-week COVID pause in the Blue Demons program, moving the game to February 17. At that point, DePaul was 9-1 with a pair of solid wins over Rutgers (NET of #105) and Louisville (#108). They’d taken Loyola-Chicago (#19) to the wire in a 68-64 loss. After returning from their pause, they’ve lost six of seven to open Big East play including five straight.
The win? An inexplicable 96-92 circus over Seton Hall. The losses include a four-point loss at Butler, a five-point loss at St. John’s, and one-point loss to Xavier. They’re improved. They’ve been close. But they haven’t gotten over the hump. And now they’re without the second-leading scorer in the Big East, Javon Freeman-Liberty. He missed Wednesday’s narrow loss to Xavier after aggravating a groin injury. He won’t play tonight.
“His (Freeman-Liberty) health is the most important thing, so we want him to be healthy when he does come back,” DePaul head coach Tony Stubblefield said after the Xavier game. “We don’t want him rushing back and then he re-aggravates the injury. So we would rather he comes back 100 percent.”
Freeman-Liberty averages 21.1 points, 7.4 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game. He’s their best scorer and his presence was notable at the end of the Xavier game; the Blue Demons needed someone to get them a bucket to win the game on the final possession, and Freeman-Liberty would have been that guy had he been healthy.
David Jones, a 6’6” sophomore, has been a terrific second option for the Blue Demons this year after a relatively quiet freshman season. He averages 16.2 points and 7.6 rebounds per game, and has stepped up the last two games in Freeman-Liberty’s absence. He scored 24 points in the win over Seton Hall, making 6-of-9 shots inside the arc and 6-of-7 from the line. And he followed it up with 26 points against Xavier, making 5-of-9 on two-pointers and 5-of-10 on three-pointers. A long, strong player, Jones is an active player on both ends of the floor and a strong finisher at the rim. His size makes him a tough matchup for just about every team they play, and the Jays will be no different.
Minnesota transfer Brandon Johnson is their third-leading scorer at 11.0 points per game, and like Jones, is a ferocious rebounder (7.4 boards per game). At 6’8”, he battles in the paint against opposing bigs and also can shoot well enough from the perimeter that you have to respect the shot (14-for-48, 29%). He’s not the most efficient shooter, but he rebounds and defends well and does it without fouling, allowing to play nearly 33 minutes a game.
That’s important because their centers, Yor Anei and Nick Ongenda, are more foul prone. Anei stands 6’10” and is a terrific shot-blocker; he moved into the starting lineup last week and had 16 points with 8 rebounds against Marquette, making 8-of-12 inside the arc. Then he had 11 points, 8 rebounds and 3 blocks in the win over Seton Hall. Interestingly, he only attempted two shots in that game — Seton Hall simply could not defend him without fouling for some reason, and he made 9-of-12 from the line.
The 6’11” Ongenda had been the starter before a minor injury kept him out of the Marquette game. He may have lost his starting job to Anei, at least temporarily. He’s scored a combined 12 points with seven boards in two games since returning, both off the bench.
- Tip: 4:35pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: CBSSN
- Announcers: Jason Horowitz, Chris Walker
- In Omaha: Cox channel 234 (SD), 1234 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 643 (SD), 1643 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: CBSSN Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 221; Dish Network channel 158
- Cable Cutters: Available on all major streaming platforms
- Streaming info
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Satellite Radio: XM 382; SiriusXM app 972
DePaul head coach Tony Stubblefield is no stranger to Omaha as he played and graduated from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. After two seasons at Clinton (Iowa) Community College, Stubblefield completed his collegiate career at UNO where he was team captain as a senior before starting his coaching career as a student assistant with the program.
The Blue Demons have outrebounded 12 opponents (7-5) and also attempted more free throws than the opponent in 12 games (9-3).
The Blue Demons have made at least seven three-pointers in 10 (5-5) of 17 games this year. Last season saw the team make at least seven three-pointers in just five of 19 games.
Ryan Kalkbrenner owns a blocked shot in each of Creighton’s last 14 games, including multiple rejections in all but two of those contests. Kalkbrenner is the first Bluejay with a swat in 14 straight games or longer since Gregory Echenique registered a rejection in the final 12 games of 2010-11 and continued it into the first five games of the 2011-12 campaign.
Creighton defeated Villanova 79-59 to open Big East play and topped St. John’s 87-64 on Wednesday in its lone two conference home games to date. It’s the first time since 2002-03 that Creighton has won each of its first two conference home games by 20 or more points. In that season, CU topped Drake 84-63 before defeating Evansville 93-56.
Wednesday was just the second time Creighton men’s basketball and women’s basketball both won Big East games by 23+ points on the same day, as the Bluejay women walloped Butler 95-44 and the CU men topped St. John’s 87-64. On Feb. 11, 2017, the Bluejay women beat Providence 88-57 and the Creighton men won at DePaul 93-58.
Creighton has won 19 of the last 20 meetings with DePaul to take a 24-16 lead in the all-time series. Sixteen of the last 18 meetings in the series have been decided by double-figures, as have each of the past 10 meetings in Omaha. Creighton is 17-1 in the series since joining the Big East, including 14 straight victories.
In the last 21 meetings against DePaul, Creighton is 19-0 when scoring 69 points or more but 0-2 when scoring fewer than 69 points.
In their most recent meeting last February, DePaul scored 11 points in the first four minutes. They scored just 12 over the remaining 16 minutes of the first half as the Jays ripped off a 25-7 run. CU won 77-53.
And in the final minutes of the first half, Christian Bishop put an exclamation point on his team’s performance with this ridiculous pass to a driving Marcus Zegarowski for a wide-open layup as three Blue Demons threw their hands up in frustration over the breakdown.
On January 22, 2020 we all learned we’d been pronouncing Mitch Ballock’s name incorrectly for 2-1/2 years.
“It is Bal-LOCK,” he clarified in a postgame radio interview. “But ever since high school, people have pronounced it Bal-lick. All of us in the family just got used to it. Today before shoot around one of the CBS guys said, “Ballock, what’s up? Is that how you say it?” And I said technically it’s not but everybody’s been calling me that so I just go with it. I don’t even care, you can pronounce it however you want. Mitch, Mitchell, Bal-lick, Bal-LOCK, whatever.”
After 16 made three-pointers in Ballock’s previous two games against them, DePaul probably had another name for him, and we likely can’t print it here.
The Bottom Line:
The first (scheduled) DePaul game seemed like it was in a dangerous spot for a young team, just 48 hours after blowing out Villanova at home. It felt like a trap game of sorts. This one has a similar feel coming off another huge win. Can the Jays sustain success?
Yes.
Jays 80, DePaul 71
