AMES, Iowa. — Creighton men’s basketball opened the Alan Huss era with an eventful 83-80 exhibition at Iowa State on Sunday.
Freshman Katrelle Harmon led four Bluejays in double figures with a game-high 16 points in his debut as Creighton shot 51% from the field and 48.3% from deep inside Hilton Coliseum.
The Bluejays raced out to an 11-3 lead, gave it up midway through the first half then used a 15-5 run spanning the end of the first and start of the second build a double-digit advantage. The lead ballooned to 19 midways through the second half before Iowa State ratcheted up the intensity and ball pressure to cut the deficit to three late, but Creighton got a stop on the final possession to secure the victory.
“I think it was a good learning experience for both teams,” Huss said. “Iowa State is physical. They are unbelievable at bothering you and taking you out of what you try to do offensively. They were clearly the more physical team today, and they did it without fouling, which is a great lesson for us is to learn how to be physical without fouling. They did it with more discipline than us.
“The disappointing part for us was we came in with kind of two goals. They had three offensive rebounds in the first half; they had 13 in the second half, 19 second-chance points. And then the second point was live-ball turnovers, and 24 points off turnovers today. Those two things require you to make a bunch of jump shots to win, and that’s not our recipe for winning. We’ve got to be a little tougher in those areas.”
Here are three takeaways from the game.
Let it Fly Lives, but Ball Security Still Needs Work
Huss promised the “Let it Fly” style of offense would live on under his watch, and that certainly proved true in his team’s first game under the lights.
Ten of Creighton’s first 13 shots were 3s (six of them went in). The Jays didn’t score inside the arc until a spinning transition layup from BJ Davis out of the under-16 timeout. In all, 18 of Creighton’s 29 shots in the first half were 3s. They hit nine of them while only attempting 11 shots inside the arc.
The offense was a bit more balanced in the second half, with 11 shots apiece from the 2-point and 3-point ranges, but in all, 29 of Creighton’s 51 shot attempts were 3s, which covered up some shortcomings in other areas as the Bluejays drilled 14 of them and outscored Iowa State by 27 from the arc.
Five different Bluejays finished with multiple 3s as newcomer Wes Enis led the way. The South Florida transfer shot 4-for-7 from deep and added an and-one floater to tally 15 points. Austin Swartz matched him with 15 points on 5-for-10 from the field (3-of-6 from deep) and 2-of-2 from the line. Isaac Traudt went 3-for-3 on triples for nine points while Hudson Greer hit two of his five 3-point attempts while recording 11 points and six rebounds.
Preseason All-Big East pick Jackson McAndrew, who has been limited in practice recently thanks to a foot issue, started the game and played 23 minutes, hitting Creighton’s other two 3-pointers.
Wes Enis elevates for a 3-pointer against Iowa State. Photo by Mike Sautter.
However, the biggest bucket of the game for Creighton wasn’t a triple. With the lead cut to three and less than 45 seconds to play, Harmon found a piece of the paint and kicked it out to Swartz for a dagger with 38 seconds left. The junior is no stranger to delivering in clutch moments for the Jays, and he stepped up once again on Saturday.
“Just giving my point guard an outlet,” Swartz said. “I believe [McAndrew] set a great flare screen for me. I saw KT get to the paint, and I saw Jack coming with the flare. We work with that almost every day in practice, when we’re doing our shooting by ourselves. It’s just something that we do, and I was able to knock it down.”
The 3-point advantage allowed Creighton to offset losing the possessions battle by a significant margin, in large part due to the 19 turnovers, including six from Enis in 22 minutes and two from Davis in 23 minutes as they both had to deal with foul trouble throughout the game.
“I had this crazy script that we stuck to until we got four fouls early with either BJ or Wes or both,” Huss said. “We really wanted to play everybody no more than about 20 minutes today. Part of it is just a lot of guys getting a lot of opportunities, and we were a little out of rhythm, I thought.
“But they’re just they’re so physical. Every ball screen action, every off-ball screen action, they just blow you up, and we have counters to it, but they did a good job of taking away our counters with an exceptional level of discipline, and we’ve got to go back to the drawing board a little bit and be better when we see it again.”
Creighton ran its offense well enough to generate a ton of high-quality 3s, but doing so without giving away the ball will be a big emphasis moving forward.
