Expectations around the league for year one under Coach Alan Huss are a bit tempered as Creighton men’s basketball landed at No. 7 in the preseason Big East Poll released by the league on Thursday.
Two Bluejays — one returner and one newcomer — also received preseason recognition.
The Jays went 16-18 including 9-11 in league play, finishing fifth in the conference and missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019 in Greg McDermott’s final season at the helm. Now his successor is tasked with getting the Bluejays back to their winning ways.
“The important thing for us right now is to figure out a way to get back to the competitive level that’s been established by Coach Mac,” Huss said at Big East Media Day. “We had a little bit of a slipup a season ago, and our deal now is trying to have an edge every day when we walk into the facility. It’s trying to make sure that we honor the process that’s been laid out by Coach Mac and that we put our own stamp on it at times and make sure the competitive level is back to what our fans and people around the Big East have come to expect over the last decade and a half.”
Senior Jasen Green, heading into his fifth season with the program, said while there are a lot of similarities between Huss and his mentor, he’s noticed a concerted effort from Huss to establish that standard the Jays are trying to reach once again.
“Obviously they both coached together for a while with Coach Huss as the assistant,” Green said. “I’d say there are a few differences, mainly just the stuff Coach Huss preaches during practice, meeting the standard. We have to approach practice with the standard every single day with the exact same approach, and he holds us to that every single day. If we’re not having a good day, he’s going to let us know, he’s going to get on us about it one way or another and he gets it figured out. There’s definitely just a little bit of a difference in their intensity levels as well. But I think Coach Huss is doing a great job.”
UConn was the preseason favorite to win the league with eight of the 11 first-place votes from the league’s coaches. Senior point guard Silas Demary Jr. is the preseason player of the year, and five-star recruit Colben Landrew is the preseason freshman of the year.
St. John’s landed at second with two first-place votes, Villanova was third, Marquette slotted in fourth with the final first-place vote and Providence rounded out the top five.
The preseason All-Big East First Team includes UConn sophomore sharpshooter Braden Mullins, dynamic Marquette sophomore point guard Nigel James Jr. and St. John’s newcomer Tounde Yessoufu as unanimous selections. St. John’s guard Ian Jackson and Villanova guard Tyler Perkins were the other selections.
The second team features UConn sophomore center Na’jai Hines, Marquette junior forward Royce Parham, Providence graduate wing Miles Byrd and Villanova senior wings Kwame Evans Jr. and Devin Royal. Parham is the only returner among that group, with the other four joining their programs as transfers.
Oswin Erhunmwunse (55) dunks during a practice on July 7, 2026, in Omaha, Nebraska. Photo by Brandon Tiedemann.
Creighton juniors Oswin Erhunmwunse and Jackson McAndrew landed on the third team, along with DePaul senior guard Layden Blocker, Marquette senior center Sanandra Fru and Xavier forwards Jovan Milicevic, a junior, and Mike Nwoko, a senior.
The coaches around the league appear to expect big leaps from both Bluejays to merit all-league consideration.
Erhunmwunse, a Providence transfer Creighton’s staff prioritized to plug the team’s void at center, averaged 6.9 points on 67.3% shooting, 8.3 rebounds and 2.1 blocks in 25.0 minutes per game as a sophomore for the Friars last season.
McAndrew could be a prime candidate for comeback player of the year if the league voted on such an award after playing in just four games last season before a preseason foot injury required season-ending surgery to address. He averaged 7.8 points and 4.4 rebounds as a freshman in 2024-25 and appears poised to make the leap the injury prevented him from making as a sophomore.
“This summer, he was really going through it, questioning himself, trying to figure out when or if it was going to come back for him,” Huss said prior to a recent practice. “Probably two and a half, three weeks ago, the light switch has gone on now, and I think it’s safe to say Jackson’s been at or near the top of anybody in our gym. He’s shooting the basketball at a high level.
