The Bluejays have three returning starters but are going to need a lot of new names to make a big impact.
Team: Creighton Bluejays
2023-24 Record: 25-10, 14-6 Big East
2023-24 Big East Finish: Tied for second with Marquette, but earned the tiebreaker to end up as the #2 seed in the conference tournament.
Final 2023-24 KenPom.com Ranking: #11 out of 362 teams, down from their preseason rank of #12.
Final 2023-24 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #10 out of 362 teams, down from their preseason rank of #6.
Postseason: The Bluejays seemed to be flying into the postseason with a head of steam after winning seven of their last eight regular season games….. and then they got their wings clipped by Providence in the Big East tournament quarterfinals. Oops. Creighton righted the ship in the NCAA tournament, beating Akron in the first round and overcoming a late Oregon run to force overtime before downing the Ducks and former CU head coach Dana Altman in two extra sessions to reach the Sweet 16. They lost to Tennessee there, but hey: Three Sweet 16s in four seasons after none since 1974 when it was a 25 team tournament? Not too bad.
Key Departures: The next two sections are going to be split somewhat evenly because the fact of the matter is that there were only six guys on Creighton’s roster last year that averaged more than nine minutes a game….. and they all averaged over 21. Three of them are gone, three of them return.
The bad news for Creighton is that they’ve lost their top two scorers, who double as two of the top three rebounders and also two of their top three assists guys. That’s Trey Alexander and Baylor Scheierman. If we’re going by impact loss, then we flip the names around, as Scheierman was the leading scorer (18.5/game) and rebounder (9.0) last season. Scheierman is now with the Boston Celtics, fast on his way to becoming a Fan Favorite after being selected #30 overall and getting a guaranteed deal. Scheierman was out of eligibility, but Alexander was not. We can have a conversation about his choice to go pro if you want, but the fact of the matter is that when you’re 6’4”, you’d better be sure you have a spot in the draft when you stay in. Alexander did not, and he’s on a two-way contract with the Denver Nuggets now.
The third guy that’s gone from the list of Creighton Guys Who Actually Played is Francisco Farabello. He was sixth of six in scoring and rebounding — and actually got beat out on rebounding by a guy playing 7 minutes a night — but Farabello was a 42% three-point shooter for his fifth and final season of eligibility.
Key Returners: Creighton’s biggest returning player is literally their biggest player as Ryan Kalkbrenner elected to return to the Bluejays for a fifth and final season. The 7’1” center has Big East coaches believing he’s the best defensive player in the league as he has snagged that trophy for three straight years now, and he averaged 17.3 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 3.1 blocks per game last season.
The Bluejays return two more starters next to Kalkbrenner. Steven Ashworth was Creighton’s fourth double digit scorer in his first season in Omaha after transferring over from Utah State. I don’t know if we could call his campaign a perfect success since his stats were down, especially his three-point shooting which fell to a career low of 34.9%. Still, 11.1 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 4.2 assists per game is pretty good stuff. Much like Kalkbrenner, this will be Ashworth’s fifth and bonus season of eligibility.
The other returning starter is Mason Miller, who definitely has “oh, yeah, right, the other guy” vibes from that starting five. The only time you probably noticed Miller is if he was firing off a wide open three-pointer, because 5.6 points and 3.3 rebounds in nearly 22 minutes a night isn’t much. Over 45% of his threes did go down though, so you had to take him seriously when defending the Bluejays.
Aaaaaaand that’s it for notable returning Bluejays. I draw a line at 10 minutes a game for Notable and Not Notable, and as mentioned above, Creighton had six guys north of 21 minutes and no one else cracking even nine minutes a game. If you want to kvetch about Isaac Traudt, Frederick King, or Jasen Green, that’s what the comments section is for, but let’s be clear: No one without a pair of Bluejays-tinted sunglasses remembers them doing anything interesting last year.
Key Additions: Creighton has a fascinating crop of newcomers on the roster, and the fact that I started writing this article in late July and then just forgot to keep going after writing the Departures section until early September paid off for me. That’s because Creighton signed Fedor Zugic (6’6”, 215 lb, Podgorica, Montenegro) in late August. Why am I highlighting him when he’s such a late addition? Because Creighton isn’t even listing an eligibility class for him yet in September, and that sent me to the Google Machine to figure out his deal. Zugic was actually in the 2024 NBA Draft pool before withdrawing in time to do so, and pretty much anywhere you turn once you search for him, you’ll find someone claiming that Zugic could be a major player in college hoops in 2024-25. We’ll see, but that’s something to keep an eye on.
