Creighton’s 75-65 win over DePaul in Omaha on Wednesday was a necessary win to keep Creighton’s chances at a two-seed in the Big East Tournament alive. Marquette is on Creighton’s heels, and a loss to a team like DePaul—however improved the Blue Demons may be—would have harmed Creighton’s seeding outlook in the Big East Tournament.
This is not to say the win against DePaul was flawless. Creighton let DePaul hang around, started to create separation in the second half, then let the Blue Demons make a game of it again. Head Coach Greg McDermott even commented that DePaul was short-handed but converted on opportunities that were presented because of a lack of effort from the Bluejays.
“We’re gonna have to be better. You know, we’re gonna go into a hornets’ nest on Saturday, and if we think this is good enough we’re kidding ourselves,” McDermott said.
So what does good enough look like in the beginning of March? Let’s look at some of the problems and positives to the Creighton performance against the Blue Demons to analyze how Creighton can improve.
Creighton Has a Three-Point Magic Number (and a Doomsday Number)
The Bluejays have a three-point percentage that they go undefeated while obtaining. That number is exactly five percent greater than they are shooting on the season currently. Creighton is shooting 33.76 percent from the three-point line this season. If they get to 38.76 percent or higher in a game this season, they are 8-0.
Creighton did not hit this number against DePaul and has only hit this number in one of the last seven games (vs Marquette, Feb. 8). In fact, Creighton is more likely in their past seven games to hit their doomsday number. If Creighton manages to shoot five percent worse than their current three-point average, or 28.76 percent, Creighton is 3-4.
Above is a graph that helps to tell the story. Creighton’s season average is the straight black line. The green line is the magic number, while the red number is the doomsday number. Dots along the season progression are green for wins and red for losses. Each individual point is the shooting percentage for that specific game.
Part of this problem is, of all players with college experience who made a three last season and this season, very few Creighton Bluejays improved on their shot. For example, junior and sophomore forwards Mason Miller and Isaac Traudt both led the team in three-point percentage last year, yet both regressed this year. Traudt’s regression is slightly more understandable than Miller’s, as the Nebraska native has increased his three point attempts by about a shot-and-a-half per game from last year to this year. Miller’s dropoff has been huge, making just five three-pointers in his 36 attempts compared to making 49 of 108 last season. These falloffs have contributed to a large dropoff in team shooting percentages.
The above graph details the downfall that Creighton has had in this season compared to the prior ten seasons. Creighton’s current percentage (in yellow) is around 2.5 percent lower than their ten-season running total (in blue), and around six percent lower than their highest percentage in the last ten years (in green). Creighton is not shooting the lowest they have in the past ten seasons (in red), but if Creighton shot exactly at their average for the rest of the season, they would finish as the second worst percentage in the last ten seasons.
There are players that McDermott believes will get out of their slumps. One of those players is freshman forward Jackson McAndrew. In the last seven games, McAndrew shot 29.4 percent from three. McDermott commented on his slump, saying “Jackson hasn’t shot it particularly well the last couple games, but he’s doing other things… Jackson is improving in other areas, he’s just kinda going through a stretch where the ball’s not going in for him, and, you know, I’m confident he’ll get out of that.”
If Creighton can get consistent production from people like Traudt and McAndrew, Creighton can help themselves reach even the season average more often. It’ll just require effort from multiple Bluejays to help push the shooting efforts.
Rebounding Saved this Game (and Others)
The game against DePaul was Creighton’s fifth game all season where Creighton shot an equal or larger number of attempts than their opponent. Creighton and DePaul both had 56 shot attempts.
The blue and red lines in the above graph helps to showcase Creighton struggle matching the opponent’s shooting output. Creighton’s average on the year is 56.6 field goal attempts per game, down a handful of shots from last year’s team. Their per game results are in blue. Creighton opponents, in the red lines above, are getting 65.7 shots per game, which does not match the Bluejays’ regression from last season. Long story short: Creighton opponents are shooting more than the Bluejays are this season, more than they were even last season.
Against DePaul, Creighton managed to even the shots up because of a +20 rebounding margin. Senior center Ryan Kalkbrenner was a big part of this with his 13 rebounds. Kalkbrenner even said in the post game interview that “I think we knew we’d have a little bit of an advantage [in the paint] and I think that was a point of topic in practices leading up to this.” With DePaul forwards NJ Benson and David Skogman out, both at or above 6-foot-8, Creighton played against five guards a lot of the night, which allowed people like Kalkbrenner and McAndrew to grab a combined 19 rebounds.
What is concerning is that Creighton rarely out-rebounds an opponent by 20 or more, regardless of personnel for the opponent or quality of the opponent. Creighton has only done this twice this season, and the other time was against Fairleigh Dickinson. The Bluejays have only done this with Ryan Kalkbrenner on roster five times over Kalkbrenner’s 161 career games.
The lack of blowout rebounding efforts alone isn’t concerning, but when teams who are not playing five guard lineups come along and start to assert dominance on the offensive glass, Creighton’s inability—or lack of desire—to force a turnover will hurt their chances to win. Per KenPom, Creighton opponents turn the ball over 11.8 percent of the time and get the ball stolen 5.3 percent of the time. Both of those numbers are bottom five in the NCAA.
These factors—turnovers, rebounds, shots—are killing Creighton, primarily because Creighton loses the turnover battle and, as a result, the shot battle almost instantly. Creighton’s only chance at winning is protecting the defensive glass to the best that they can.
This graph tells us Creighton’s opponent’s offensive rebounding rate over every game this season. This statistic tells us how often the opponent grabbed an offensive rebound in a game. The blue line is Creighton’s season average. The black line is KenPom’s average for the NCAA Division One level. Lower is better. Notice that Creighton has five of their eight losses when allowing an offensive rebounding rate above the NCAA average. This is because losing the offensive glass compounds with loss of the turnover battle, allowing more opponent shots and making it more difficult to win a game.
Conclusion
DePaul is not the best team in the Big East, nor are they going to give Creighton much of a fight if the Bluejays are on their best. The reason this game was within 10 was because, as McDermott said, the performance was not sharp. The coaching staff knows that and so do the players. To win at Xavier on Saturday, Creighton will need a much more spirited performance to win their last opportunity at a Quad One game this regular season.
Credits
Special thanks to KenPom and Sports-Reference for much of the data.