“Probably more importantly than that, he’s found some of the new defensive principles and systems that we’re using, they’ve gotten to the point where they’re becoming second nature to him, so he’s able to fly around without thinking now defensively, and his length, size and strength are really impacting the game on that end. He’s just been an absolute monster on the glass, which being close to 235 pounds, I believe, now, and all of 6-10 with a 7-foot-some odd wingspan, so using his size and length to impact the game on that end of the floor is an unbelievable help to our team as we try to figure out ways for him to be impactful when those shots aren’t going in so he’s not kind of a one-trick pony that he once was.”
McAndrew was one of three players Huss chose to accompany him to New York, joining Green and USF transfer Wes Enis, who has emerged as a vocal leader for the Bluejays.
Creighton is one of many teams in the league looking to take a big step forward after the Big East only placed three teams in the 2026 NCAA Tournament, the three teams tabbed to finish in the top three again this season. Marquette dipped back into the transfer portal to supplement its returning core, Providence made a coaching change and subsequent roster overhaul and Xavier and DePaul both were aggressive adding transfers as well. New commissioner Tim Brosnan said on Thursday he expects at least half the league’s teams to make the expanded NCAA Tournament moving forward.
“I think that across the league, our programs have invested,” Huss said. “Financially, I think they’ve put resources into making sure that we’re the premier basketball conference in the country. I agree with the commissioner in that we need to be properly represented in the NCAA Tournament. In order to do that, we need to all have a successful nonconference season. I think the league was better than what we played in the nonconference a season ago and I think it’s up to the 11 programs here to do a little better in the nonconference this year so we can make his prediction come true.”
Creighton will have a chance to do its part in that area with a nonconference slate that includes games against Iowa, Nebraska, Gonzaga, reigning national champion Michigan and others.
Other Notes:
>> Creighton’s projected starting lineup goes 6-foot-8, 6-foot-10 and 6-foot-10 at the three through five spots with four others listed at 6-foot-9 or taller available off the bench. Huss reiterated that the program will continue to prioritize shooting and skill under his leadership, but the increased size on the roster is a nice bonus.
“The idea is, obviously, always to be as skilled as you can,” Huss said. “When you think of Creighton basketball, it says ‘Let it Fly’ on our floor and in our practice facility for a reason. We’re all about shooting, skill, guys that can make shots from 22 feet away. When they can do that and they happen to be 6-8, 6-9, 6-10, 6-11, it makes it more interesting.
“It’s not all that dissimilar to what’s happening in professional basketball now. We’re trying to get longer, trying to get more positional size, and at the same time, we want to not sacrifice skill. I don’t necessarily think we set out to get all that much bigger, we were just able to do so.”
>> Green had a breakout junior season last year for Creighton, averaging 10.5 points, 6.3 rebounds and 2.4 assists. He slid into an expanded offensive role by necessity, and Huss wants to see him continue to be aggressive despite the added size and firepower around him.
“I’ve a very unselfish player,” Green said. “I like to look for my teammates before I look to create for myself, and I feel like Coach Huss thinks that I as a player have the ability to create shots for myself, and sometimes I’m hurting the team by not taking as many shots as I should be and things like that. On one end, it’s me not passing the ball as much, but on the other end, it’s me creating more for the team and being able to put points up on the board.”
>> High school recruiting was a topic of conversation at Big East Media Day with the changing landscape including increased transfer portal, NIL and the implementation of the age-based five-for-five eligibility model. Whereas Villanova’s Kevin Willard said he isn’t recruiting high school recruits in the 2027 cycle to save space for returning seniors under the new model, Huss made it clear investing in young players will be a key part of his roster construction as head coach.
“I’m probably a little bit of an outlier in my views on high school basketball,” Huss said. “Maybe it’s skewed by the fact that I’m a long-time high school basketball and AAU basketball coach. I believe that the recipe for success for the last three decades has always been continuity. It’s been getting young players, attracting young players, developing young players, retaining young players. Whether that’s guys that have multiple years out of the transfer portal or that’s guys from high school basketball, I don’t necessarily care, but we’ve put a huge emphasis and we’re spending a ton of time on our class.
“We’ve got a couple commitments in this [2027] class and we’re continuing to recruit more. We’re going to continue to lean into the high school piece and then honor the process of trying to retain those players as they develop in our program.”
