When Creighton opened National Invitational Tournament play with a 73-71 win against Bowling Green on Wednesday, the place to be was Qwest Center Omaha. However, before and after the game, the place to be is the Bluejay Café.

For those non-hardcore Creighton sports addicts out there, the Café, as it’s known to many, is a Web site devoted to Creighton athletics. It began in September of 2005 and contains articles and other news items about the Jays. The most popular feature on the site is the message board, where fans use avatars (nicknames) and talk about CU sports, especially men’s basketball. The Café has two administrators, FreddyMac and Creighton Journalism Professor Joel Davies, aka cuProfessorX.

“The purpose of the site is to foster community among fans,” Davies said. “It is a place for students, fans and recruits to talk about Creighton basketball and other sports.”

Currently, the site has 2,055 registered users who have made close to 21,000 total posts covering 1,342 topics.

“The site used to be small, but has really grown in the past few years,” said Davies, who has posted 650 times. “With Creighton becoming more of a national name and this year with Booker being the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year, more and more CU fans are reading the board, as are opposing fans.”

The 15 players on the Jays men’s basketball team are the most discussed topics. However, almost none of them read the board.

“I have never been there, nor will I ever go there,” said senior guard Josh Dotzler.

“For us as players, the site really serves no purpose. Many of the things that we hear are posted on the board come from people who don’t understand basketball or what happens behind the scenes.”

Dotzler does understand why the Café can be a positive thing though.

“Obviously, a lot of people really care about Creighton basketball and that is good to see,” the Bellevue native said. “Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and it is a good place for fans to talk.”

Sophomore forward Kenton Walker says he has visited the site, but not very often.

Walker, who is from San Diego, does admit it was cool to see fans posting about him committing to Creighton.

“I can see that it is a good source for fans, but when they start ripping players, I don’t

get it.”

FreddyMac and Davies monitor posts on the site to control negative messages, especially ones about players.

“I think if it’s dealing with how they played in a game or are playing in general it’s fair game. When it’s personal though I’ll delete it,” FreddyMac said.

Last week, Davies posted a thread insisting that people do not post negative comments about players.

“When someone who has never met a player, doesn’t understand how hard it is to be a student athlete and loses sight that we’re talking about college athletes, it makes me frustrated.

“The Bluejay Café will not stand for that.”

The one thing that can’t be denied is the success of the site.

“People have a place to either talk about how great a game was or vent about how bad one was too,” FreddyMac said. “Unfortunately, there are a few people who seem to want anything even remotely negative about Creighton deleted. In my opinion, doing that would just ruin the board, though.”

No matter how far CU goes in the NIT this year and its record next year, the Cafe will remain the place to go before, during and after the game.