Coach Alan Huss identified two major questions surrounding his Creighton men’s basketball squad heading into its exhibition win at Iowa State — and it’s fair to say the 83-80 victory in Ames did not provide any definitive answers.
The first question lies on the defensive end of the floor where Huss is incorporating a more aggressive system featuring on-ball pressure and strategic trapping. Last week, Huss laid out his vision for how he wants the defense to look and what he needs to see from his team during the exhibitions.
“Hopefully, we can be a little bit more disruptive,” Huss said. “We were in stretches in our scrimmage against Omaha. We’d like to be, in certain areas on the floor … we want to really be aggressive. In other areas, we want to look very similar to where what we’ve done in the past. The challenging thing is when we get out to real games without the tape on the floor and without the ability to stop action as we fully built these habits, we’ve got to have some carryover from the practice floor to the competition, and that’s going to be the beautiful thing about these next couple of weeks.”
The Bluejays allowed just three points and no field goals in the first four and a half minutes of the game and held Iowa State scoreless for nearly four minutes in the second half as they extended the lead out to 18. At times, it looked exactly like it should with strong traps, proper rotations and defenders flying around all over the place. Creighton blocked three jump shots in the first half, held up on the defensive glass for the first 20 minutes and also got the stop it needed on the final possession to secure the victory.
However, the Bluejays also gave up 80 points (including 44 in the paint), allowed the Cyclones to shoot 18-of-26 at the rim (with five dunks), committed 24 fouls (including 15 in the second half), gave up 13 offensive rebounds for 16 second-chance points in the second half and only forced 10 turnovers (including six steals) that led to only two points for the Bluejays on the other end.
Overall, it was clear the players were still swimming in it a bit as far as where and when to be in rotation and how to be aggressive without going overboard in fouling.
“It’s been tough at times,” veteran Isaac Traudt said of the adjustment. “Obviously, it’s pretty much backwards of what we’ve done for three, four years now, because at Virginia, we did the pack line type of defense too. So I’ve just kind of trained myself that you’re sending [the ball] a different way, you’re being more aggressive, you’re trying to foul more than we used to with Mac.”
The second question surrounds the point guard position. Huss started veteran transfers BJ Davis and Wes Enis alongside returner Austin Swartz against Iowa State — three players who have primarily played shooting guard to this point in their careers and whose strengths seem to fit that role better.
While the guards split ball-handling duties, Davis was nominally the point guard and projects to play that role for this team. He finished with four points on 2-for-6 shooting, four assists and two turnovers in 23 minutes against the Cyclones. He made a few really nice plays, but I also thought he made some poor decisions after breaking down the defense.
Enis showed what he does best, pouring in 15 points on 4-of-7 from 3 plus an and-one floater. He also had six turnovers and zero assists, with the giveaways a mix of struggling to handle the ball under pressure and poor passing decisions.
Huss praised Swartz’s assist-to-turnover ratio in practice, but like Enis, he’s a bucket-getter by nature and put up 15 points and one assist against the Cyclones, though he also didn’t have a turnover.
“It’s been a work in progress, and I don’t have the answer there,” Huss said prior to the Iowa State game. “Aside from the defensive question marks right now that are something that we’re going to have to answer as a group, kind of collectively, over the next over the next couple of months, what our defensive identity is going to be, that’s probably our second greatest question mark. Who’s going to grab that? Who’s going to grab that that role and really decide they want to own it and not just own the good parts, but own the difficult parts?
“We’ve got to initiate offense with a little bit more fluidity right now, and that’s certainly not been a strength of ours thus far. We’ve got to do a better job of, especially when teams throw off our rhythm, of just really trying to organize us and having poise in that spot, and that’s probably the most difficult part about taking a combo guard and giving them reps at the point guard. It’s just those nuances that I think go largely unnoticed.”
The biggest bright spot from the first exhibition was the play of freshman Katrelle Harmon, the only point guard by nature on the roster (excluding Oakland transfer Brody Robinson, who is currently ineligible). He dazzled with a team-high 16 points and six assists (I counted 14 assists opportunities he generated) with three turnovers in 28 minutes.
Harmon’s ability to weave his way to the rim and read/manipulate defenses is tantalizing, and he very well could be the answer to the question at some point this season. However, the 6-foot-4 floor general from Seattle is a true freshman, and he’s still learning the ins and outs of performing on a day-to-day basis at the collegiate level.
Huss wants to see someone grab that position and make it theirs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s looking for whoever puts up the biggest numbers.
“I think it’s staying away from the flashy, major plays and just being solid,” Huss said. “Be a singles hitter that hits singles every time, that goes up and works the count every single time, that doesn’t need to be spectacular. It doesn’t need to be a grand slam home run on day one, it needs to be just a really simple kind of chip away mentality, and understand that if you just get us into our offense and we get shots every time, we have a chance to score, and if we don’t and we start their offense, it’s difficult for us to stop them.”
To Huss’ point, the Bluejays’ 19 turnovers against Iowa State compromised their defense and led to 24 points on the other end. When they didn’t turn the ball over, they shot 14-for-29 from deep.
Friday’s exhibition against Minnesota — the final dress rehearsal before the season begins on Nov. 2 — will provide those guards another opportunity to show Huss what they can do under the bright lights at CHI Health Center Omaha. Can the freshman Harmon stack two strong performances together? Can the upperclassmen learn from the Iowa State tape and clean up their play?
The Golden Gophers will provide a dramatically different challenge than Iowa State, one of the strongest defensive programs in the country that excels at forcing turnovers. Minnesota was only average in that category last year in Niko Medved’s first season in Minneapolis, though it’s hard to take too much away from 2025-26 as injuries ravaged his s roster.
Minnesota returned three double-digit scorers from last year’s 15-18 squad in 6-foot-8, 240-pound senior forward Jaylen Crocker-Johnson (13.4 points and 6.8 rebounds per game), 6-foot-3 junior guard Isaac Asuma (10.9 points and 3.7 assists per game) and 6-foot-7 senior wing Bobby Durkin (10.2 points per game, 39.2% 3-point shooting) and awaits an eligibility ruling for leading scorer Cade Tyson, who poured in 19.6 points per game last season.
The Golden Gophers defeated Omaha 72-52 in their first exhibition on Oct. 15 with Malick Kordel — a 7-foot-2, 275-pound transfer from Michigan — tallying a team-high 13 points on 5-of-5 shooting in just 19 minutes. Another impact transfer for Minnesota is point guard Kyan Evans, who spent his first two seasons playing for Medved at Colorado State before transferring to North Carolina for his junior season. He had eight points, seven assists and four steals against the Mavericks.
Tipoff on Friday is set for 7:30 p.m. CT. Fans can watch for free on YouTube or listen to the radio broadcast on 1620 the Zone. John Bishop and former Creighton director or basketball operations Jeff Vanderloo will have the call.
