Following an 83-76 loss to Kansas State on Dec. 13, Coach Greg McDermott said his Creighton men’s basketball team had some soul searching to do.
The Bluejays gave up 51 points in the first half and trailed by 18 at the break, which McDermott called unacceptable. Heading into the game, he shook up his starting lineup, moving three of his top transfer additions to the bench.
That loss dropped the Bluejays to 5-5 on the season. They stood at 112th in the NET rankings, 104th in Bart Torvik’s T-Rank and 72nd in KenPom. It was the team’s worst record through 10 games since Dana Altman’s final season.
Fast-forward to the Christmas break and Creighton is on a three-game winning streak, each victory by more than 20 points.
“We’re in such a better place than we were 10 days ago, and I’m proud of the guys for that,” McDermott said after a 92-69 win over Utah Tech on Monday. “I think they’ve bought into each other a little bit more and bought into what we’re asking them to do and keeping the game maybe a little simpler than we were before, and the results have been better because of that. I’m really proud of the way that we’ve finished these last three games before break.”
The turnaround started in that second half against the Wildcats. After some issues in the first 20 minutes, the new starting five of Ty Davis, Austin Swartz, Josh Dix, Isaac Traudt and Jasen Green got the team off to a much better start, and McDermott cut down his rotation, essentially rolling with that five plus Fedor Žugić for the majority of the second half. He promised a short rotation moving forward if some things didn’t change.
After losing their starting spots, Nik Graves, Blake Harper and Owen Freeman responded to that challenge in practice leading up to the Big East opener at Xavier, and each of them made significant impact off the bench in a 98-57 blowout against the Musketeers. McDermott said that win was really important for his team, and the Jays followed it with an 84-63 win over Marquette in which Graves was the star.
“The Nebraska deal was one thing; obviously, Nebraska has proven they’re a heck of a basketball team, and you don’t play them and not shoot it well and have a chance to win probably,” McDermott said. “The K-State first half was obviously concerning, but when I watched the film of the second half of that game, I saw some signs of some things that I hadn’t seen, and I was hopeful that we could continue with that, and fortunately, we’ve been able to do that. The win at Xavier, and obviously then to back it up with Marquette, and then tonight, we’re moving in the right direction. We’re not anywhere near where we can be, I don’t think, but at least there’s been positive steps by a number of guys on our roster.”
As of Christmas Day, Creighton has risen to 58th in the NET, 52nd in Torvik and 44th in KenPom. Small sample size theater is certainly at play, but during Creighton’s three-game winning streak, the Jays rank 12th in T-Rank. The offense has been better, ranking 50th an adjusted efficiency, but it’s been the defense that has led the way, ranking 19th.
“I just think we’re more connected, and I think I think that unselfishness on offense, I think it leads you maybe to play a little bit more unselfish on the defensive end,” McDermott said. “This team, more than any team I’ve coached in quite a while, was more concerned whether my man scored rather than their team scored, and I think that mind shift is gradually changing, that, ‘Hey, it’s our responsibility as a five-man unit to make them shoot as difficult shot as possible.’ It’s not his job or my job or somebody else’s job, we all have to do our job, and when we do, our defensive numbers have gotten better, so that needs to continue.”
Creighton’s activity on defense has certainly ramped up, with more deflections, steals and blocks. The help side rotations, while still not perfect, have been far more consistent. The guy setting the tone has been one who admitted to me before the season that he didn’t really focus on defense at his last program in Dix. At Creighton, he’s embraced the role of guarding the opposing team’s best perimeter player and has held guys like Kansas State’s PJ Haggerty and Marquette’s Chase Ross in check. Against Utah Tech, he recorded a career-high five steals. Dix credited his teammates for preparing him for this role during the offseason.
“I think just our team, we have so many different guys,” Dix said. “So throughout the summer, having to guard Austin, Blake, Nik, different guys that do different things, it helped me a lot so that the matchups in the games, I can be more versatile and guard different guys.”
Dix is also Creighton’s leading scorer and the only Bluejay in double figures at 12.2 per game. He’s up to 36.6% from 3 after a cold start to the season and is second on the team in assists at 2.9 per game.
As a team, the Bluejays have forced 41 turnovers (13.7 per game) during the winning streak after averaging just 9.2 per game in the first 10 games of the season. Offensively, Creighton has shot 37% or better from 3 with double-digit makes in each of the last four. Making shots is part of it, but since the lineup change, Creighton has assisted on 65.1% of its field goals, up from 60.2% in the first nine games (with nearly half those assists, 67 of 145, coming in three buy games against South Dakota, Maryland Eastern Shore and Nicholls State).
“I think everyone’s just kind of sacrificing a little bit, and we’re playing more unselfish,” Dix said. “We’re turning good shots into great shots and keeping the ball moving, and I think that shows. We’re shooting a lot better from the field because we’re getting open shots.”
In the past four games, the new starting lineup has logged by far the most court time together. That group is plus-19 in just over 32 minutes. The only group that has outscored the opposition by more is Graves with the other four starters — plus-22 in just under 12 minutes, the third-most-used lineup.
“I think that starting lineup has helped us,” McDermott said after the Marquette game. “There are a few more talkers in that group than there was in the previous starting group, and I think the guys that are now coming off the bench understand now why those guys are starting and the value that that brings to our team, and they’ve all accepted it. I don’t expect them to totally like the role; they’re competitors, and obviously everybody wants to start, but I think they’ve embraced it.”
Here’s a look at player averages since McDermott made the lineup change.
With the lineup changes, Green has played nearly 90% of his minutes at the five, while Kerem Konan’s playing time has dwindled. Harper has played nearly two-thirds of his minutes (including all of them against Kansas State and Utah Tech) at the four after playing primarily at the three when he was starting. After the staff experimented with Dix at lead guard earlier in the season, he’s logged less than four minutes as the sole point guard on the floor in the last four, all when Graves was in foul trouble and Davis needed a breather against Marquette.
The reward for turning the season around including the best two-game start to Big East play ever (62-point margin of victory) was a few days at home for Christmas before reporting back to Omaha to begin preparing for the rest of conference play.
“These guys, most of them got home during fall break in October, but a lot of them haven’t seen their families since, except for when they come to games a few times,” McDermott said. “But it’s good for everybody to get away and then regroup on the 26th and get started again.”
While the 2-0 start is encouraging, the wins have come against two of the four Big East teams currently ranked outside the top 100 in KenPom. The path ahead will be much more difficult with Butler (No. 51) at home on Tuesday before trips to Seton Hall (No. 48) and Villanova (No. 24) after that.
It appears that McDermott has hit all the buttons needed to right the ship for now, but there are plenty of choppy waters ahead.
