Creighton men’s basketball shot 29.1% from 3 on 29.0 attempts per game during its seven games in February. Even so, the “Let it Fly” Jays went 5-2 during the month with the two losses coming by a combined 10 points.
The Jays have had to find other ways to win during the team’s slump while encouraging each other to continue to shoot with confidence.
“I think it starts with defense,” Isaac Traudt said. “When we play good defense and get stops, that kind of fuels our offense. That’s kind of how we get going, it seems to me. But we have a bunch of really good shooters on the team. We’ve just got to keep shooting and staying confident. Everyone believes in each other, the coaches believe in us too, so that makes it easy to just let it fly.”
The slump began after Creighton put on a blistering second-half shooting display in an 86-77 win over Xavier in Omaha on Jan. 31. The Bluejays will make the return trip to Cincinnati on Saturday, and Coach Greg McDermott knows they can’t rely on their shooting to complete the season sweep.
“That game, neither team defended very well,” McDermott said. “Both of the offensive efficiencies were relatively high. We were 8-of-10 from the 3-point line in the second half, so we won that game because we outscored them. I don’t know that we’re going to go into their building and outscore them, so we have to be better defensively than we were in that game.
“Now, having said that, at that time, almost 45% of their points were coming from free throws and in transition, and I think they got 23 or 24% against us combined, so we did the job there in the areas that we thought were going to be important, and that’s going to be pretty, pretty key on Saturday as well.”
Xavier scores 22.3% of its points at the foul line (35th nationally) with a 38.7% free-throw rate 42nd). The Musketeers also rank in the 97th percentile nationally in transition scoring efficiency.
The other area in which Xavier excels offensively is 3-point shooting efficiency. The Musketeers only take 37.9% of their attempts from the arc (201st) but they hit them at a 38.3% rate (16th). The one leading the charge is junior guard Ryan Conwell, who is averaging 15.7 points and shooting 39.1% on 7.0 3-point attempts per game. He scored 20 points and shot 4-of-8 from deep against Creighton in the first meeting.
“You have to be there on the catch,” McDermott said. “If he has space, it’s over. He’s one of the elite shooters in our conference, and he cuts with great pace and makes good decisions on when to shoot and when not to. We’ve got to make his life as difficult as possible. We did a decent job on him at our place, but we still lost him a few times.”
In the first meeting, Xavier played a lot of guard-heavy lineups around leading scorer Zach Freemantle (16.6 points and 7.1 rebounds per game). McDermott said Xavier also has the ability to play big, meaning the Jays will have to be ready to adjust to whatever Coach Sean Miller puts on the floor.
“They’ve played a fair amount this year with Freemantle at the five and with four guards,” McDermott said. “Now, they’ve also, they’ve also gone big a little bit. [John] Hughley had a big game. I think he’s averaging eight minutes a game in conference; he played 19 against us, hit a couple 3s, so we have to kind of be ready for whatever lineup he throws out there.
“Freemantle is a problem because of his ability to space the floor, shoots the 3-point shot to a level that you have to respect it, and then if you crawl up into him, he’s pretty good off the dribble. And then obviously he can score on the block as well. He’s a hard guard for us, but I thought Ryan [Kalkbrenner] did a decent job on him the first game.”
Xavier (18-10, 10-7 Big East, 52nd in the NET) looks to be on the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble, and a win over Creighton would go a long way to strengthen its résumé, while a loss all but eliminates the Musketeers. The Bluejays are expecting a hostile environment at the Cintas Center with the season on the line for Xavier.
“We know we’re going to get their best shot, obviously,” Traudt said. “I heard they have students camping out and stuff for the game; sounds like it. So it’ll be a really fun atmosphere. It was a lot of fun playing there last year. It’s one of the best environments in the Big East, and obviously they have a really, really good team … This one will be one of the loudest in the Big East, but we’ve played in tough environments this year — at Marquette, at UConn, at St. John’s.”
However, McDermott said Creighton has a lot to play for as well in terms of postseason seeding, and St. John’s has not yet clinched the Big East title (although one more win will do it for the Red Storm). Creighton is 5-4 on the road this season including a five-game winning streak that ended at St. John’s on Feb. 16. The Jays are embarking on their final road trip of the season this weekend as they will remain on the road after the Xavier game, continuing on to Seton Hall for a Tuesday night meeting.
“You can’t beat yourself,” McDermott said of challenging road environments. “Oftentimes, when you make mistakes, that leads to something really good for the opposing team, and that fuels the crowd. So if you want to keep the crowd in their seats, you have to play as mistake-free as possible. If you make a mistake, a dead-ball turnover, we can live with that. It’s live-ball stuff, it’s mistake we make on not communicating on a back screen and give up a dunk, those are the things that really get the job going, and we’re going to have to try to nullify that.”
Tipoff is set for 3:30 p.m. CT on FOX with Brandon Gaudin and Robbie Hummel on the call.
