The 2020-21 college basketball regular season wraps up on Saturday afternoon, and it’s been every bit the roller coaster we expected it to be — but in none of the ways we thought it might be. Assuming Saturday’s game is played, Creighton will have completed their entire 25-game schedule without a single COVID pause since losing the season-opening tourney in South Dakota. They’ll have completed their entire 20-game Big East slate, too. The only two teams in the league to play all 20 are the teams competing in Omaha on Saturday, in fact.
But the Bluejays will finish that 25-game schedule with a different head coach, at least on an interim basis, with the news that Greg McDermott has been suspended indefinitely following this week’s controversy over his postgame speech at Xavier.
“I made a mistake and I own it,” McDermott posted on Twitter. “Mistakes come with consequences, and I accept and agree with the suspension.”
Assistant Al Huss has been named the interim head coach for however long McDermott is suspended; it’s a bit of a surprising choice given the presence of two former D1 head coaches on the bench in Paul Lusk and Steve Merfeld, but Huss has recruited a good portion of the current roster at this point and is the lead recruiter on their 2021 commits.
Plus, even with McDermott there, Creighton’s staff is extremely collaborative. On the practice floor, McDermott is the offensive coordinator, Lusk is the defensive coordinator, Merfeld runs the scout team, Terrence Rencher is in charge of skill development, and Huss is the lead recruiter and understudy on offense. All the coaches have a collective voice when 5-on-5 scrimmages take place, and they more or less coach in-game as a collaborative unit, too. Jays fans may not notice much of a change in terms of in-game strategy other than seeing a different former collegiate big man roaming the sideline.
As one of five Black head coaches in the Big East, more than any other major conference, Butler’s LaVall Jordan was asked about the suspension and the events leading up to it this week by Indianapolis media. He called it an unfortunate situation, and added that “you just feel for the young guys in the locker room.”
“It tells you that, hey, there’s still a long way to go in terms of awareness,” Jordan added. “An awareness of what others feel and empathy toward other groups when we’re all speaking, and what that might make them feel. My experience isn’t their experience. You try to consider others’ experience when you’re speaking or when you’re doing anything. That’s on us all, just try to be considerate of others’ experiences. Because then you might not say certain things or use certain language.”
Whether this is the first step in an exit strategy for McDermott, or a suspension he returns from at some point in the future, there’s basketball to be played on Saturday — and pretty important basketball at that. Butler comes into the game at 9-13 and 8-11 in the Big East, in ninth place, but is playing their best basketball of the year. Hinkle Fieldhouse witchcraft struck again as they first dented Seton Hall’s tourney resume with a 61-52 win, then upset Villanova 73-61. And they’ve had a week off coming into this one.
Freshman Chuck Harris has steadily improved as the season has gone along, and now in March he leads the Bulldogs in scoring at 12.0 points per game. Among Big East freshmen, only Marquette’s Dawson Garcia averages more at 13.2. In earning Big East Freshmen of the Week honors last week, Harris averaged 17.0 points, 5.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists in two wins while shooting 50.0% from the floor. He’s set a career high of 22 points twice this year, and ranks third in the Big East in free throw shooting (83.3%) and 11th in three-point shooting (39.4%). Harris scored 10 points in the first meeting, playing just 28 minutes in an overtime game due to foul trouble.
South Carolina grad transfer Jair Bolden is second on the team in scoring at 11.3 points per game, and had been their top perimeter threat before the emergence of Harris. Now the duo combine to give Butler two really good three-point shooters for defenses to worry about. Bolden is 57-of-158 (36.1%) from behind the arc. He’s not a threat from anywhere else, though. Of his 226 shot attempts this year, 158 of them have been threes (69.9% of his total shots). He’s taken exactly two shots at the rim all year, and missed them both. He’s 26-of-66 (39.3%) everywhere else. Your task as a defender is to run him off the line; shooting a three is his only real way to score. Make him shoot something else.
6’7″ Bryce Nze is a solid, versatile forward who does a little of everything for the Bulldogs. He’s strong enough to post up opposing bigs and score in the paint, he’s comfortable shooting from the perimeter (making 40.0% of his threes this year) and he’s their top rebounder (8.2 per game). He’s had 10+ rebounds in three of his last four games, including 13 against Seton Hall. And he’s drawn the most fouls on the team. But about that: Nze is single-handedly dragging down Butler’s team free throw shooting percentage. He’s just 36-of-77 from the line (46.8%).
Their other Bryce, Bryce Golden, averages 9.6 points and 4.6 rebounds a game. He didn’t make much of an impact on the box score in the first meeting, but he defended Christian Bishop and Ryan Kalkbrenner really well.
Freshman Myles Tate scored 15 points with 10 rebounds, two assists and two steals in 39 minutes in the first meeting. For the year, that game is a clear outlier: he’s scored in double figures in just three of 19 Big East games, and none since January 19 against DePaul. He hasn’t had more than four boards in any game since he had 10 against the Jays on January 16.
