3/16/2025
In League With Creighton Big East Tournament Edition
Game 1
Fifteen minutes into their Big East opener against DePaul it was looking like this column would be about 2 sentences. They had scored a whopping 11 points and were down 17. Little did I know, I was about to get sucked into the game of the year. After a first half where they looked flatter than a Roy Lichtenstein painting, they turned on the jets and found a way to get back into the game. But, DePaul wasn’t buying into the whole, “slow first half but the better team comes out in the second and boatraces the 10 seed” narrative. Layden Blocker was on a mission. Dude was raining shots like Slayer reigns blood. Everytime the Jays got close, Blocker would stand on his head, juggle five chainsaws and throw in another completely ridiculous shot. Jays were down 11 with 1:55 left. That’s when things got interesting.
Through a series of clever defensive plays, adroit fouling and quick strike offense, the Blue Jays looked more like the Phoenix, rising from the smoldering ashes of a likely first round tournament exit. When Steven Ashworth buried a cold-blooded three to tie the game at 62 and the Blue Jays got a huge stop to send the game to overtime, I was scraping my jaw off the floor. Ashworth had been unconscious all night….not in the good way people use it when a guy can’t miss, but literally like a person who had sustained a massive head injury and was seeing squirrels and stars floating around his head. But when it mattered, he thrust a dagger into the hopes and dreams of the long suffering 25 or so DePaul fans out there.
With a minute and thirty three seconds left in overtime, the Jays were up 8 and my sphincter muscles started to loosen a bit. Ashworth had fouled out, but there was no way they were coughing up an 8 point lead in 1:33 right? Wrong! Without Ashworth on the court, the Jays descended into madness. Throwing passes to wide open spectators. Gagging free throws. Falling apart like the protagonist in a Yates poem. When, who else, Layden Blocker buried a jumper with one tick left on the clock, we were headed for 5 more minutes of extra basketball.
Down a point guard and flat out exhausted, Creighton needed someone to step up and carry them down the stretch. Of all the potential heroes I could possibly conjure to mind, the very last on the roster would have been Ty Davis. Davis is a talented freshman who has logged roughly the length of an Eric Andre episode in minutes over the last two months. Up until the last 33 seconds of the game, Davis had taken 15 free throws in his entire college career. He stepped to the line and buried his last four, leading the Jays to an improbable 85-81 double overtime victory.
Game 2
Jamiya Neal had played 50 minutes the previous night. The kid has pogo sticks for legs, but following a game like that up with a battle against two-time defending National Champion UConn Huskies the next night seemed a bridge too far. Instead of wilting, Neal came out and played his best game as a Blue Jay. 19 points including 3 baskets from beyond the arc, five boards and three assists. Unfortunately, his celebratory dunk in the final seconds of the game was what most people were talking about afterwards.
Throwing down a double pump jam that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an And 1 mixtape with one second left was admittedly not a good decision. UConn, who seems to relish the opportunity to act as the aggrieved party, was indignant and Hassan Diarra came at Neal looking like he had shown up on the wrong night for the Golden Gloves. It seemed impossible to imagine that the more unctuous of the Hurley brothers would become Danny. Watching him play at Seton Hall, a viewer might have gotten the idea that the Hurley bloodline was not completely contaminated with arrogance. His recent heel turn transformation has been unsettling. Easily one of the most brilliant young minds in the game, a 3-year-long impression of Vic Morrow’s detestable Yankee coach in the Bad News Bears has been the most disappointing part of a great run at UConn. Of course, he made a point to turn the handshake line into his opportunity to share his own personal Jerry Springer warmup act. Stay classy, Danny.
McDermott didn’t seem to mind. His team had made UConn freshman Liam McNeely look more like former Mike Tyson punching bag Peter McNeely for most of the game. He torched them earlier in the year with 38 points, but at MSG on Friday, Creighton got him to channel his inner-John Starks….13 points on 6 for 20 from the field with no assists. Between that and Jasen Green throwing down a career high 19 points, the Jays took the Huskies out of the game early and left them there.
