Depth, Defense and Other Preseason Notes for No. 23 Creighton Men’s Basketball

Ryan Kalkbrenner may be gone, but Greg McDermott is still at the helm of Creighton men’s basketball, and his track record plus his offseason additions were enough to land the Jays in the AP Top 25 heading into the season.

The Bluejays will enter the season ranked 23rd in the poll, though there’s still plenty of work to do before the games start to count with nine newcomers to incorporate and the team’s top three scorers from a season ago gone (four if you include Pop Isaacs).

“It’s been a process,” McDermott said. “Obviously, a lot of new faces, but part of that’s kind of fun as well, just watching them learn and grow and figure it out as time goes on.”

Creighton has four returners who logged more than 250 minutes last season, including three with starting experience. The staff added five transfers who played more than 500 minutes last season, four of whom were full-time starters and among their team’s leading scorers. First-year big man Kerem Konan logged more than 1,500 minutes in the professional ranks over the past two seasons overseas.

That’s 10 bodies with significant playing experience without even getting to freshman Hudson Greer (a four-star recruit ranked among the top 60 in his class), sophomore point guard Ty Davis (who played in 28 games with one start as a freshman), former walk-on and defensive sparkplug Shane Thomas (who played in 24 games last year) or the rest of the roster.

McDermott has leaned heavily on his starters over the last several years. Last season was the first time since 2018-19 that Creighton has ranked inside the top 300 in bench minutes at 26.3% (295th). To further illustrate the point, here are the percentages and rankings from the preceding six seasons (in reverse order): 19.4% (355th), 19.7% (351st), 23.7% (312th), 23.4% (317th), 19.4% (343rd) and 26.5%, (269th).

The last time the bench played a truly significant share of the minutes was the 2017-18 season when Mitch Ballock (now an assistant coach for the program) and Ty-Shon Alexander were freshmen. That reserve unit accounted for 35.5% of Creighton’s minutes, ranked 71st nationally.

One of McDermott’s offseason goals coming out of the loss to Auburn in the NCAA Tournament was to create a deeper roster. The staff accomplished the mission, but the result carries its own challenges.

“Depth is a tricky thing sometimes,” McDermott said. “You want to have enough depth, but too much depth can be problematic as well. We wanted to have a deep team, and we accomplished that, and we didn’t think Fedor was coming back.”

After months of uncertainty, Fedor Žugić learned he’d be eligible to continue playing for the Bluejays on June 27, two months after Creighton landed Blake Harper as a transfer to bolster depth on the wing. Similarly, the knee injury Iowa transfer Owen Freeman sustained in the spring that sidelined him for nearly the entire offseason put the program in a dicey position, and the staff used an open roster spot to address that by adding Konan in mid-August. Freeman managed to avoid any “hiccups” — as McDermott put it — in his recovery, and he’s already back in practice, perhaps a bit ahead of schedule.

“We probably ended up with two more bodies than we thought we were going to on a team that was already pretty deep,” McDermott continued. “So it’s going to test how unselfish we are, because there are going to be some guys that might play a role one game and then the next game, somebody else’s skill set fits that game a little bit better. Guys are going to have to be able to understand that we have to do what’s best for us.”

How deep does McDermott go? Which players emerge from the pack and lock down rotation spots? Those questions and more are the focus of preseason camp — and the exhibitions could provide valuable data points as well.

Other Notes:

>> Freeman’s absence has put a wrench in an offseason focused on incorporating so many newcomers and building camaraderie, but the staff has been ramping up his activity and involvement over the last two weeks. The team has a lot to learn still before the opener, but McDermott said he expects Freeman will adapt quickly.

“Number one, it’s great to have him back, just his experience and his voice, but I think it’ll be a pretty easy transition for him,” McDermott said. “One of the biggest challenges when you come to our program is the pace that we play with, and Josh and Owen have the benefit of having played with that same pace at Iowa, so that part of it isn’t new to them. It’s just learning the different things and the different terminology that we may have on both ends of the floor.”

Freeman has been taking mental reps the whole time, working out with graduate assistant Geoffrey Groselle on the side, and he’s already making a good impression on his teammates during his stints going live.

“He looks really good,” Isaac Traudt said. “He doesn’t look like he’s missed much. He’s been really locked in the whole time during his recovery, to kind of make sure he knows all the plays and how he’s accustomed with the system. So I’m really excited to see him full go.”

>> Life without Kalkbrenner has meant far more layups in practice than McDermott is used to seeing, especially with young guys like Konan and Aleksa Dimitrijevic playing heavy minutes at the five while Freeman has been limited.

Kalkbrenner’s presence over the past four years has allowed McDermott to run heavy drop coverage and mostly defend the post straight up. With the undersized Christian Bishop starting at the five before that, Creighton sent a lot of double-teams in the post and hard-hedged ball screens. Throughout the summer and fall, the Jays have experimented with a lot of defensive looks in search of what will fit this roster the best.

