The 2025-26 college basketball season has finally arrived. While the games tipped off nationally on Monday, No. 23 Creighton men’s basketball had to wait just a bit longer with a Wednesday opener scheduled at CHI Health Center Omaha.
“It’s always exciting,” Coach Greg McDermott said before Monday’s practice. “I think anxious, a little bit, from a player’s perspective, probably nervous from a coach’s perspective, because you don’t feel like you’re totally ready. I don’t think there’s a coach in the country on the first day that feels like his team’s ready to actually play, and I fall into that category. It’ll be good to get started. It’s time to get into the mode of preparation for somebody else. It was good to turn the TV on at noon and see some games on TV.”
Perhaps there’s an extra bit of nervousness from the coaching staff this year with so many newcomers in position to play big roles. The offseason has been all about teaching for McDermott, Alan Huss and the rest of the staff, and now that focus shifts more toward game-planning for the opener against South Dakota, adding a new wrinkle to the process.
“Now the practices become less taxing physically, but they come become more taxing mentally, because you add a layer of understanding the game plan and executing the game plan to what we’re trying to do,” McDermott said. “A lot of these new guys are still trying to remember, where am I supposed to go on this play, and when am I supposed to go there? Now you add the layer of, ‘all right, here’s what we have to do that’s specific to South Dakota to be successful.’ That can be challenging, and hopefully our guys cand do it.”
One of those newcomers is Iowa transfer Josh Dix, the Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln graduate who is excited to be back close to home for his final season of college basketball. Though he has a couple exhibition games under his belt, Wednesday will be his official debut as a Creighton Bluejay — with several family members sitting in their newly-purchased season-ticket seats.
“It’ll be exciting,” Dix said. “I think our whole team is ready, but for me, it’s definitely exciting, being from here. I grew up coming to games and stuff. That was kind of a dream as a kid, so it’ll be a dream come true for sure.”
Dix only scored 11 points combined in Creighton’s two exhibitions, but he averaged 14.4 on a 61.1 true shooting percentage as a junior last season with the Hawkeyes and was on the initial Naismith Award Watch List. He’s one of the best shooters in the country (from both the mid-range and 3-point arc) and should thrive as Creighton opens the playbook now that the games will count for real.
“It’s definitely exciting,” Dix said. “Huss, he’s an offensive genius, and Mac is too. Just the way that they play, they like to play five-out. I feel like that’s pretty exciting, the lane’s open at all times and just motion, it’s kind of free for all, kind of read the defense. I feel like, for our team, we’ve got a lot of guys with high IQs.”
Wednesday will be a big day as well for a returning Bluejay in Fedor Žugić, who is preparing to compete in his first season opener. The NCAA didn’t grant the Montenegrin guard eligibility until late December, so he was still working on the scout team at this time a year ago. Though he faced more eligibility uncertainty last spring, the 6-foot-6 guard is good to go with two seasons of eligibility remaining.
“I went through the whole summer with no problems with eligibility, so that was amazing,” Žugić said. “It’s definitely different, my first time going through this, my first season opener in college basketball, I’m excited. I’m more ready than I was last year, so I just can’t wait.”
The overarching theme from the offseason has been the team’s depth, and the difficult decisions awaiting the coaching staff when it comes to putting together a rotation. How unselfish this team is will be tested as McDermott said he has more players who deserve to play than he has minutes for.
“It’s been OK so far, but we haven’t played a game that counts,” the head coach said. “We’ll find out when that time comes. In the exhibition games, I kind of substituted very freely; some guys got more minutes than they’re probably normally going to get, some didn’t get as many as they’re normally going to get. That’s going to be kind of a game-by-game, matchup-by-matchup decision that we’re going to make. I think they understand that this team has a lot of depth and the days of guys playing 37 minutes are probably over.”
With the team’s depth, redshirting is still on the table for select players, though McDermott declined to divulge any names on Monday.
“We’ve had some [conversations],” McDermott said. “Nothing is finalized, and I’m not sure it’s going to be finalized even this week. You’ve got to kind of take a wait-and-see approach. It’s too early in the season, I think, to make a definitive decision.”
That depth could be tested on Wednesday as the Bluejays are less than 100% healthy heading into the season. The staff is taking a cautious approach with Owen Freeman’s return from offseason knee surgery. The Iowa transfer sat out the first exhibition, played 13 minutes in the second and only participated in the walk-through ahead of Monday’s practice.
Additionally, Jasen Green sat out practice Monday and first-year Turkish forward Kerem Konan will have to sit out the first game before becoming eligible for the Bluejays. Isaac Traudt and walk-on Josh Townley-Thomas could be in line for extra minutes at the five on Wednesday.
Unlike the Bluejays, the Coyotes out of the Summit League already have a game under their belts after falling 81-79 to Utah Tech on Monday. South Dakota’s top returning scorer, 6-foot-4 junior Isaac Bruns, put up 23 points in the opener, though he shot 8-of-24 from the field. Junior forward Jake Brack, a Skutt Catholic graduate from Omaha, played 26 minutes off the bench, chipping in eight rebounds, four points and a block.
Former Bluejay Josiah Dotzler transferred to South Dakota during the offseason but suffered a second consecutive ACL tear and will miss the season.
Last season, South Dakota played at the second-highest tempo in the country. Creighton is no stranger to playing with pace, but McDermott’s focus is preparing the team to operate at their own speed and not let the Coyotes dictate things.
“First of all, you’ve got to handle their full-court pressure,” McDermott said. “That’s different than what we’ve seen, so we have to be ready for that. We’ve got a couple days to prepare. You want to attack it, but at the same time, you don’t want to allow it to speed you up so much that you’re taking the shots that they want you to take versus the shots that we want to take.
“We’ve got to guard them in transition, and we’ve got to keep off the free-throw line. They do a great job of making a quick decision when they catch the ball, whether with a shot or a rip to the basket. They utilize the shot fake extremely well, and as a result, they get to the free-throw line a lot, and that’s a battle that we not only need to win this game, we need to win that every game.”
While giving proper respect to the opponent, Žugić said Wednesday’s opener will mostly be about the Bluejays. Everything they’ve worked on throughout the offseason must translate to the game, because the Jays don’t have the luxury of easing into the season. After Wednesday’s home opener, they’ll head west to take on No. 23 Gonzaga next Tuesday.
“I think it’s just going to be about us, about being ready, about staying ready, about sticking with the principles that we have and the game plan … I would just say stick with what we do and just be together and play hard,” Žugić said. “I think that’s going to be for not just next game, I think that’s just going to be for the entire season. I think if you play together and we stick to what Coach says and what we believe in, I think it’s going to be very hard to beat us.”
Tipoff on Wednesday is set for 7 p.m. CT on Peacock with John Fanta and Nick Bahe on the call.