Game 3
Creighton has made the most of their short tenure in the Big East. Since they arrived, they have been outstanding, hovering around the top of the conference standings. However, they have not yet figured out a way to win the Big East Tournament. If they were going to do it this year, it would require beating the elite St. John’s defense on their home floor. The Red Storm have yet to lose a home game this year and as the number 6 team in the country, they are poised to potentially make their first Final Four run since Marlboro Man lookalike Bill Wennington was their center back in the 80s.
Creighton came out of the gate with their hair on fire in the first half. Potential Aphex Twin album cover model Jackson McAndrew looked like he was going to give the Jays another improbable hero, racking up 8 quick points in the opening 6 minutes. Neal was, as the kids say, “in fuego” again. They opened with a flurry of baskets and took St. John’s completely out of rhythm on offense. They clung to a 3-point lead at the half and seemed to have a genuine chance to win the game.
I have no idea what Rick Pitino said or did at halftime, but St. John’s came out in the second half like a team possessed. They amped up the already frenetic pace of the defense, forcing turnovers and even briefly flustering Ashworth and Kalkenbrenner, who are two of the most unflappable players in the country. They couldn’t miss from the field. Kadary Richmond and RJ Luis were outrageous in the second half, turning what had been a rather somber MSG crowd into a howling, snapping pack of wild dogs. They shot 72 percent from the field, 67 percent from three and ran away with the game late. Pitino, whose coaching resurrection seemed less likely than a 20 leg parlay, proclaimed his official return in the loudest possible way, by delivering the Red Storm their first Big East Tournament Championship since the dot com bubble.
3/7/2025
I’ve always despised Sean Miller, even when he was a kid. The sausage-fingered wunderkind who used to go on the Johnny Carson Show and do amazing tricks with basketballs. The human equivalent of a frisbee catching dog. You could tell that even Carson found the kid’s boundless self-confidence off-putting. When he was at Pitt playing point guard in the 80s, I used to go down to the Big East Tournament at MSG and yell horrible things about his mother and her relationship with farm animals. I was thrilled when he became an “accidental” FBI informant and blew his career to smithereens at Arizona.
I don’t know why I feel this way about him…I just do. Maybe I’m mean-spirited enough to just want to see a little flash of pain on his round, Jimmy Kimmel looking face. Maybe it’s professional jealousy. So when I write something positive about him, please understand that it is the literary equivalent of passing a kidney stone. I am almost ashamed to admit that the best coached basketball game I’ve seen all year was the game plan Miller threw together and his squad executed against Creighton last week. He exposed every flaw, took away every possibility and dismantled (or Freemantled) the Jays for forty minutes of shrill, shrieking misery.
Usually around this point in the season, Creighton has what I call a “roadmap” game. McDermott has done an exceptional job reviving this team from the brink of implosion, but Xavier illustrated the limitations he’s managed to hide for the last two months. If you want to beat Creighton, Miller gave the fully articulated version of how. The key is putting a body on Kalkenbrenner every time he comes within 15 feet of the basket. Xavier never let him get set up in the post and practically mauled him into catching the ball in places that made it next to impossible for him to score. Meanwhile, they swarmed every possible three point look and sprinted back to take transition baskets away. Possessions regularly degenerated into Jamiya Neal making a wild lunge towards the basket with 3 seconds left on the shot clock and firing up an off-balance prayer to no deity in particular.
For Creighton to make a sustained run in the tournament, they are going to have to figure out a way to beat teams that can physically overwhelm them in the post and on defense. Unfortunately, I can think of at least 8 teams that fit that description, and that’s just in the SEC. Creighton defends well, using spacing and excellent positioning to finesse the opponent into bad shots while rarely picking up fouls. But, when they face a team who relies on blunt force trauma as an offensive and defensive strategy, there really isn’t much they can do about it. Tennessee and San Diego State have ended their season in back-to-back years because while Creighton is an outstanding basketball team, they aren’t particularly skilled wrestlers.
They looked much better late in the week against Seton Hall, scoring at will in the post and from the perimeter. Even Frederick King, the offensively limited back up center who often looks as if he was born with flippers instead of hands, managed to rack up 12 points in nine minutes on the floor. Unfortunately, they aren’t likely to run into many seven win teams in the field of 64.