“You start your defense on how do you guard the post, and then how do you guard ball screens, and then you build the rest of the defense from there,” McDermott said. “Our challenge has been, Owen Freeman’s probably going to play a pretty important role for us, and he hasn’t really practiced. We’ve had to kind of throw everything at the wall in terms of coming with some double teams in the post and different ball screen coverages so everybody kind of learns everything, and then when we get Owen in the mix and figure out what exactly he’s best at, the rest of the guys are well schooled.

“But it’ll be back to more of the Christian Bishop days, where you have to provide maybe a little bit of help in the post at times, and you have to be creative with your ball screen coverages.”

Traudt said things have been a lot different in practice on the defensive end, but the players are embracing it.

“Last year, we could be in drop coverage the whole game because we had an eraser at the rim, and now we don’t have that as much, so we’re going to have to adjust,” Traudt said. “It’ll be kind of fun to have different styles we can throw at people. They’ll have a lot of things that they’ll have to game plan for.”

McDermott said it’s possible that what fits this team best is to be “ever-changing” in what they run.

Regardless of the scheme, the Bluejays still have plenty of work to do on defense. It would probably be fair to say the offense has been ahead in practice to this point, and whichever of the players in contention for roster spots show the coaches the most on that could get the nod.

>> Creighton received an infusion of youth this offseason, from traditional high school recruits to prospects from overseas to transfers, and many of these newcomers have popped in one way or another throughout workouts and practice, perhaps none more so than Miami transfer Austin Swartz.

The 6-foot-4 sophomore guard has been tearing it up in the practice gym throughout the fall, showing off a diverse offensive skill set.

“He’s just a good basketball player,” McDermott said. “He makes good decisions in transition if he leads the break. Obviously, he can come off screens and shoot it, he gets into the paint and he’s got a pretty good bag when he gets there in terms of different things that he can go to, and he’s made some good plays for his teammates. Now it’s just adjusting to what we’re doing defensively, and I think, in particular the last two practices, I’ve seen some really good growth from him in that regard.”

Greer has been impressive since he arrived on campus, showcasing a deft shooting touch, explosive athleticism and defensive potential on a team looking for someone capable of holding his own on the wing.

“He’s done a good job,” McDermott said. “It’s just there are a lot of guys at that wing position, and that’s the problem is they’ve all done some really good things, so trying to sort that out is going to be a challenge. There’s going to be a guy or two at that position that, frankly, probably deserves to play that isn’t going to play … Sometimes practice play is a little bit like the stock market. Guys play good and then they don’t play good, and it’s a little bit up and down. As a coaching staff, you’re looking for consistency, and for a freshman, Hudson has been very consistent.”

Traudt said Greer, a Texas native who spent his senior year at prep powerhouse Montverde Academy in Florida, doesn’t look or play like a freshman.

“He has a ton of confidence in himself and also in his teammates too,” Traudt said. “So he’s a great teammate. He’s been awesome, so he’ll definitely contribute quite a bit.”

Harper, the Howard transfer who averaged nearly 20 points as a freshman last season, put together arguably his best week of practice before the team left for fall break. His ability to score in the post or put defenders in jail in the pick-and-roll to make plays for himself or others has really popped.

Harper said he’s enjoyed competing with the other underclassmen.

“We be at each other’s heads for sure, but those are my guys,” Harper said. “It’s all love. We all have one common goal, and that’s wins in win column. Whatever that’s going to take, if that’s somebody else starting and me coming off the bench, just being unselfish and making sure that everybody keeps the main thing the main thing.”

>> The Creighton coaching staff this season will include four Bluejay basketball alumni, including Alan Huss, who has returned to Omaha to serve as associate head coach and coach in waiting for the final stretch of McDermott’s career at the helm.

McDermott has always given his assistants plenty of responsibility and a voice in everything they do, but “associate head coach” isn’t just a title for Huss in his second stint with the program, and he’s certainly not waiting to make an imprint on the team.

“Really, every decision we make, we make together,” McDermott said. “He’s heavily involved with the offense but also is a sounding board for me and Coach [Derek] Kellogg, who’s running the defense. We’re working together, really, on all parts of the program and recruiting as well. It’s really been an easy transition for me, and we’re just absolutely thrilled to have him back and have him in the role that he’s in.”

The other three are Ballock, whom McDermott promoted to full-time assistant coach after he served as a graduate assistant the past couple of seasons, along with Groselle and Justin Carter, who will serve as GAs this season.

“It’s different, and just that just that just explains a lot about the culture here, about the guys coming back,” Harper said. “They already played for Mac, and just coming back and helping a new generation, and they already know what it takes to do it at this level. So just teaching us, and us being sponges, and just learning it all.”

>> As has been the case every time he’s addressed his future since announcing Huss’ return, McDermott declined to provide a timeline for retirement.

“When the time comes and I don’t have the fire anymore, that’ll be the time I walk away,” McDermott said. “But I’ve really enjoyed this team so far. I’ve enjoyed practice, and I’m enjoying — I can’t say I’m enjoying that much trying to figure out who’s going to play and who’s not, because it’s as challenging of a group as I’ve ever coached in that regard, because there really have been 13, 14 guys that on given days have proven that they belong in the rotation, and obviously there are three or four of those that aren’t going to be.”

Creighton fans will get their first look at this year’s squad in Friday’s exhibition against No. 16 Iowa State.