A season of extreme highs and lows for men’s basketball culminated in March when the team went on a historic run in the NCAA Tournament to their first ever Elite Eight.
The heartbreaking one-point loss in that Elite Eight matchup with eventual national runner-up San Diego State can be considered a low, but the extreme low of the season was certainly the Jays’ losing streak of six games earlier in the season in December.
After a 7-0 start and two ranked wins at the Maui Jim invitational, the Bluejays fell to No. 14 Arizona and No. 2 Texas, before suffering losses to UNL at home, BYU, Arizona State and eventual Big East champion Marquette.
As fate would tell, coach Greg McDermott’s squad never gave up, came together and turned the ship around. The Jays would post a 14-6 record in the Big East, finishing third in one of basketball’s best conferences.
Then March came around and the team started playing their best basketball at just the right time. Having claimed a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament, the Jays took down No. 11 NC State, No. 3 Baylor, and No. 15 Princeton before being bounced out just shy of the Final Four.
Following the national championship game that saw the Big East’s UCONN dominate the field and San Diego State, the Jays were awarded a No. 12 ranking in the USA Today Coaches Poll and many experts had them in the top-10 of early rankings for next season.
Things were looking great for the Bluejays to start the offseason.
And then, one by one, the transfer portal announcements began to come out. It started with less surprising departures from the depths of Creighton’s bench.
On March 28, freshman guard John Cristofilis became the first Bluejay to enter the portal and has since signed with his hometown school, Seattle University. On March 31 freshman Zander Yates announced that he had entered the portal. The forward is likely to follow former assistant coach Alan Huss, who was appointed the new head coach at High Point. On April 3, the Jays lost their two backup guards. It was announced that the promising freshman Ben Shtolzberg would depart after playing less than 100 minutes in a Creighton uniform.
The longest tenured Bluejay on the roster, Shareef Mitchell, then announced his own exit. The senior understandably hopes to use his last year of eligibility in a place where he can get more minutes, the favorite landing spots being Ohio or across town at Nebraska-Omaha.
But on April 6, Bluejays fans were blindsided by the news that their starting point guard of two years, Ryan Nembhard, would be entering the transfer portal too, as announced by Jeff Goodman. The big question: why?
As a sophomore, Nembhard had everything a DI guard could want. In his first two seasons of college basketball, Creighton’s offensive system was a perfect fit for him as he helped the Jays to two straight March Madness runs, with a third being imminent.
The answer: money. This is the new reality of the impact Name Image and Likeness (NIL) is having on college sports. A record number of names are entering the portal not just in college basketball, but in football and most other sports across the NCAA, many hopping from smaller school to bigger school.
Creighton men’s basketball’s NIL money is good, especially being the biggest sports team in Omaha, but it can always be better. This is the case for Nembhard, who is now linked to Arizona.
The Wildcats are coached by Tommy Lloyd, who was formerly an assistant at Gonzaga where Nembhard’s brother Andrew, who is now a rookie sensation with the Indiana Pacers, was developed. There are rumblings of illegal tampering by Lloyd to get Nembhard out of Omaha, with figures on a rumored NIL deal worth a half to a quarter-million dollars.
Of the five Bluejay starters, Nembhard was the one who was least expected to leave the program. Sophomore forward Arthur Kaluma is on the other end of that spectrum with the NBA draft also being a factor.
Sophomore guard Trey Alexander and star center Ryan Kalkbrenner are also NBA hopefuls but have different outlooks since the Nembhard shakeup. Alexander could be persuaded to stay by the prospect of becoming the feature guard now that the spot is open. Kalkbrenner, who was recently engaged to former Creighton women’s basketball player Rachael Saunders, is being pinned as not NBA-ready as experts fear he’s too slow and the deeper shooting ability isn’t there yet.
Senior Baylor Scheierman is expected to return as is freshman big Fred King, but who’s to say since the shocking Nembhard news. Senior Francisco Farabello has already announced he will be returning. Freshman forward Mason Miller’s situation likely depends on whether Kaluma returns for next season or not, as he too wants a more involved role.
In the wake of the shocking Nembhard news, coach Greg McDermott addressed the Bluejays fans frustration and uncertainty of what the roster would look like, the main message being the that the transfer portal taketh, and the transfer portal giveth.
“The transfer portal works both ways,” he wrote in a post on Twitter. “We have enjoyed many players that have come from other schools. All of the young men that have decided to move on have made huge contributions to our program. I wish them all the best as they continue their journey. I hope you will do the same.”
McDermott has already landed four-star forward Isaac Traudt out of the transfer portal. The Grand Island, Nebraska native redshirted in his first season at Virginia. It must also not be forgotten that Scheierman himself was one of the biggest names in last year’s portal.
Leading the list of potential prospects to fill the void left in the Bluejays’ roster is former Utah State senior Stephen Ashworth. A career 40% shooter from 3-point range, Ashworth is a good fit for McDermott’s system and averaged a stellar 16.2 points per game last season.
Other names linked to Creighton are Cal Baptist’s Taran Armstrong and St. Thomas’ Andrew Rohde. The two best guards currently in the portal are Max Abmas, who has averaged 23 points per game at Oral Roberts, and Millard North five-star Hunter Sallis out of Gonzaga, but they are mere reaches for the Jays because of superior NIL funding elsewhere.
Anything can happen in the coming days, weeks and months of the offseason, but one thing is for sure; when the Jays kick off the new season in November, the roster will look very different than the one that made a historic run to the Elite Eight this March.