Near the start of official preseason practice, Owen Freeman said he’d “be back soon” for Creighton men’s basketball after offseason knee surgery. At the time — and consistently since — his head coach, Greg McDermott, has preached caution.
“He’s not as close as he thinks he is,” McDermott said.
Those words proved true. While Freeman returned to live action in time to play in Creighton’s second exhibition game and has played in each of its first three contests during the 2-1 start to the season, he’s nowhere close to full strength.
Freeman averaged just 17.7 minutes in those first three games, often appearing visibly winded on the court. He’s contributing 10.0 points per game on 66.7% shooting — down from the 16.7 points in 26.4 minutes the former Hawkeye was averaging last season at Iowa before a finger injury ended his sophomore season 19 games in. The path back has been more difficult than Freeman expected.
“My expectation, just getting back on the court, you think, like, ‘OK, this is just normal,’ but there’s a lot more that goes into it,” Freeman said on Monday. “Just being able to, obviously, get the touch, get the feel back, and just trust in the Lord’s plan, that everything’s going to take place, and that He has a plan for everything. That’s kind of what I’m what I’m leaning on, because I want to just get back to playing basketball the way I know how to.”
Creighton continues to take a cautious approach, with McDermott deferring to director of athletic medicine Ben McNair and head coach of athletic performance Jeremy Anderson. It isn’t simply a matter of Freeman shirking his conditioning.
“The surgery he had is four to six months recovery time, and we’re not to five months yet, so you really can’t do anything extra, because you can’t stress that knee anymore,” McDermott said. “Unfortunately, there have been some times where it’s puffed up on him a little bit, and that’s kept him out of practice, and every time that happens, you’re taking a couple steps forward, then you’re taking a step back. But he also has to listen to his body, and our medical team has to kind of watch that knee and make sure we don’t overdo it to where all of a sudden he’s missing weeks instead of a day here and there.”
With Freeman playing shorter spurts, McDermott has deployed a three-center rotation with Jasen Green and Kerem Konan also at the five. The head coach called their presence “very, very valuable.”
“Kerem is getting a little better every day,” McDermott said. “Jasen is, from a coaching perspective, I think I’ve said this before, when you put someone in the game, you want to know what’s going to happen. When I put Jasen in the game, I know what’s going to happen. He’s one of the few right now, probably because he has the most experience. It’s comforting when he’s in the game. He’s going to do his job and he’s going to help other guys do their job. The new guys, they’re so worried about doing their job, it’s very difficult to help someone else. So Jasen’s really valuable in that regard, and frankly, I’ve got to get him on the floor a little bit more.”
There are eight Bluejays averaging more than 15 minutes per game through the first three games. Only three of them, Green included, were on the team last year. By no means has the team looked like a well-oiled machine thus far, but that’s to be expected with the roster turnover.
“You have to have both [urgency and patience],” McDermott said. “I probably don’t have enough patience, but that’s just the reality of it as I take a step back and understand we’ve got a bunch of guys learning a new system, a new role, a role that’s probably different than what they played before. So any anytime there’s a lot of new, there’s a lot of thinking going on. When there’s thinking going on, your body doesn’t react quite as fast. So we have to get past that, where it becomes habits. Once we get there, then I think we’ll really have the chance to move forward.”
McDermott said he’s looking for daily improvement, though an illness going around the team has impeded that recently. He said on Monday he hoped to have everybody back soon. Communication has been a focus since summer workouts began, and McDermott said the team has improved in that area from nonexistent to often late, which isn’t much better. He’s looking for more anticipation moving forward, and he wants to see better pace in the quarter-court. McDermott described their halfcourt offense as “clunky,” and a cold start to the season from 3 hasn’t helped. The Jays are shooting 29.8% from deep through three games.
“I think we’ve had some decent shots but haven’t shot it very well in any of the three games,” McDermott said. “If you go back to the first half of Iowa State, we shot it really well, shot it OK against Colorado State. We’re going to have to shoot the basketball better. That’s, in large part, what this team is built on, is the ability to shoot the basketball. So as long as we’re getting the right looks, I think that the law of averages will sort itself out, and we’ll make plenty of them before the season is out.”
Sophomore Jackson McAndrew is among those who are struggling. He’s leading the team in 3-point attempts but has only connected at a 30% clip thus far. Josh Dix, a career 41.9% shooter at Iowa, is second in attempts while shooting 28.6% as a Jay. McAndrew, who shot 37.3% in conference play as a freshman last year, said keeping the confidence is key to pulling out of a slump.
“Obviously, I’m not shooting, like I want to be shooting, and there are some guys that feel that way too about themselves,” McAndrew said. “For myself and them, just stay confident and trust the work that we’ve put in and continue to stay in the gym and keep working on it, because obviously something’s got to change, but also know that we are great shooters. So just keeping that confidence.”
Creighton will have one more game at home on Wednesday against North Dakota to work some things out before heading to Las Vegas for the Players Era Men’s Championship.
McDermott began his coaching career at North Dakota as an assistant from 1989 to 1994. He also hired current UND head coach Paul Sather as a graduate assistant at Wayne State for the 1997-98 season.
“There are plenty of plenty of ties,” McDermott said. “Obviously that’s where I got my start. I’ve got a lot of great, fond memories of my time in Grand Forks. I still have a pretty good connection to a lot of those players, and certainly Coach [Rich] Glas, who was the architect of it all.”
McDermott isn’t the only one with ties to North Dakota. McAndrew’s father, Steve, a native of Fargo, North Dakota, played for UND while McDermott was there. He’ll be in the stands on Wednesday, and Jackson said he better be wearing blue.
“He was nothing like his son, let’s just go with that,” McDermott said of Steve, the player. “He could probably defend better than Jackson; Jackson might not want to hear that, but that’s true. Jackson shoots it way better. Jackson can catch a pass and maybe dribble the ball a little bit better than Steve could. But like Jackson, they won a state championships at Fargo South. His group of guys that came through UND during that five-year period had a ton of success, so like Jackson, he’s been a part of some really good teams.”
North Dakota is 2-3 with only one Division I win after splitting a pair of games with UC Riverside. The Fighting Hawks have five players averaging double-digit points, with two more scoring better than 8.0 per game. Greyson Uelmen, a 6-foot-2 sophomore guard, leads the way at 13.6 points per game while shooting over 60% from the field and over 45% from 3. Anthony Smith III, a 6-foot-1 freshman, is dishing out 5.0 assists to go with his 10.8 points per game. Reggie Thomas, a 6-foot-1 senior guard who has appeared in three games, is an Omaha Westside graduate.
Tipoff on Wednesday is set for 7 p.m. on ESPN+.