3/1/2025
Creighton rolled into last Sunday’s matchup with Georgetown looking to avenge an early season woodshed visit they took at the paws of the Hoyas. When Jaden Epps knocked down a jump shot 15 minutes into the game giving the Hoyas a 9 point lead, the game seemed to be devolving into something uglier than the Eraserhead baby. Instead, Creighton rose up, slammed their collective Jordans on the accelerator and went into the half up by 2. This is a different team than the one Georgetown beat like a rented mule in December. One key to the change has been the growth and development of McDermott’s most recent Swiss Army Knife, Jasen Green. Back in December the squad had begun to look like Ashworth, Kalkbrenner, Neal and two very tall cardboard cutouts. But, Green has a knack of making things happen when they need to. He provides urgency and toughness on defense and seems to have a preternatural ability to grab offensive rebounds at critical moments. Creighton cruised in the second half to an 80-69 victory led by Green’s career high 14 points.
The Jays rolled into the Depaul game on Tuesday higher than Bill Walton after a week in a lab at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. If ever a play typified the new direction of the offense, the possession at the 18 minute mark of the first half where Ashworth and Kalk were setting up the standard high pick and roll is a perfect example. The scouting report on Creighton all year long has been to switch defenders on the play and put a body on Kalk to take away the lob and dunk. Ashworth, who looks like a perfect rendering of what Brett Easton Ellis envisioned when he created Patrick Bateman, immediately noticed the switch and used that open from the switch to bury a three faster than Bateman could say “co-ed dormitory”. The Blue Jays spent the duration of the game helping to continue Depaul’s four decade long rebuilding project by taking control and never relinquishing it for a “not as close as it looks in the box score” 75-65 win.
2/21/2025
Dave brought me in to be the beat reporter for Creighton back in October, but due to a disagreement between myself, several law enforcement officials in Box Butte County, Nebraska and a surly, mealy-mouthed local judge who seemed to think that indecent exposure is actually still a crime, I haven’t had access to a computer. Luckily, my father taught me to make Pruno at a young age, a skill that has made me highly popular with some of the locals. Thanks to the intervention of my friends Spyder, Despair, and other members in the Cellblock 6 Brotherhood, I have been able to watch every single Creighton game this season.
Here’s an overview of the season to date…..
November
Things began with such promise. Ryan Kalkenbrenner helped the Blue Jays to a season opening victory against a spunky UT Rio Grande squad by managing to go 20-22 from the field and finish with a game high 49 points and 11 rebounds. At that point, I pretty much just assumed Kalk had locked up the Naismith Player of the Year award. The performance was so spectacular that certain facts that might have been obvious to me were obscured from vision. For example, why did Creighton just give up 86 points to a team that looked like they were sponsored by Chico’s Bail Bonds? Or, just who exactly is the point guard? Or, why are all these tall guys standing around the perimeter chucking threes up when UT Rio Grande seems to be conceding layups?
But, the Jays were undefeated and everything was lovely. Game number two solidified my conviction that this Creighton squad was never again going to lose a basketball game by pummeling the college formerly known as Fairly Ridiculous (Fairleigh Dickinson is the name the school has been using since its stunning first round upset over Purdue a few years back).
It wasn't until November 22 that my doubts started to settle in. In some twisted homage to Lee Harvey Oswald, the Jays celebrated the 61st anniversary of the JFK assassination by being nowhere near the building they were supposed to be in. In-state basketball powerhouse Nebraska overwhelmed Creighton with a flurry of two handed set shots and variations on the three man weave. In victory, Nebraska again won the rights using the term “Nebrasketball” for the duration of the season. Creighton managed to force an endless series of shots from the lowest percentage nooks and crannies of the gym in mustering a meager 63 points. And, the aforementioned Kalkenbrenner managed a line that even the Warren Commission wouldn’t believe. 38 minutes….0-1 from the field. Why give the ball to the guy who put up 49 in the opener when the baseline three point shot is so much more efficient?