Heck of a First Impression for the Freshman
Perhaps Harmon will eventually be the answer to Creighton’s initiation questions. Huss had to throw him into the fire against one of the most aggressive defensive teams in the country, and he passed the test with strong marks.
“He was really good today,” Swartz said. “For his first time being in an environment, first away game, first college game, all those things, and to play the way he did — I feel like he took pretty good care of the ball for the most part. Like Coach Huss said, they’re a really physical defense, and for his first time seeing a college defense, I think he played one great game, and that’s a terrific freshman.”
Harmon went 5-for-5 from the field, all at the rim, and also attempted 10 free throws. Harmon’s ability to get into the paint, absorb contact, contort his body, hang in the air and finish above the rim all popped. He finished with a team-high six assists, although that could total have easily could have approached double figures had his teammates finished more of the looks he created for them.
Sunday provided Harmon with an opportunity to experience the pressure of a clutch-time situation as well after the Cyclones closed the gap. Davis fouled out with 2:05 to play, and Enis followed him five seconds later. That left Harmon as the lead — and really, only — ball-handler for the last two minutes.
He turned the ball over with 70 seconds to go and went 0-for-2 at the line with 6.7 left, but he also finished through contact on the first possession after Davis and Enis fouled out when Creighton really needed a bucket then found Swartz for the dagger.
“He was really poised,” Huss said. “Even his turnovers, I thought, he just had a couple times where maybe he left his feet a little too early. I thought his poise was great, and other than knocking down a couple of free throws — hopefully we got that out of the way, missing those free throws late that could have iced the game — I thought he was really poised, really composed, and made really good decisions over and over down the stretch in some tense moments.”
Mixed Bag on Defense
Sunday was the first look at Creighton’s new, more aggressive scheme on the defensive end of the floor — one that somewhat resembles the way the Cyclones also play under Coach T.J. Otzelberger.
“First, a lot of respect for Coach Huss,” Otzelberger said. “I’ve known him a long time. He’s going to do a great job, and I think Creighton fans should be excited about the future. Defensively, they’re continuing to evolve and adapt. I think with each head coach, you have a way of doing things, and Coach Hus needs to do things and put his stamp on the program. There’s an appearance defensively that they’re going to try to dictate some things, and that certainly showed today.”
There was a lot to like. Creighton got off to a strong start as Iowa State missed its first four shots (with the Jays challenging most of not all of those attempts) and didn’t score its first points in the halfcourt until after the under-16 timeout. Creighton gang-rebounded well in the first half at least, and the Jays flexed their defensive muscles in the second by holding the Cyclones scoreless for nearly four straight minutes as they opened up the 19-point lead.
Wes Enis (2) and Jasen Green (0) look to contain Iowa State guard Jaquan Johnson off the dribble. Photo by Mike Sautter.
However, Iowa State also scored 44 points in the paint, shot 18-of-26 on layups and dunks, scored 16 second-chance points in the second half and only turned the ball over 10 times in the game, leading to just two Bluejay points. Creighton’s rotations out of traps were too late at times and closeouts to shooters were slow.
Finally, Huss told fans to expect more fouls this season, but 24 of them isn’t what he had in mind. As he said in his opening statement, the Jays will have to find that line of applying pressure without drawing so many whistles.
“They really picked us apart early with the short roll, which is something we talked about quite a bit in practice,” Huss said. “We got a little loose and a little wide. We did a better job of mixing some pick-and-roll coverages then late in the half to kind of get us back recalibrated defensively and made sure we stayed compact, and then the second half we went back to more of an aggressive coverage for the for the bulk of the second half and we did a better job of pulling in and making them making them skip the ball.
“But overall, other than just kind of letting them get it where we wanted it, they were really physical and sealed us a few times, where we’re not quite maybe as physical in practice as what they were. Other than some of those, it was a good a good first run, but we we’ve got a long ways to go.”
Swartz said the biggest difference this season is how aggressive the coaches are asking the players to be, especially the guards.
“We’re doing a little bit more icing, a little bit more just up on the ball, and when you’re off the ball, just having your hands activity and just trying to make a play,” Swartz said. “The ‘make a play’ might not be a steal, but it may be just cracking down on a little guy or taking somebody else’s man because they went and did their job. So just multiple second efforts is the biggest thing, and I think we did a decent job with that today. But just keep improving that, and I think we’ll get there.”
The Bluejays will get four days to work on what they learned against Iowa State before heading to CHI Health Center Omaha to host Minnesota on Friday for its final exhibition.
