Introduction
Despite a valiant effort from the Jays, Creighton’s season ended a few weekends ago at the hands of the first overall seed Auburn Tigers, 82-70. There are reasons to be optimistic of the future of Creighton men’s basketball, but with some long-tenured players leaving the program, Creighton is in a state of flux as well. Roles need to be established and leaders need to emerge to help Creighton be as successful as it has been in prior years. Here are some reasons why this trend of success might continue.
Late Season Production Increases
Late in the 2024-25 season, players who had not been major contributors earlier in the season found their roles, scoring more efficiently and more often. These players, including both starters and rotation pieces, helped to make Creighton a different team against teams like Louisville and Auburn than when Creighton was reeling with injury problems to Pop Isaacs, Ryan Kalkbrenner and Steven Ashworth.
First player that falls into this category was freshman forward Jackson McAndrew. McAndrew’s talents out of high school allowed him to space the floor but early on at Creighton he was not shooting at a strong clip from range. Through his first 10 games, McAndrew shot 15/51 from three, which equals out to 29.4 percent, including three games without a made three-pointer in the first 10 games of the season.
McAndrew’s ensuing improvement to finish with a 35.4 percent shooting split from three-point range does not tell the whole story. With the framework he established early in the season with his 15/51 start, McAndrew needed to shoot 37.5 percent for the rest of the season to achieve his final mark. Additionally, he was shooting the ball at his best late into the season, with a percentage of 39.7 in his last ten games.
Above is every game, with three-point makes (in green) and misses (in red), on the season for McAndrew. The numbers on the X-axis indicate the game he played, sorted by date. For example, game one is UT-Rio Grande Valley, while game 36 is Auburn. The black line is his shooting percentage at that point in time. Take note that as the season wears on, it becomes harder for the black line to move, even if McAndrew is shooting as well as he was at the end of the season.
McAndrew was not the only Bluejay to see improvements as the season continued. Both sophomore forward Jasen Green and freshman guard Fedor Zugic also saw improvement to either scoring or percentages or both. Looking at Zugic first, the shooting is a similar story to McAndrew: he started off slow, but came into his own late in the season. While Zugic does not have the quantity of shots that McAndrew has, he still managed to overcome some initial slumps and be productive late into the season.
His game order is funky because he missed some games early in the season and was not used in every game after becoming eligible, but the idea is still there. Zugic finished the season 16/40 from three, which equals out to 40 percent, but after his 11th game, his push to get from 27.8 percent to 40 percent required Zugic to shoot 50 percent for the rest of the season, including a game going 1/5 against DePaul at home.
It is also worth noting—perhaps foolishly—that the last player to have a similar track to Zugic was 2020-22 guard Alex O’Connell, who was deemed eligible because of a transfer rule change and the advent of a COVID year in the 2020-21 season. O’Connell’s production after burning his redshirt in 2020-21 was not stellar: 9.7 minutes per game, 3.4 points per game and just 38.1 percent from the field. He then went into the offseason as one of the only guards to have played significant minutes the last season and exploded for 32.4 minutes and 11.8 points per game in 2021-22. Zugic might not reach this ceiling, but his story right now looks very similar to what O’Connell’s was in the summer of 2021.
Finally, Green had been on a tear to end the season. He had been a starter for the first game, then wasn’t, then became a mainstay in the starting lineup to end the season. It may have been a gamble for Head Coach Greg McDermott, as Green was averaging just 2.6 points per game in his first 12 appearances, but if it was a gamble it paid off.
The above chart tells the story. Green was given more time and very rarely squandered the chance. He scored in every ensuing game from Dec. 21 to the regular season finale against Butler on March 8. He had a career high 12 points off the bench, but also reestablished career highs against Georgetown with 14 points and against UConn in the Big East Tournament with 19 points. His average for the season rose from 2.6 on Dec. 18 to 4.6 points per game to end the season, which required—in part—to average 7.6 points per game across the final ten games.
When Creighton was suffering from injuries, people stepped up, and these increases in production allowed for players to extend Creighton’s season further than what many national pundits thought possible.
The Ample Opportunity for Playing Time
The reason a lot of these players were able to get significant playing time late in the season and be trusted in crunch time is because a ton of different players were sent into the starting role early this season.
Creighton used more starting lineups this year than any other year under McDermott aside from 2014-15, when the Jays utilized 10 starting lineups en route to a 14-19 finish. This year they used seven, much higher than any season in this decade. Creighton’s only number close to seven was four in 2021-22, when players like Ryan Nembhard, Arthur Kaluma, Shereef Mitchell and Ryan Kalkbrenner were all injured for various periods of time at different parts of the season.
The lack of a coherent starting lineup hindered Creighton early on, but with their injury issues it had to happen that way. When Steven Ashworth was out, freshman guard Ty Davis came in. When Pop Isaacs went down, junior forward Mason Miller came in. These are just the prominent examples, but they likely threw the team out of a rhythm early in the season with a particularly difficult non-conference schedule.
The starting lineup being so inconsistent meant that so many different people started. Of the 15 Bluejays to suit up for McDermott and log a minute, 10 of them had started at some point in the season. This is more than any of the prior four years, despite 2022 being riddled with injuries as mentioned above. This implies that, in previous years, McDermott had one guy or a few guys that he wanted to slip into the starting lineup in case of injury. In this year’s case, with only one player starting every game this season, Creighton needed many different players to be ready to start, and many did.
What else this meant was that bench minutes were on the rise. Because of the experience players like Davis and Traudt, among others, got in their starting roles it allowed for these players to be used in crucial times later in the season. Davis was instrumental in getting Creighton out of the quarterfinals against DePaul in the Big East Tournament after Ashworth fouled out. Traudt was a huge factor in getting Creighton wins in the season, especially at home.
This resulted in the most bench minutes in the last five seasons and the highest percentage of bench minutes used in the last five seasons. Creighton’s percentage over the last five seasons was 22.62 percent of minutes being played by the bench. This season’s percent was 25.15 percent, higher than the 2021 mark by around 0.4 percent. That looks like just a sliver of a minute, but the starters would have had to play over 29 more minutes combined this season to fall to the mark in 2021. The bench was trusted to compete when called upon, and they did just that this season.
Uncertain Times
Creighton is on track to return just about 37 percent of its minutes played and 28 percent of its scoring from the 2024-25 season, the lowest marks since 2021-22, when McDermott had to retool with an entirely new starting lineup. Creighton, as a result, will look different next season. Part of looking different is relying on different guys, finding new leaders and acquiring new faces all together. Those who have been at Creighton for even some time will need to step up, but as McDermott has shown, Creighton will be ready for their next challenges without Kalkbrenner and Ashworth.
Credits
Special thanks to KenPom, Creighton Athletics and Sports-Reference for much of the data.