Creighton junior Trey Alexander picked up his second Big East Player of the Week award on Monday after a 2-0 week for the Bluejays, who are sitting alone in second-place in the conference at 7-3 and have risen to No. 13 in the AP Poll.
Alexander was also on the 10-man midseason watch list announced on Tuesday for the Jerry West Award, honoring the best shooting guard in college basketball.
After an up-and-down nonconference, Alexander has stepped up his game in league play and is leading the team in scoring through 10 Big East games. After five straight double-digit scoring games to open conference play, Alexander hit a two-game skid, scoring 14 points on 6-of-26 shooting combined against St. John’s and UConn. Since then, he’s taken his all-around game to another level, reminiscent of what we saw from him to open the season.
Since that loss at No. 1 UConn, Alexander has topped 20 points in three straight games as Creighton improved to 16-0 in his career when he’s reached that threshold. Alexander is averaging 24.3 points, 7.0 rebounds, 6.0 assists and 2.3 stocks (steals plus blocks) per game while shooting 51.8% from the floor including 35% from 3 and 88.9% from the foul line during that stretch. He scored a season-high 27 points in the home win over Xavier and followed it up with a 23-point outing in the Pink Out Game against DePaul to earn the Big East Player of the Week award with a 25.0 scoring average.
As has been the case all season, the pick-and-roll game has been key to Alexander’s production. Pick-and-rolls have made up nearly a third of his scoring possessions this season and have resulted in 22 points and six assists over the last three.
With help from Synergy Sports, here’s a look at his pick-and-roll scoring possessions (minus the attempted lob pass that a DePaul defender goaltended for some reason). Besides the goaltend, Alexander shot 10-of-18 out of the pick-and-roll and only committed one turnover.
Twice he beat the coverage with a drive straight to the rim (once when the big tried to show and once when the big took himself out of position to impact the play at all), but the rest of it was strictly mid-range, which has become Alexander’s greatest strength. When Alexander goes left, it’s almost always to snake back to the right to get to his pull-up. If you play drop against him, he is going to make you pay. There were a couple plays in there where teams actually defended him pretty well and it just didn’t matter because of his ability to fade away and hit over a contest.
Alexander is shooting 52.3% on off-the-dribble 2-point jump shots, which is a ridiculous mark. He’s 10th in the country in percentage among players who have at least 75 such possessions this season. Alexander is 45-for-86 on the season and is the only player in the top 10 averaging over 4.0 attempts per game (he’s at 4.1). He shot 44.3% on 97 attempts last season, meaning he’s upped both his volume and efficiency as he’s slid into the lead guard role this season.
Alexander ‘s new role has given him a chance to show off more of his playmaking as well, and he’s already topped his assist total from last season. Here’s a look at his pick-and-roll assists from the last three.
He found Ryan Kalkbrenner twice, once on a slip before he even had to put the ball on the deck and once on a lob when the big showed a bit too aggressively and the tag defender didn’t rotate all the way over. The other four assists were to four different three-point shooters, three of which came in Creighton’s Spain pick-and-roll action where a shooter sets a screen on the rolling Kalkbrenner’s man before popping out to the 3-point line. All of these assists were the correct read by Alexander, and he put the ball exactly where it needed to be every time.
In the halfcourt, Alexander plays at a pretty methodical pace, probing the defense and looking for gaps in which he can rise up for his pull-up. In transition, he cuts it loose a little more if teams don’t find a way to stop the ball. Over the past three, he’s scored 15 points on 6-of-12 from the field including 1-of-2 from deep with two and-ones. He also dished out two assists.
Twice Alexander scored as a trailer (once letting the 3 fly and once getting downhill). One time he caught a hit-ahead pass on the wing and attacked the basket for a finish. The rest of his buckets all came on coast-to-coast plays where he pushed it off a steal, a board or an outlet pass and kept going until he got to the rim. Shooting 50% in transition isn’t ideal, and Alexander had some contested misses at the rim that you’d like to see go down for a player of his caliber, but he still did a good job of putting pressure on opposing defenses after stops.
The other big source of points for Alexander during his three-game hot streak has been spot-up possessions. Alexander has struggled from 3 this season after connecting on spot-up triples at a near-50% rate as a sophomore, but he saw a handful go down over the past three games. Alexander scored 17 points in spot-up situations, shooting 6-of-11 from the field including 5-of-10 from deep.
With Baylor Scheierman playing the way he has all year and Steven Ashworth’s increased comfort in the system and improvement as a playmaker, it’s opened up opportunities for Alexander off the ball. Heading into this three-game stretch, he was just 9-of-35 (25.7%) on spot-up 3s, but if he continues to get looks like the ones above it could lead to a positive regression in his shooting percentage.
In addition to his pick-and-roll playmaking, Alexander also did a good job running the offense and getting the ball where it needed to go within Creighton’s sets. Here’s a look at the rest of his assists over the past three.
That compilation includes a nice mix of feeding Kalkbrenner, hitting shooters running off designed screens and improvising to find the open man.
At his best, Alexander can be as good as any guard in the Big East. He was that last week and took home some hardware as a result. As Creighton’s offense continues to round into form with key players settling into their roles, Alexander will be the key to Creighton’s success as much as anyone on the team.