Aaron Thompson scored 17 points in the first meeting, carving up the Bluejays in the paint (7-of-13 on two-pointers). He also had six assists. Thompson is out for the rest of the year with a shoulder injury, leaving a rather large hole in Butler’s lineup. Almost all of his points came in the paint, giving them a nice one-two punch with Bolden. And he was their best perimeter defender.
Creighton surrendered 44 points in the paint on Saturday at Xavier, and 36 at Villanova. That’s a bad sign heading into a game with Butler, because the Bulldogs boast a style of play that stresses scoring in the paint. Butler scored 30 in the paint in the first game, and CU was defending that area better at that time than they have recently.
Butler is also one of the slowest teams in America, tempo wise — they rank 328th in D1 and last in the Big East in adjusted tempo. Despite going OT, the first game between these two had just 70 possessions. Since joining the Big East, Creighton is 7-1 when scoring 72 or more points against the Bulldogs and 1-6 when scoring 71 points or less. We say it every year in the Primer before Butler games because it’s more true against them than it is against anyone else: if the Jays can push the pace into something resembling a track meet, they’ll win. If the game gets dragged into the mud — Butler’s average possession length is 19.4 seconds, 335th in D1 — the Bulldogs win. Creighton’s been able to do that at home, generally, against Butler and if they’re successful at it Saturday, they should like the outcome.
- Tip: 4:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FOX
- Announcers: Kevin Kugler and Nick Bahe
- In Omaha: Cox channel 10 (SD), 1010 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 42 (SD), 1042 (HD); DirecTV 42; Dish Network 42 or 5203
- Outside Omaha: Your local FOX affiliate
- Streaming on FoxSportsGO
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Satellite Radio:
- Creighton broadcast: SiriusXM channel 81
- Butler broadcast: SiriusXM channel 381
- Butler is assured of playing in either the 7/10 or the 8/9 game Wednesday at Madison Square Garden. Based on Saturday’s results, Butler’s opening-round opponent will come from a group that includes Xavier, St. John’s, Georgetown, Providence and Marquette.
- Four of Butler’s nine wins have included a double-digit comeback: they came back from 16 points down against St. John’s on February 9, 12 points down against DePaul on February 6, 13 points down against Creighton, and 11 points down against Georgetown on January 6. In other words, don’t let up no matter how big your lead gets against these guys — they don’t die easily.
- Butler had just seven turnovers in 45 minutes against Creighton in the first meeting, helping keep the Jays from getting out in transition. The Bulldogs have committed 10 or fewer turnovers in 55 of the 121 games since LaVall Jordan took over as head coach.
- Creighton will honor four players following Saturday’s game as part of Senior Day festivities, as Mitch Ballock, Jacob Epperson, Damien Jefferson and Denzel Mahoney will be recognized. All four men will graduate in May and do still own the option of returning to the program next winter.
- Both Creighton and Butler rely on a solid core group of seniors to lead the way, as the Bluejays have gotten 49.2 percent of its scoring from seniors (Mahoney, Jefferson, Ballock, O’Connell) and the Bulldogs 49.9 percent (Thompson, Nze, Bolden, David, Hodges, Donovan).
- Mitch Ballock could surpass 300 career treys on Saturday, as he owns 298 three-pointers in his Bluejay career. His 232 career treys entering the year were second-most in school history after a junior season, trailing only Kyle Korver (242). Korver is the all-time leader with 371, followed by Ethan Wragge with 334. Fourth on the list? Doug McDermott with 274.
Creighton is 12-10 all-time vs. Butler. The home team has won the last seven meetings.
When they met on January 16, Marcus Zegarowski was out due to injury and Butler led by seven at the half. The Jays used a 26-3 run to take a 13 point lead with eight minutes left — they made 11 of their first 13 shots in the second half, and held Butler to 1-of-14 shooting — then proceeded to blow that lead, and lost in overtime.
Denzel Mahoney basically carried the team — he scored 29 of their 66 points, shooting 10-of-22 overall, 5-of-11 from three, and 4-of-6 at the line. He had seven rebounds, two assists and three steals in 40 minutes. And his perimeter defense was a big reason for Butler’s cold start to the second half. But he’s been in a shooting slump for going on a month at this point and spent most of the second half of Wednesday’s loss on the bench.
On March 6, 2009, this happened:
The Bottom Line:
Senior Day is always emotional. The final curtain call at home for Mitch Ballock, Denzel Mahoney, Damien Jefferson and Jacob Epperson will be no exception. Seeing Epperson’s name on that list may be a little surprising to some; his injury-riddled career has been limited to just 32 games but he’s on track to graduate in May and ending his collegiate career. The others are major contributors: Ballock has started 95 straight games, contributing 1,252 points, 484 rebounds and 326 assists in 123 games as a Bluejay. DJ has started 69 games in the past three seasons since transferring from New Mexico, contributing 740 points, 403 rebounds and 126 assists in a CU uniform. Mahoney has played just 45 games in a Bluejay uniform, but owns 560 points in that span.
Those four will have their Senior Day without the head coach who brought them to the Hilltop, at the conclusion of a week full of existential conversations about things unrelated to basketball. For their sake, I hope they’re able to block all of those things out for 40 minutes and make one last set of positive memories on their home court. I think they will.
Creighton 77, Butler 65