On Wednesday night, No. 18 Creighton men’s basketball will get the chance to play the best of the best as the Bluejays travel to Storrs to take on No. 1 UConn at 6 p.m. CT.
After a wild week of results that saw most of the top 10 suffer losses, Coach Danny Hurley’s Huskies have climbed to the top spot in the latest AP Poll.
“It’s awesome; that’s why I came here,” Steven Ashworth said of the opportunity. “I wanted to be able to play in big-time games and in the Big East, I knew there was going to be a lot of them. Playing top-10 games, top-five games, and now it’s the number one-ranked team in the country … It’s going to be a real good test on Wednesday. We’ll really see where we’re at and at the end of the day, it’s Big East basketball, so I can’t wait.”
The Huskies lost three starters from last year’s championship-winning squad yet haven’t really missed a beat despite some early injury issues. UConn stands at 15-2 overall and 5-1 in Big East play, tied for first in the conference, and boasts the third-ranked offense in the country according to KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency. They are third nationally in effective field goal percentage and are second in 2-point percentage at 61.8%, narrowly ahead of Creighton in third place at 61.4%.
“They run a million sets, first of all, and all other players are elite players,” Francisco Farabello said. “There is a reason why they are the defending national champions. They lost some pieces but they found some good replacements for them.”
One of those replacements is Rutgers transfer Cam Spencer, who stepped into the void left by NBA lottery pick Jordan Hawkins. Spencer is leading the team in scoring at 15.6 points per game while shooting 51.4% from the field including 46.8% from 3 and 87.5% from the foul line. Another is 5-star freshman Stephon Castle, who is contributing 10.1 points, 4.7 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game despite missing five games with an injury.
The returning starters are veteran point guard Tristen Newton (14.8 points, 6.5 rebounds and 6.1 assists per game) and sophomore forward Alex Karaban (15.4 points and 5.8 rebounds per game, shooting 54.4% from the field and 41.2% from 3).
The Huskies have won five straight despite missing a big piece of their puzzle in 7-foot-2 sophomore center Donovan Clingan (13.9 points, 6.3 rebounds and 2.0 blocks per game on 63.2% shooting), who suffered a foot injury in the team’s loss to Seton Hall on Dec. 20. Hurley said Clingan returned to practice last Friday and hasn’t had any set-backs, and he went through pre-game warm-ups in the team’s win over Georgetown on Sunday before watching the game from the bench. Samson Johnson, a 6-foot-10 junior, has been starting in Clingan’s place, and Creighton is preparing for both of them.
“We have, obviously, plenty of film with [Clingan] playing, so we have an idea,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “And really when Samson’s in the game, what they do is similar to when Clingan’s in the game. But the fact that Clingan’s missed five games, Castle missed five games earlier and they’re still ranked number one in the country, I think, speaks to their depth and what a good job Danny’s done with his team.”
With Clingan sidelined, UConn has used Karaban (6-foot-8, 220 pounds) as a back-up five in a small-ball, five-out look. Creighton briefly experimented with its own small-ball look against St. John’s on Saturday as Jasen Green got the first call ahead of Fredrick King when Ryan Kalkbrenner took a seat for the first time, though Kalkbrenner ended up playing all but 96 seconds in the game.
“Obviously it’s a whole different team and they play differently offensively with that group, and also defensively,” McDermott said. “But we’ve got to try to attack that group in the paint, because they’re going to be really hard to guard on the other end of the floor.”
UConn is stout defensively as at 44th nationally in adjusted efficiency, largely because of its effectiveness in defending 2-point shots (42.4% allowed, third nationally). The Huskies play at one of the slowest paces in the country as well (320th in adjusted tempo, 278th in average possession length). One way to avoid getting sucked into UConn’s preferred tempo is to secure defensive rebounds and trigger transition basketball, but that won’t be an easy task. Much like St. John’s, UConn crashes the offensive glass hard — at the 14th-highest rate in the country.
“Our defense can help our offense in a lot of ways,” Ashworth said. “If we can get stops and get the rebounds secured, I think that we’ll be able to kind of keep the tempo the way that we like it, and then I think that’ll allow us to kind of continue some more of our motion offense which I think we saw at times just the other night against St. John’s. When we were able to get the rebound and run, they’re not able to set up their press, and that allows us just to play a different style of basketball. So I think a lot of the same things will be keys as we head on the road against UConn.”
The Huskies are 9-0 at home this season and KenPom ranks their home-court advantage at Gampel Pavillion as the 24th-best in the country. On the other hand, Creighton is 4-1 in true road games and has gotten off to great starts at Nebraska and at Marquette, though the Jays weren’t able to sustain that effort for the full 40 minutes against the Golden Eagles.
“That’s why you come and play college basketball,” Farabello said of difficult road venues. “I think playing in front of that many people either in the stadium or watching at home kind of motivates you. A lot of energy, you can feel the energy in the building. So hopefully we can have another great start on Wednesday.”
FS1 will televise the game with Tim Brando and Bill Raftery on the call.
