Want to cap a season-changing four game swing? Grab a huge Q1 on the road.
Road kill. I think Dante Jackson started it. Watch Xavier Twitter after a big road win and you’ll those words, or word, depending on how you style it, pop up everywhere. Going on the road and leaving the other team in a crumpled heap means something. It means something in conference play, it means something to opponents, it means something on Selection Sunday.
Xavier has won two road games this season. That’s not a typo. Twice they have gone on the road and come back happy. Six times they’ve left the confines of the Cintas and trudged back with a loss. The road games come no bigger than this one. Xavier’s last was also a test. They weathered that against a brutally good Marquette team. Creighton will be just as big a test. To come away with road kill will take another Herculean effort.
But the reward is great. We said that these four games would define the season. Win one and you have breath, win two and you’ve set the course, win three… well winning three wasn’t really in the cards when this started. Xavier has changed, though. The defense is suddenly vicious, the offense has been good enough. Now, three wins out of four is possible. Standing in the way is Creighton.
Team fingerprint
Creighton’s offense is predicated on Ryan Kalkbrenner and their size inside. They don’t shoot very well from deep, but they absolutely dominate inside, shooting 60.2%, good for fifth in the nation. They still heave from deep, but just not was well as they have. Their offense is ball movement and making shots. They turn the ball over, they don’t offensive rebound well, they get blocked too much, and they don’t get to the line. They just make those inside shots relentlessly.
Defensively, only three teams in the nation cause fewer turnovers. Instead, they stifle shooters and grab defensive rebounds. It’s genuinely that simple. The Bluejays will try to make you miss and then grab it when you do. They also won’t foul you. They have held seven teams, including Kansas, to under 43% EFG. When teams top that number against them, the Jays are only 7-6.
Players
Starters
| Starting matchups | ||
|---|---|---|
| Steven Ashworth | Point Guard | Dayvion McKnight |
| Senior | Class | Senior |
| 6’0″, 175 | Measurements | 6’0″, 188 |
| 16.6/3.9/6.7 | Game line | 10.4/2.7/4.8 |
| 40.8/36.5/97.1 | Shooting line | 41/37.2/77.9 |
| This guy is a weapon. He spends a ton of time with the ball in his hands, and he’s elite in ball screen action with Kalkbrenner. Chase and he’ll lob, go under and he’s a career 38% three-point shooter. He’s bad at the rim but deadly from mid-range. He can be a little turnover prone and he’s not a super defender, but he does his job really well. Also, he’s nails from the line. | ||
| Jamiya Neal | Shooting Guard | Ryan Conwell |
| Senior | Class | Junior |
| 6’5″, 190 | Measurements | 6’4″, 215 |
| 11.4/5.7/4.1 | Game line | 16.1/2.7/2.1 |
| 45.9/33.3/66.7 | Shooting line | 42.7/39.1/82.7 |
| Neal spent his first three years at Arizona State before sliding over to Creighton. After a slow start, he’s shooting 41% from deep and averaging over a dozen per game in conference play. He’s all over the stat sheet, distributing the ball well and doing enough on the defensive glass. He’s also a strong defender on the perimeter. He’s a really solid glue guy for McDermott and the kind of player and coach would be happy to have. | ||
| Jasen Green | Small Forward | Marcus Foster |
| Sophomore | Class | Senior |
| 6’8″, 230 | Measurements | 6’5″, 215 |
| 3.2/2.7/0.8 | Game line | 8.2/4.4/1.9 |
| 50/30/63.6 | Shooting line | 41.8/44.3/71.9 |
| You’ve gotta start five, so here’s Jasen Green. He’ll play good defense and show up on the offensive glass, but he’s turnover prone and has a miniscule usage rate. He’s averaging a three-point attempt per game for some reason despite being hopeless from deep and shooting almost 70% from inside the arc. He’s… present. | ||
| Jackson McAndrew | Power Forward | Dailyn Swain |
| Freshman | Class | Sophomore |
| 6’10”, 220 | Measurements | 6’8″, 220 |
| 8.2/4/0.3 | Game line | 9.9/5/2.2 |
| 40.1/34.6/69.6 | Shooting line | 57.6/27.3/83.6 |
| This dude loves to shoot; he leads Creighton in shots percentage in conference play. Despite being 6’10”, he takes almost 80% of his shots from behind the arc, where he’s solid but not spectacular. He’s in a bit of a slump, having not scored double figures in a game since Jan 11 against Butler and not in a game against a good team since Jan 3 against Marquette. | ||
| Ryan Kalkbrenner | Center | Zach Freemantle |
| Senior | Class | Senior |
| 7’1″, 270 | Measurements | 6’9″, 227 |
| 17.7/8.4/1.4 | Game line | 16.1/2.7/2.1 |
| 66.5/37.9/72.3 | Shooting line | 42.7/39.1/82.7 |
| I know the Just Tall scouting report has been a hilarious way to get a rise out of Creighton fans for years, but the reality is that Kalkbrenner is also actually good at basketball. He’s solid in the mid-range and doing okay (albeit in few attempts) from deep, but the real strength of his game is that 81.3% shooting percentage at the rim on almost 7 attempts per game. He’s a good rebounder, especially on the offensive glass, and a good defender who rarely gets called for fouls. In pick-and-roll action, he’s a nightmare. |
Reserves
First off the bench is Isaac Traudt, a 6’10”, 225-pound sophomore big man. He’s the most efficient offensive player in the league, sporting an eye-popping 150.8 ORtg in Big East games thanks to a .600/.520/.857 shooting line in those games. He’s averaging 5.6/2.7/0.5 per game overall and is a deadly shooter. He doesn’t board or distribute or turn the ball over, just splash long jumpers.
