Following a season-opening win over South Dakota on Wednesday, Coach Greg McDermott said his No. 23 Creighton men’s basketball team needed to “hook it up” in practice in order to get ready for this week’s trip to No. 19 Gonzaga.
McDermott called out his team’s lack of physicality on the defensive glass and in the paint after the Jays allowed a 45.7% offensive rebounding rate and 48 points in the lane during the 92-76 win over the Coyotes.
“I feel like, especially with this group, toughness is going to be a choice for us,” Jasen Green said after Monday’s practice. “All of us have it inside of us; we just have to be able to be able to dig deep enough to get it out. That Thursday practice after we came back, I feel like a lot of people learned a lot about themselves during the practice. A lot of people got so much tougher. I feel like the things we worked on are the things that we needed to, especially just seeing the stuff that we didn’t do as well as we thought we were going to in that Wednesday game.
“We worked on it a lot, and we definitely got a lot tougher already, but we’ve still got a long ways to go.”
McDermott said they were able to spend a couple days working on themselves before turning their attention to Gonzaga (2-0) on Sunday and Monday. The Zags will test that toughness with a big front line of Graham Ike (6-foot-9, 250 pounds) and Braden Huff (6-foot-10, 250).
Ike was an All-WCC performer a year ago, averaging 17.3 points and 7.3 rebounds in just 22.9 minutes per game, and he’s put up 16.0 points, 11.0 rebounds and 4.0 assists in Gonzaga’s first two games this season. Huff averaged 11.0 points in 16.7 minutes per game as a sophomore and upped that to 13.5 points with 7.0 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game against Texas Southern and Oklahoma. The Bluejays faced a similar frontcourt in their last game of the 2024-25 season with Auburn’s Johni Broome and Dylan Cardwell, who are both currently on NBA rosters.
“I think the biggest thing I could take from that is the physicality that we had to play with when we were going up against them, because those two guys were huge, probably some of the biggest players that I’ve ever played against, and it’s going to be kind of a similar situation, especially height-wise and strength-wise for these two guys that we’re about to go up against,” Green said. “So I’m definitely going to take some things from that Auburn game.”
Creighton had Ryan Kalkbrenner in that game, and now he’s in the NBA as well. The Jays’ new starting center, Owen Freeman, flashed his offensive potential with 19 points in 19 minutes against South Dakota, but he struggled at times on the glass and on defense as he continues to work his way back from offseason knee surgery.
“I wish he was back in shape, and 100%,” McDermott said. “Clearly, he’s not there yet, and he probably don’t be for a while, but it’s going to be a test for our front line. It’s two of the two of the better passing bigs in the country; they just happen to be on the same team with Ike and Huff, so that provides a lot of challenges. They have a lot of different ways to try to get the ball into the paint, and we have to do whatever we can to make those catches difficult.”
Creighton will have Green back in the lineup after he missed the opener, and Kerem Konan will also be available to make his debut after sitting out the South Dakota game. However, walk-on Josh Townley-Thomas, who gave Creighton good minutes in both exhibitions and the opener, will be out six to eight weeks after successful surgery for a lower leg injury, according to McDermott. Freshman 7-footer Aleksa Dimitrijevic will redshirt this season, and the staff is still discussing a redshirt for freshman wing Hudson Greer, who sat out the opener and was working with the scout team during Monday’s practice.
While Gonzaga’s starting bigs are both back from last season, the backcourt is almost entirely new. Adam Miller is in his sixth season and is playing for his fourth school. Starting point guard Braeden Smith, the 2024 Patriot League Player of the Year, transferred to Gonzaga last year and redshirted behind Nolan Hickman and Ryan Nembhard. Jalen Warley spent three seasons at Florida State, transferred to Virginia, re-entered the transfer portal after Tony Bennett announced his retirement and landed at Gonzaga, where he redshirted last season.
Former Grand Canyon wing Tyon-Grant Foster was granted a preliminary injunction to play this season froma. Spokane judge after the NCAA denied his waiver for an extra season. The 6-foot-7 wing missed all but one half of one game during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons while collapsing in the locker room and undergoing multiple heart surgeries. He scored over 1,000 points in his two seasons with Grand Canyon, winning WAC Player of the Year in 2023-24, and averaged 14.5 points in his first two games with the Bulldogs.
“Miller really shoots it,” McDermott said. “Smith was terrific when he was at Colgate before he transferred in, and he really runs the team and is great defensively. Grant-Foster is such a good slasher, and he can take it off the rim, he can lead the break, his back cuts offensively, his work on the offensive glass. Warley really changes the game too, because he’s totally different. He can switch some ball screens, he can provide a little bit more pressure defensively for them, and he’s a downhill driver. They can give you a lot of different looks. You talk about the two bigs a lot, but at the end of the day, they’re probably only on the court together 12 to 15 minutes, and the rest of the game, you’re dealing with a little bit smaller, more athletic lineup.”
Gonzaga has already faced another high-major team in the Sooners, winning 83-68 on Saturday, while Creighton only has the one game (while short-handed) against South Dakota under its belt. However, the Jays did see another top-25 team in Iowa State during exhibition play, and McDermott hopes that experience will help Creighton on Tuesday.
“I think we’re going to learn a lot, regardless of what happens,” McDermott said. “Obviously, it’s a very difficult place to play against an outstanding team that’s extremely well coached. You don’t know how your team’s going to react to that, especially when you have this many new guys, so it’s going to hopefully be a day of growth for us, one way or the other … We have a long ways to go before we’re going to be ready to tackle the Big East, so this is another step in that direction, and hopefully we can put our best foot forward.”
Tipoff at the McCarthy Athletic Center in Spokane, Washington, is set for 9 p.m. CT on ESPN with Dave Flemming and Sean Farnham on the call.
