Wednesday marked the start of official preseason practices for the Creighton men’s basketball team.
The Jays have been conducting workouts throughout the offseason, but Wednesday was the first real step towards the 2025-26 season. Coach Greg McDermott said their fall workouts were focused primarily on skill development so that the first day of practice felt like a turning point, and the players certainly felt the difference.
“My mindset, at least, is you’ve really got to set the tone,” Jackson McAndrew said of day one. “I think this sets the tone for the rest of the year. So I’m excited, I think it’s going to be great.”
McDermott has said the start of practice is his favorite time of the year. While the offseason included plenty of experimentation and instruction, the problem-solving begins in earnest once the players hit the practice floor.
“I think there’s an excitement,” McDermott said. “I think guys are hungry to learn, and it’s a puzzle. As a coach, you’re trying to put together all these pieces, and this group could be as challenging as any just because we have a lot of guys that are probably ready to play, and not everybody is going to play, so how you manage that, how we how we take advantage of this depth that we have, because, let’s be honest, the last few years, that hasn’t necessarily been the case. The bench has been pretty short, but that will not be the case this year.”
Creighton only returns two starters and has added nine newcomers, including two big men who arrived on campus late in the summer. The coaching staff introduced many of the program’s foundational concepts during workouts, but the next month will be pivotal in getting all the freshmen and transfers ready to contribute.
“Obviously we have a lot of new faces that are going to play significant minutes for us, and how quickly we can get them up to speed is going to be critical,” McDermott said. “I think the work we were able to do this summer and to have guys like Isaac [Traudt][ and Jasen [Green] and Ty [Davis] back, I think, has really been valuable for these new guys, because they’ve been able to make sure they understand what our culture is all about, and then they talk in the locker room about what’s acceptable and what’s not.
“So I think that part of it’s been great. The communication is getting better, which is always a challenge when you have a lot of new guys.”
The departures of Ryan Kalkbrenner and Steven Ashworth left a massive void in leadership, particularly the vocal kind in practice. Sophomore point guard Ty Davis has been among the loudest voices in the gym throughout the summer and fall, and other returners like Jasen Green, Isaac Traudt and McAndrew have also made an effort to bring along the newcomers.
“All the returners, I think we’ve really helped acclimate them to everything we do, along with the coaching staff, obviously,” McAndrew said. “But it’s a process, and we’re still getting there, but I think we’re doing a good job with it.”
The coaching staff has seen its share of turnover as well with the departure Ryan Miller (and former graduate assistant Jahenns Manigat along with him) and the return of Alan Huss as associate head coach and head coach-in-waiting. Huss brought Mike Nesbitt with him from High Point to join the staff as an assistant while Mitch Ballock moved into a full-time role as well after a couple years as a graduate assistant. Creighton also has four new GAs this season: former Bluejays Geoffrey Groselle and Justin Carter, former manager Julien Berry and Malik Garner, who came with Huss from High Point.
Huss played a big part in leading the offseason work.
“It’s been great having him back,” McDermott said. “As you guys know, in the summertime, I kind of hand the keys to my assistant coaches anyway, and he had done it before when he was in my assistant, and obviously as a head coach, he’s done it over and over again. So he was able to install some things that are a little bit different to our offense to go with what we’ve done in the past and to take advantage of the strength of this team. Mike Nesbitt has joined us, Mitch is now in a full-time role, so couldn’t be more pleased with our coaches.”
McAndrew wasn’t around yet during Huss’ first stint on staff, but he’s been impressed with what the Bluejay alumnus has brought to the program since his return.
“He’s a great coach, and he’s a really amazing basketball mind,” McAndrew said. “He’s brought a lot of concepts I’ve never seen before, and just his presence too. I think he’s been big time for us, and he’s going to continue to be, obviously, huge for the program.”
Transitioning into a new era after the departure of an all-time great is never easy, but that’s the task McDermott and his program are facing as they move forward without Kalkbrenner patrolling the paint. He was the backbone of the team’s defense over the past four years, and nobody on the roster offers the size, length and shot-blocking instincts that will have Kalkbrenner’s No. 11 jersey hanging in the rafters down the line. The staff will have to find what style of defense fits this year’s roster best, which is still a work in progress.
“We’ve thrown a lot of things at the wall so far,” McDermott said. “I just think, as a coach, when you put together what you’re going to do defensively, it starts with how are you going to guard the post, and then how are you going to guard ball screens? Well, when we had Ryan Kalkbrenner, we didn’t have to worry about guarding the post, and we knew how we were going to guard ball screens, so it was getting everybody else on the same page with how we were going to do that.”
Making things more challenging is the fact that the team’s expected starting center, Iowa transfer Owen Freeman, has been sidelined by a knee injury he suffered in May that required surgery. He’s still a few weeks out from clearance to practice.
“Because we haven’t had Owen a lot, I don’t have a great feel for what he’s capable of one-on-one in the post defensively, and what his strengths are from a ball screen perspective,” McDermott continued. “So with the other guys, we’ve really done a lot of different ball screen coverages and worked with some different things on how we’re going to defend the post, and hopefully we get Owen back here in a few weeks and can fast-track him. I think we’ll be ever changing this year where last year, you kind of knew what we were going to do, and we were going to stick with them virtually no matter what happened. I think this team, we’re going to have to have a few tricks up our sleeve.”
The Bluejays have three weeks to explore and develop those tricks before fans get their first look at the team in an exhibition against Iowa State on Oct. 17.