Fredrick King is a 6’9”, 250-pound big man who averages 3.7/1.8/0.2 per game in less than 8 minutes of run. He comes on, does damage, and commits fouls. That’s his role. Mason Miller is a 6’9” beanpole of a forward who averages 1.4/2.2/0.7 per game. He has developed into a solid defender, but his 49-108 (45.4%) from deep last year has devolved into a .200/.161/.600 shooting line this season.
One guy to watch is Fedor Zugic. He’s a 20-year-old out of Montenegro who has been playing pro ball since he was 15 and had to wait a long time for an eligibility decision from the NCAA. McDermott blooded him in slowly, but in his last 3 games he has played 38 minutes and posted 23/6/5 on 8-15/3-8/5-7 shooting. He can get buckets when he’s on.
Three questions
– Can someone get Ryan Conwell going again? Xavier’s star guard hasn’t been very good recently. Since scoring 34 against Nova he’s put up efficiency ratings of 42, 94, and 63. He’s 4-19 from deep in that span and only 7-19 inside the arc. Xavier has won two of those games, but they need Conwell to get back on track in a game where shotmaking will be vital.
– Is this team only seven deep? Recently John Hugley has struggled to find minutes. He’s not played double digit minutes since the 7th of January in the first loss to St. John’s. Somewhere in there is the guy who got Duke for 19 and TCU for 16 in previous seasons. You just wonder if he can find it in time. Maybe he’s the guy on this team who can match Kalkbrenner.
– How does Xavier handle the size? Creighton is 16th in the nation in average height. They have guys going 7-1, 6-10, 6-10 in their regular rotation. Xavier plays a 6-9 guy at center and has a 6-8 guy playing the four. Will they feed in more Hugley? Use Swain and Hunter together more? Or, will they go small and try to force pace. Creighton loves to run as well, but there’s liking to run and then there’s trying to keep up with Dayvion McKnight.
Three keys
-Ball screen defense. Ashworth and Kalkbrenner are an incredible combination in the high ball screen. Kalkbrenner can pop just enough to merit being monitored, but their real strength is in roll action through the middle. Ashworth can hit from beyond the arc or mid-range, and Kalkbrenner is a deadly roller and is really tough to stop when he gets moving towards the rim. Xavier made UConn’s Diarra/Mahaney and Samson Johnson combination look like absolute all-stars in that action; doing something more like viable defense this time around is crucial. If they don’t, Ashworth and Kalkbrenner will combine for 55 and nothing else will matter.
-Make it a three-point contest. Creighton shoots 59.1% from inside the arc in Big East play, tops in the league. For reasons I can’t discern, they take nearly half their shots from behind the arc. Xavier is not a good interior defensive team, but they are elite in defending the arc. If they can somehow clog up the paint enough to make chucking from the cheap seats seem more enticing than watching Ryan Kalkbrenner dunk, they might be onto something.
-Find a way to the line. Xavier scores a quarter of their points from the line, a number that leads the Big East during Big East play. On the other end, Creighton’s defense only allows 10% of opposing points from the line and leads the league in that stat and in defensive free throw rate. The Muskies absolutely have to score from the line to prop up their offense; that’s a tall task against Kalkbrenner and Creighton. I’m glad it’s not my job to figure out how to accomplish that.