In addition to Zugic, who may or may not be a freshman at the age of 21, the Bluejays also add top 40 freshman Jackson McAndrew. The 6’10”, 220 pound forward from Minnesota is #38 in the Class of 2024 according to 247 Sports’ Composite rankings. McAndrew is, literally, the best ranked player to have ever signed with the Bluejays in the eyes of 247 Sports, but that’s because 2025 prospect Hudson Greer won’t sign until November. CU also brings in Larry Johnson, who is a 6’4” shooting guard out of California. He comes it at #115 in the Composite rankings, and so that means he’s a guy that we have to take seriously as a potential notable rotation guy for the Bluejays this season.
There are also two transfers on the board here. Jamiya Neal (6’5”, 190 lb, Toledo, Ohio) will only be in Omaha for this season, as he’s on his fourth year of eligibility after spending the last three at Arizona State. Neal had a breakout season in 2023-24, averaging 11.0 points and 5.4 rebounds per game, both career highs. He’s going to have to figure out his three-point shooting if he wants to play for Creighton, as he’s under 27% for his career and hit just 27.5% on more than four attempts per game last season. Pop Isaacs (6’2”, 180 lb, Las Vegas, Nevada) joins Creighton after two years with Texas Tech. He was A Guy right out of the gate, and in 59 games for the Red Raiders, Isaacs averaged 13.9 points, 2.7 rebounds, and 3.1 assists per game, plus a steal as well. He’s had some wide variance on his three-point shooting, connecting on nearly 38% as a freshman but only 29% last year. Isaacs has averaged 7.0 three-point attempts per game for his career, so we’ll see how that number works in the Creighton offense.
Coach: Greg McDermott, entering his 15th season in charge of the Bluejays and 24th season in Division 1. He has a record of 325-160 with Creighton and 605-355 overall when you add in his years in Division 2 as well.
Outlook: With three starters returning and a 15th year head coach, How Creighton Does Things is probably not going to change all that much from last season. The questions for Creighton come through in the form of figuring out how they’re going to fill the 110 minutes per game that we’re not defaulting to Ashworth, Kalkbrenner, and Miller. Trey Alexander and Baylor Scheierman did an awful lot of heavy lifting for this squad last season, combining to average nearly half of CU’s field goal attempts, nearly 40% of their rebounding, and more than half of their assists and their steals. The three returning starters get you pretty far down the road, but either A) those three guys start doing even more or B) Creighton relies on new guys to do that kind of work.
From a logical point of view, it does make sense for the new guys to do a lot of the work, because Creighton needs them to play so many minutes. This isn’t the worst plan, because it looks like they’ve got guys who can do that. Jamiya Neal and Pop Isaacs have track records that you should be able to rely on, and Jackson McAndrew didn’t pick Creighton because he wanted to sit on the bench doing nothing. Cross your fingers that maybe a couple of the guys who were relegated to deep bench roles last year can do a little bit more, and you’ve really got something here. Isaac Traudt and Frederick King were playing double digit minutes early in the season before trailing off, and Jasen Green seemed to be trending towards a 10 minute a game guy late in the year.
Or at least that was probably the plan for Creighton before they signed Fedor Zugic.
Here’s what I want to know about this: Did Greg McDermott see a major flaw in his roster that Zugic fills? Is he a major net positive for the entire situation? Or was McDermott presented with a major opportunity to bring in a talented guy with NBA Draft potential out of the gate and he jumped at it, no matter what it did to the roster chemistry that he and his staff had put together to that point?
Why does that matter? Because BartTorvik.com thinks that Creighton has the #13 team in the country to start the season, and that’s with Zugic averaging about nine minutes a game. More importantly to the point here, if you flip over to the Torvik RosterCast and pull Zugic out of the lineup….. Creighton’s still #13. There’s multiple possibilities of what Zugic could be for the Bluejays, but the fact of the matter is that Creighton had enough on deck to be considered as a dark horse contender for a national championship heading into the season without him. Is Zugic going to be the last thing that pushes the Bluejays over the line to be a national contender here. even more so than they might have been anyway, or is adding him to the roster a miscalculation by Greg McDermott that upsets the apple cart? What if it is a mistake but Things Were Promised to Zugic and McDermott finds himself stuck in a situation that he can’t get out of in the middle of the season?