It only spiraled from there. San Diego State avenged their Elite 8 victory over the Jays by holding them to 53 points in route to a 71-53 drubbing. They followed that with a Heironmous Boschian nightmare of a performance against Texas A&M and a close win against an astonishingly mediocre Notre Dame squad in the 7th place game of the Players Era Classic in Las Vegas. It was clear that, in the words of former Nobel Prize Winner and Nobel Laureate Michael Ray Richardson, “ship be sinkin’”.
December
The road to hell is often paved with good intentions and December Creighton basketball games. The month that seems to be the most particularly unkind to the Jays each year. And, to make matters worse, they started off the month with a matchup against the number one Kansas Jayhawks. But, just when Creighton’s 2024-25 season seemed to be completing its final revolution around the drain, the Bluejays played inspired basketball and ran Kansas out of the gym with a 76-63 victory. What followed was a completely confusing series of games in which Creighton caromed from losing a shrieking horror show of a 22-point loss to a Georgetown team that hadn’t won a conference game since the Eisenhower Administration to the loss of star transfer Pop Isaacs for the season due to injury to a remarkable 1 point nailbiter over an extremely talented St. John’s squad. It was hard to know what to make of any of it.
By the end December, several things had become apparent about the team. On the positive side of the ledger, Ryan Kalkenbrenner was every bit as good as we thought he was on both ends of the floor. Jamiya Neal is the best transition player the Jays have had in a very long time and can be downright explosive in the open court. Steven Ashworth should be forced to shoot free throws blindfolded to make things fair for the opponent. The kid is the closest thing to the platonic form of a “pure shooter” that has come down the pike in a long time.
On the negative end, there are an astounding number of gangly limbed forwards on the roster who seem like they could do real damage driving to the basket but feel an almost Manson Family sort of zeal for three point shooting. To make matters worse, other teams had finally caught on to Coach Greg McDermott’s heavy reliance on the high pick and roll and decided to take that away, making the offense appear more like the scramble to the lifeboats on the Titanic than the fluid, point-accumulating machine it usually is. The team is filled with several players who seemed to have heard of the concept of a point guard, but think of that as more of a theory rather than a necessary reality. There were moments of promise and moments of terror, but it was starting to feel like one of those NIT kinda years.
January
If there has ever been a stretch of basketball that typified my argument that Greg McDermott is the most innovative offensive coach in all of college basketball, it was this. McDermott has shown a commitment and level of artistry with the high pick and roll in the last few years that is every bit as breathtaking as Picasso’s Blue Period. But, what sort of offense would McDermott be left with if defenses genuinely committed to taking it away each game? Imagine Picasso’s Blue Period without him being able to use the color blue.
McDermott recognized this and went back to the drawing board. He reimagined the offense into something stunningly beautiful. Steven Ashworth emerged as the key piece. Ashworth, who had spent much of his 25 years in college career around the perimeter throwing in three pointers, became the centerpiece of the offense. Ashworth spent the month morphing into the point guard that Creighton desperately needed. While still lethal from three point range, Ashworth refined his passing skills and went all-in on making everyone around him more effective going to the basket. You still see the standard Kalk sets a pick, Ashworth runs his guy off of him and throws up a lob to Kalk for a dunk. But, these days, Ashworth spends much more time drawing defenders out of position, probing the weaknesses of the defense and exploiting vulnerabilities. No one is ever going to confuse Creighton with UNLV’s 90’s Runnin’ Rebels teams, but Ashworth seems to regularly fire baseball passes the length of the court to players streaking towards the basket for layups. As Ashworth has come into focus as the offensive leader, players around him have stepped up and found new ways to score. The result of this seismic shift that saw the Jays ending the month with six consecutive wins taking them from Bubble Purgatory back into the Top 25.
Early February
The Jays started the month white hot, winning a nail biter on the road against Villanova. Ashworth finished his 13 point, 7 rebound, 7 assist showcase with a remarkable 3-point corner shot to clinch the victory with 8 seconds left. And the wins kept coming. The Jays ran their streak to nine in a row before Liam McNeely’s 38 point shooting spree gave them their first loss in over a month to two-time defending champion UConn. The streak included an impressive win over the number 11 team in the country, Marquette. In spite of a tough loss on Sunday to Big East leader St. John’s, the Blue Jays have grabbed a firm grip on the number three spot in the conference going into their Sunday rematch with Georgetown.
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