With No. 24 Creighton men’s basketball and No. 9 St. John’s both taking a loss this week, Sunday’s showdown between the two at Madison Square Garden will have first place in the Big East on the line.
Creighton (18-7, 11-3 Big East) sits a game back of the Red Storm in the standings. A Bluejay win would tie them up — and give Creighton a season sweep over the Johnnies after beating them 57-56 in Omaha on New Year’s Eve.
“I always talk about wanting to play meaningful games in February, and they don’t get any more meaningful than this one,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “We’ve had a great start to this conference season. We’re two-thirds of the way through, and we’re right there. Now, we just have to finish it off.
“Obviously, we’re playing an incredible team. Last time we played them, I talked about losing two games by whatever, four points, and now what, they’ve lost four games by seven points on the year or something like that? So this is a team that’s not far from being one of the top couple teams in the country in the rankings, for good reason. Their defense is elite and obviously they’re playing with a lot of confidence.”
St. John’s is 21-4 including 12-2 in big East play, and the four losses are by a total of seven points as McDermott said, including a double-overtime loss to Baylor in the Bahamas. In Wednesday’s 73-71 loss at Villanova, the Johnnies took the lead late on a Simeon Wilcher 3 before the Wildcats answered with one of their own, and the Johnnies came up empty on their final possession.
The first time the teams played, Creighton survived a couple of looks on St. John’s final possession to pull out a 57-56 victory. The Jays shot 41.5% from the field and committed 19 turnovers but held the Red Storm to 36.8% shooting.
“There were a lot of ugly parts of that game, but we found a way to win,” Ryan Kalkbrenner said. “So hopefully we can take out the ugly parts and make it a little easier on ourselves this time.”
St. John’s boasts the second-best adjusted defensive efficiency in the country, according to KenPom. The Johnnies are holding teams to 43.5% shooting inside the arc (seventh nationally) and forcing turnovers at a 22.1% rate (15th). In conference games only, that turnover rate is 23.1, tops in the league. However, Creighton has only turned the ball over 18 times combined in its previous two games heading into Sunday.
“The good news for us is we’ve seen probably the other two teams in our league that pressure the most in Marquette and UConn back-to-back, so we’ve been through a week or 10 days of preparation against pressure,” McDermott said. “Now, is it the same as St. John’s pressure? Not necessarily, but at least you’re seeing that aggressiveness on the ball that we had to experience against Marquette and UConn.”
RJ Luis (6-foot-7, 215 pounds) leads the St. John’s attack at 17.4 points, 6.9 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game. Big man Zuby Ejiofor (6-foot-9, 240 pounds) led the Johnnies with 16 points and eight rebounds in the first meeting with Creighton and is putting up 13.7 points and 8.0 rebounds per game (including 4.1 on the offensive end). Kadary Richmond (6-foot-6, 205 pounds) has elevated his game since Big East play began and is averaging 12.3 points, 5.6 rebounds and 5.2 assists.
“They’re really versatile, really across the lineup,” McDermott said. “They’ve got a lot of length and size. RJ, Kadary, Aaron Scott, those guys are all 6-6, 6-8, with good length. Then Zuby is having the best year of his career in there and they bring a couple guys off the bench that kind of give you the same thing. So it doesn’t really matter who you’re guarding, you’ve got to be ready to guard the dribble. They’re going to be very disruptive defensively, on the ball, off the ball, and then when the shot goes up, that’s when the game starts. We’ve been the best team in our league at defensive rebounding all year long, and it has to happen on Sunday for us to be in the game.”
St. John’s isn’t a great offensive team (ranked 80th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency). It’s one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in the country at 29.2% (349th). The Johnnies don’t get to the free-throw line a ton (264th) and struggle to shoot a good percentage when they do (68.7%, 284th). They win through sheer possession volume, keeping their turnover rate low (16%, 81st) while stealing extra possessions from opponents and dominating the offensive glass, grabbing 37.3% of their misses (12th).
In the first matchup, the Bluejays held St. John’s to 14 offensive rebounds while grabbing 11 themselves, and they only lost the second-chance points battle by five. Creighton has given up the lowest offensive rebound rate in the Big East this season at 26.9% but is coming off two games where it surrendered 30 offensive rebounds leading to 24 points for Marquette and UConn.
“They’re a super physical team, and you’ve just got to match that physicality,” Kalkbrenner said. “They really put in second, third, fourth efforts on the o-boards, so you’ve just got to put forth second, third, fourth efforts in boxing them out. So it’s just matching that intensity level.”
One difference from the first meeting is St. John’s will be without guard Deivon Smith (9.8 points, 5.2 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game) because of a shoulder injury that will sideline him indefinitely, according to Coach Rick Pitino. With Smith sidelined, Pitino has relied heavily on his starting five with all five playing 30-plus minutes against Villanova.
“We played against [Smith] the first time,” McDermott said. “Obviously, defensively, he was really disruptive on the ball. He’s hard to screen because his center of gravity is so good. He’s quick, he’s strong, and he’s one of their better 3-point shooters. So obviously, you take a guy out of your lineup like that, it has an impact. But they’ve also played some games without him and played very well.”
St. John’s is 15-0 at home this season — the longest home winning streak in the country — and is expecting a large crowd for its White Out at Madison Square Garden. McDermott laid out the keys to accomplishing something no other team has so far this season.
“You’ve got to handle your business,” McDermott said. “It’s a game where we can’t turn it over, and if you do, it can’t be live-ball that leads to points. We’ve got to win the free-throw battle somehow and then we’ve got to survive on the backboards. If we do that, we’ll be in position, even like we were against UConn — it was a tie game with two minutes ago. St. John’s was in a very similar situation against ‘Nova. They had the lead inside the last minute. We’ve won our fair share of those close games this year, as have they, and I’m hoping that we can be in a position the last five minutes to try to pull one out of there.”
One factor that may help Creighton check off those boxes McDermott listed is the extra time to prepare after facing a series of difficult travel and quick turnarounds. Creighton had four days between the UConn loss and St. John’s game to recharge and hammer home the game plan for Sunday.
“It was nice to have a couple more days to prep for this, because you don’t have to be doing so much in such a short amount of time to prep for a game,” Kalkbrenner said. “You kind of spread it out a little bit and get a little more of a break, especially since a lot of us have been playing a bunch of minutes and there’s been a cold going around. So it’s good to have a couple of days extra.”
Tipoff on Sunday is set for 2 p.m. CT on FS1 with John Fanta and Donny Marshall on the call.
