No. 23 Creighton men’s basketball is a self-described work in progress, but after a slow start, the Jays put things together enough to secure a 92-76 win over South Dakota in Wednesday’s season opener at CHI Health Center Omaha.
The victory was the 500th of Coach Greg McDermott’s Division I career.
Twelve players saw the court, 11 scored and five reached double figures as the Bluejays pushed the lead as high as 24 before the Coyotes cut into it late.
Here are three takeaways from the opener.
Time to Hook it Up
The Bluejays were short-handed in the frontcourt on Wednesday, but the head coach wasn’t pleased with the lack of physicality he saw regardless of who was in the lineup, especially knowing the test that awaits them next week when they head west to take on No. 21 Gonzaga on Tuesday.
“We need to hook it up tomorrow,” McDermott said. “We need to hook it up Friday. We need to hook it up Sunday and Monday as we get ready for Gonzaga, because we’re not tough enough yet. We’re not physical enough yet, and we don’t need to do it because I’m mad and I’m upset. We need to do it because it’s the only way we’re going to reach our potential.”
Creighton surrendered 21 offensive rebounds (a 45.7% offensive rebounding rate for the Coyotes) and allowed 48 points in the paint in the first game of the post-Ryan Kalkbrenner era. McDermott said the issues were mental as well as physical.
“We got beat off the dribble,” McDermott said. “They essentially went to four guards there for a while and we had some matchups that weren’t great for us, but just the understanding of when I’m guarding a guy that’s a great shooter and when I’m guarding a guy that’s not a great shooter, and I need to be in help and I need to protect the paint a little bit more when I’m guarding a guy that’s a 25% 3-point shooter. We were having a hard time with that registering, so those are things that we have to get better at.”
Creighton got off to a sluggish start offensively with some stagnant possessions and cold shooting from the perimeter. Eventually, however, the Jays settled in and started to flow, finishing with 20 assists on 37 field goals and scoring 54 points in the paint. Nik Graves led the way with five assists, Blake Harper added four others finished with multiple helpers. The Jays scored 18 of their 24 fast break points after halftime as the Jays made a concerted effort to push the pace (whenever they weren’t giving up an offensive rebound, at least).
“Probably a little first-game jitters, but we’re an unselfish team and I thought at first we were kind of dribbling a little too much, maybe, and not finding the open guy,” Josh Dix said. “But as the game went on, I thought we were making the extra pass to the open guy all the time and it went really well. Owen [Freeman] started running the floor really well in the second half and we were able to get out in transition.”
Freeman’s Debut
Speaking of Freeman, the Iowa transfer came off the bench in his Creighton debut, and his first stint didn’t go well. He checked in at the under-16 timeout, bit on a pump fake for an and-one, got a layup blocked and subbed out after less than two and a half minutes on the floor.
He returned late in the half and missed a dunk attempt. However, he grabbed the rebound, scored the put-back and didn’t miss again the rest of the day, making his last nine shots including four dunks.
Freeman finished with a game-high 19 points in just under 19 minutes, though only one of his four rebounds came on the defensive end.
“It was a lot of fun just being able to go out there and just play basketball again,” said Freeman, who was limited in practice this week as he continues to work his way back from offseason knee surgery. “I was able to run the floor, I thought, pretty well. But like Coach said, I felt like me personally, I wasn’t physical enough on the on the defensive side and rebounding the ball. I’m going to look in the mirror and have a tough conversation with myself. But it was really fun to go out there and play with my teammates.”
McDermott said he started Isaac Traudt at the five in part to make it easier to keep Freeman’s minutes down, and the 6-foot-10 junior landed right near the top end of McDermott’s desired minutes range. Freeman said he’s not where he needs to be in terms of stamina, but continued conditioning and further reps are the only way to get there.
“I wanted to get in between 15 and 20 if we could,” McDermott said. “When he was moving well and when he looked like he wasn’t tired, I let him go a little bit, because game shape is game shape, and sometimes the other way you get in it is being in a game and having that adrenaline and being able to fight through it. I think he played about where I wanted him to play tonight. Obviously, he was efficient running the floor and doing some things, but defensively and on the boards, he’s just not there yet. He’ll get there, but it’s going to take some time.”
Rotation Questions Remain
With so much depth and so many newcomers, what the rotation looks like was perhaps the biggest question surrounding the team heading into the season, and one game in we still don’t have an answer.
In part out of necessity, McDermott started a lineup he said hasn’t practiced much together, with Traudt and Jackson McAndrew together in the frontcourt and Harper on the wing. In addition to Freeman coming off the bench, Jasen Green didn’t suit up for the game because of injury and Kerem Konan had to sit out one game before becoming eligible.
McDermott said he expects to have Green back in practice on Thursday, but his absence impacted the rotation on the wing and in the middle the junior likely to start at the three as well as play some minutes at the five.
With the game mostly in hand in the second half, nobody played more than 26 minutes. Austin Swartz was the third guard off the bench (behind Ty Davis and Fedor Žugić) but logged 18 minutes to 16 and 14 for the other two, respectively.
Additionally, joining Green and Konan in street clothes were freshmen Hudson Greer and Aleksa Dimitrijevic. McDermott said the Serbian 7-footer plans to redshirt this season. Greer could follow suit, but McDermott is still talking through the prospect of redshirting — based on the number of more experienced bodies on the wing — with Greer and his family and wanted to hold him out until they make the final decision.
Will the team be healthy enough for McDermott to roll with his preferred starting five on Tuesday? If so, who will be the first options off the bench, how deep will he go and what will the minutes distribution look like?
We’ll have to wait until the Bluejays arrive in Spokane to learn the answers to those questions.
