News and Notes from around Creighton and the Big East this week:
- Charles Barkley of the “NBA on TNT” referred to Doug McDermott this week during a Thunder playoff game as McDougitt McBuckets, getting his nickname kinda sorta right, but not really. The show’s top-notch graphic design team quickly made light of it, sticking Doug into a McNuggets box to taunt Barkley:
- Speaking of Doug McDermott and confusion, he’s apparently now pulling double duty — both as player for the Thunder and coach for the Bluejays. A national recruiting writer tweeted that “Creighton head man Doug McDermott will be by to see Brewster Hoops’ Thomas Allen today”, and John Bishop, Kevin Kugler, Rob Simms and Greg McDermott had a lot — and I do mean a lot — of fun with it.
- They weren’t the only ones giving Coach Mac a hard time this week. Former Bluejay Geoff Groselle did, too, from halfway across the world — and as usual, Mac was a great sport:
- Creighton strength coach Dan Bailey shared a picture of Martin Krampelj after a workout, displaying what appears to be a bit more bulk in his upper body.
- Former Bluejay Anthony Tolliver was a guest on The Bottom Line with Mike’l Severe, and talked NBA Playoffs, the MVP race, and about Justin Patton’s transition to the league.
- Fellow NBA’er Kyle Korver was featured in this video segment from the Cleveland Cavaliers:
- Isaiah Zierden was a guest on “Bluejay Banter” on Monday night, and had some great postmortem thoughts on the season, and on the recruiting process from the standpoint of a player. His thoughts on the point guard situation after Mo Watson’s injury are interesting — the word “frustrating” gets used a couple of times. The segment with Z begins at the 10:30 mark of the podcast.
- Sports TV expert Matt Sarzyniak compiled a breakdown of TV broadcasts by conference, and the Big East had the most games on broadcast TV (15), the most on wide-distribution cable (99 games on channels with 80 million or more subs), and the fourth-most televised games (173) overall.
- Jacob Epperson, a four-star recruit, officially signed with Creighton this week and was later a guest on The Bottom Line with Mike’l Severe to discuss his game and what drew him to CU.
- Epperson’s signing, combined with the fall signings of Mitchell Ballock and Ty-Shon Alexander, give the Jays a top class nationally — 22nd according to Rivals (4th in the Big East), 18th according to 247Sports (3rd in the Big East), and 18th according to Scout (3rd in the Big East). ESPN is the least impressed by a fair margin, slotting the Jays class at 34th and 3rd in the Big East, mostly because they disagree with every other service and have both Epperson and Ballock outside of their Top 100. They’re oddly down on both Providence and Villanova’s classes, too, despite much higher marks for those schools from Rivals, 247 and Scout. [Insert your own joke about ESPN and the Big East here.]
- There’s one potential signing still out there that not even ESPN could ignore, and that’s Brian “Tugs” Bowen. The latest in the recruiting saga that never ends:
- Bowen told FanRag Sports that “Honestly, there’s so many schools calling me because they know I’m undecided. These guys here (which also included the likes of DeAndre Ayton, Jaren Jackson and Matt Coleman—other players at the Jordan Brand Classic who are signed to schools on Bowen’s list) are pushing their coaches on me (and) to go to their schools.”
- Jon Nyatawa talked with The Bottom Line about the latest on Bowen’s recruitment.
- So did Dirk Chatelain, who said Bowen picking Creighton could be huge for CU’s ability to convince future five-star recruits to look at the Jays as a legit landing spot.
- And finally, Bowen talked to Big East Coast Bias about how he might fit into Creighton’s system, should he pick the Jays:
https://twitter.com/crimebait/status/853400143239946241
- The baseball team beat Nebraska Tuesday night, and WBR’s Matt DeMarinis filed this recap.
- If you believe some Nebraska fans and writers, the Jays won in large part because of a long eighth-inning flyout that they felt would have been a home run in other ballparks. DeMarinis used facts to shoot that theory to hell.
- Ed Servais was a guest with Nick Bahe, and talked about the team’s resurgence after a slow start.
- Former Bluejay Nicky Lopez had a tremendous defensive play for the Wilmington (A Ball) Blue Rocks this week:
- Volleyball star Jaali Winters was a guest on KMA Sports’ “Upon Further Review” this week (960AM out of Shenandoah, IA).
- And finally this week, Alan Huss returned to the Hilltop as an assistant coach on Greg McDermott’s staff. Here’s the breaking news segment on 1620’s Unsportsmanlike Conduct when the news came out Thursday.