It was a week filled with ups and downs for the Creighton Bluejays, from the euphoria of beating the No. 1 team in the country to the devastation of losing a key player for the rest of the year. And it was truly a microcosm of the team’s season so far. With all the injuries and upsets, it’s been as crazy a few months as head coach Greg McDermott has experienced in his career.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever been part of a team that has had this many things happen going back to the start of practice at the end of September,” McDermott said Tuesday after Creighton’s 76-63 win over No. 1 Kansas. “I’m not sure we’ve had the whole team at a practice one time. It’s been different, crazy things [where] it’s hard to imagine they’re actually taking place — and at the worst time for them to take place, during this stretch of really difficult games.”
McDermott said all that before it was announced that junior guard Pop Isaacs, who scored a game-high 27 points on 10-of-15 shooting against the Jayhawks, would undergo hip surgery and miss the remainder of the season. Point guard Steven Ashworth and center Ryan Kalkbrenner have also been hobbled by injuries this season, both missing time over the past few weeks. Ashworth couldn’t play against San Diego State, in a game Creighton would lose by 18 points. Kalkbrenner sat out against Notre Dame, a contest the Bluejays managed to win narrowly. Multiple players have battled illness as well throughout a tough non-conference schedule. Creighton suffered three straight losses to Nebraska, San Diego State and Texas A&M, then rebounded with three consecutive wins over Notre Dame, Kansas and UNLV.
The high of the team’s massive win over Kansas lasted merely two days, as the crushing news about Isaacs was delivered before practice on Friday. There wasn’t much time to lament, however. Creighton was set to host UNLV on Saturday, with a chance to end its roller coaster of a week on a high note. CHI Health Center was packed with 17,080 fans for the affair, and the Bluejays were able to get the job done, winning 83-65 to improve to 7-3.
The game provided a snapshot of how Creighton will function without Isaacs, who was averaging 16.3 points, 4.8 rebounds and 3.9 assists, while shooting 38 percent from three. Constant lineup shifts and role changes have become the norm for this team. “Unfortunately that’s kind of the year we’ve been having,” said Jamiya Neal, a senior who transferred from Arizona State, after the victory over UNLV. “We’ve had that challenge of people having to step up all year.”
With Isaacs out, Creighton has to fill a significant scoring void. The team has already struggled at times offensively, averaging 78 points per game (141st in Division I) and connecting on just 33.7 percent of its threes (186th in Division I). Isaacs was one of the top perimeter threats on the roster.
Prior to the season, Hoops HQ talked with McDermott about replacing Baylor Scheierman and Trey Alexander, the program’s two leading scorers from last year. “We’re just trying to get good shots, and it never really matters that much to me who gets them,” McDermott said. In Creighton’s system, those “good shots” are generated by pushing the pace, spreading the floor and working off Kalkbrenner. Ashworth holds the keys to the offense, and more opportunities will certainly find him going forward. The fifth-year senior, who has been dealing with an ankle sprain since the loss to Nebraska on November 25, is shooting 40 percent from three on 8.3 attempts per game.
“[I was] a little bit more involved with some of the different actions that we were running today, with the capabilities of being on and off the ball,” Ashworth said after scoring 17 points and dishing out seven assists against UNLV. “And then really just trying to find Jamiya early in transition because he’s so lethal at that.”
Jamiya Neal, a 6-foot-5 guard, has been the X factor for this team amid its three-game win streak. He will likely continue to play that role in the absence of Isaacs. While his outside shooting has been unreliable, Neal is adept at creating his own offense, particularly in transition. “He has the ability, like Trey [Alexander] did, at the end of a shot clock to go get a shot,” McDermott says. “He’s got the length and athletic ability. He’s got enough wiggle in his game that he’s able to get to a spot and get a shot. He’s learning our system and the speed of our system, but obviously he’s incredibly fast. He’s electric going to the rim.”
McDermott has cautioned that it would take time for Neal to get acclimated to the program, just as it did for transfers like Scheierman and Ashworth. Sure enough, after a slow start, Neal has put together a few big-time performances. He scored 21 points in Creighton’s 80-76 victory over Notre Dame at the Players Era Festival and led the Bluejays with 19 points against UNLV. Neal makes a tremendous impact defensively, but his offense will be even more crucial given what Isaacs brought to that end of the floor. “We’d be dead without him,” McDermott said of Neal. “That’s just the reality.”
Men’s College Basketball Top 25 Rankings
Seth Davis’ rankings for Week 11. Purdue moves up, five new teams move in.Kalkbrenner has been slowed by an injury of late, but even prior to that, he was not as aggressive offensively as Creighton will need him to be now that Isaacs is out. Since scoring a career-high 49 points on opening night, the big man is averaging just 7.3 field goal attempts per game. He has the green light to take threes this season, which was one of the primary focuses of his off-season training, but he has attempted just seven total shots from behind the arc so far.
Fedor Žugić, a 6-foot-6 guard from Montenegro, is the type of proven scorer the Bluejays could really use right now. Unfortunately, the 21-year-old, who was playing for the German club BG Goettingen before signing with Creighton in August, has yet to be ruled eligible by the NCAA.
As far as how the lineup will shuffle, McDermott has plenty of options and can roll with whoever has the hot hand. He started junior forward Mason Miller against UNLV but began the second half with sophomores Isaac Traudt and Jasen Green in place of Miller and freshman Jackson McAndrew. Traudt and Green, two versatile forwards, combined for 27 points on 7-of-9 shooting from deep. McDermott said he will continue to call upon guards Shane Thomas and Ty Davis to round out the backcourt rotation. The coach spent his off-season trying to build the team’s depth. That will now be put to the test in a major way.
Creighton will need multiple contributions in its next outing — an away game against No. 10 Alabama, which ranks second in the country in offensive rating, per KenPom. Luckily that game isn’t until Saturday, so the Bluejays have ample time to get healthy and recover from a wild week. Given the circumstances, McDermott said on Saturday that the team might even take three days off.
Despite all the obstacles, Creighton still sits at 7-3 and should have its two top weapons, Kalkbrenner and Ashworth, back to full strength soon. It wasn’t what the Bluejays expected or wanted, but the crazy start to the season appears to have brought them closer together and provided added motivation.
“As cliche as it sounds, adversity makes us stronger,” Ashworth said. “When you’re a part of a group that’s really just the 14, 15, 16 guys in that locker room against the world, it’s an opportunity for us to look in the mirror and recognize, this is where we fell short earlier, and let’s not let it happen again. I think that this group is resilient, and we’ve been able to showcase that. And the journey is far from over.”
