The Golden Eagles crack the seal on 2025 with a home game against a Bluejays team with a lot of questions swirling around them.
#8 Marquette Golden Eagles (12-2, 3-0 Big East) vs Creighton Bluejays (9-5, 2-1 Big East)
Date: Friday, January 3, 2025
Time: 8pm Central
Location: Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Marquette Stats Leaders
Points: Kam Jones, 20.1 ppg
Rebounds: David Joplin, 5.4 rpg
Assists: Kam Jones, 6.6 apg
Marquette Injury Update: Junior guard Sean Jones remains out while recovering from ACL surgery in January.
Creighton Stats Leaders
Points: Ryan Kalkbrenner, 17.2 ppg
Rebounds: Ryan Kalkbrenner, 7.8 rpg
Assists: Steven Ashworth, 6.2 apg
GIANT BLINKING ASTERISK: Ryan Kalkbrenner is only averaging 14.5 points per game since opening the year with a 49 point outing against UTRGV.
Creighton Injury Update: Junior guard Pop Isaacs is out for the year with a hip issue that requires a second surgery. He played in eight games this season and averaged 16.3 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 3.9 assists per game.
KenPom.com Rankings
Marquette: #8
Creighton: #52
Game Projection: Marquette has an 85% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 80-68.
This Season So Far: You can’t say that a season with nine wins in it already has been nothing but downhill for Creighton. However, it is very clear that this campaign is not going anywhere close to how anyone thought it might go.
Let’s start with the fact that Creighton was picked to finish second in the Big East this season, squeaking just Xavier by two points. The Bluejays were #10 in the KenPom.com rankings when they tipped off their opener against UTRGV, and #14 in the BartTorvik.com rankings. They were also #15 in the preseason Associated Press poll, so no matter where you turned, computer algorithm or hive mind of humans, everyone thought “this is a good Creighton team, maybe even an outside contender for a national championship.”
And then they were in a five point game with UTRGV with less than three minutes to play. While Ryan Kalkbrenner was putting up 49 points on 20-for-22 shooting, along with 11 rebounds, two assists, and three blocks. Hey, look, it’s awesome that Kalkbrenner put that game together. However, the Bluejays needed each and every square inch of his production on that night, and that seems like a bad thing.
But hey, Pop Isaacs missed that game as he worked his way back from offseason hip surgery, everything will be okay when they get him in the lineup, right?
Fast forward to a home loss to Nebraska by 11 points, which featured 1) Isaacs getting 25 points by going 5-for-12 from long distance plus seven rebounds and 2) Ryan Kalkbrenner shooting the ball one time and scoring four points. The one shot was a three-point attempt for a 7’1” 270 pound center who was voted Big East Preseason Player of the Year.
They followed that up with getting shelled by San Diego State in the Player’s Era Festival opener, then blowing a four point lead with five minutes left against Texas A&M the next night.
And yet somehow, they blasted #1 ranked Kansas off the court exactly one week later. Sure, it was a home game, but a 13 point win over the #1 team in the country is a big deal! Isaacs had 27 on 10-for-15 shooting, Kalkbrenner had a 17/10 double-double, things are looking up!
And then Isaacs was ruled out for the rest of the season so he can get another hip surgery to finish correcting the problem that he had when he underwent the original hip surgery in the spring.
And then they got beat by 24…… at Georgetown. The Jays were already losing in the second half when they coughed up a 17-3 run to the Hoyas. Kalkbrenner had 10 points on eight shots and added four rebounds.
Things have slightly turned for the better since then, as they’ve beaten Villanova and St. John’s at home on opposite sides of Christmas. A 12-2 run in the second half against the Red Storm turned the tide in Creighton’s direction in their most recent game, but they nearly didn’t hold on. The Bluejays led by seven with 2:45 to play, and a Steven Ashworth turnover with 13 seconds left gave the Johnnies a chance to win it at the buzzer but RJ Luis couldn’t convert two attempts in the final three seconds.
Good news: You beat a STJ team that seems to be trending towards an NCAA tournament bid! Bad news: You are not trending towards an NCAA tournament bid yourselves after being considered as one of the 20 best teams in the country heading into the season.
Tempo Free Fun: Before we do anything else, we have to acknowledge that there’s Pop Isaacs Creighton and Not Pop Isaacs Creighton. He played in eight of the Bluejays first nine games, including an outstanding 27 point, seven rebound, four assist outing in their home win over then-#1 Kansas, but he hasn’t played since. He missed the opener as part of his recovery from offseason hip surgery after transferring from Texas Tech, but he was apparently never 100% pain free and will miss the rest of the season to get that taken care of by way of another surgery.
And so we turn to the BartTorvik.com filtering system to get a view of what the Bluejays were before Isaacs dropped out of the lineup for the rest of the year, and what they’ve been since then.
Ranking: #53
Offense Ranking: #82
Defense Ranking: #41
Ranking: #65
Offense Ranking: #92
Defense Ranking: #75
So, uh. Creighton’s worse without him. That’s not a surprise. When you can put up the stat line he put up against the #1 team in the country, your team is going to be worse without you.
The problem for the Bluejays is that they weren’t good with Isaacs in the lineup to start with. Go back and read the This Season So Far section to get the idea. If you slip from #12 to #23, you can find a way to deal with that. Creighton went from “y’know, they’re not really a tournament team, Kansas win or not,” to “uh, what exactly was the plan for this season, anyway?”
The really big problem for Creighton? They’re crummy on defense. Don’t get me wrong, the offense is not great. But the Bluejays have been a top 40 KenPom defense in each of the last four seasons, and that was a surprise when it happened. Head coach Greg McDermott was not known for having lockdown defenses in the past to the point where I spent an entire Summer Check-In pointing out that based on historical trend, Creighton wasn’t going to get better than their #32 ranking in 2020-21. Their level of crummy isn’t because they don’t force turnovers, that’s been built into the system for the past three years. In fact, they’re slightly better at it now than they were last year per KenPom.com. The issue is that they’re no longer compensating for the lack of dead possessions. Their effective field goal defense ranking has slipped from #12 last season to #38 in the country right now. The percentage is slightly better though, so maybe that’s not really the problem.
The defensive rebounding, though….. hooooooboy. The Jays are giving up a second chance 28% of the time this season, which is sub-100 in the country. Last year, they gave one up less than a quarter of the time, and that was top 30 in the country. This is as good time as any to remind you that Baylor Scheierman was a top 100 defensive rebounder last season. He’s not there now, and no one — not even the 7’1” three-time Big East Defensive Player of the Year — is picking up the slack.
So you have a defense that just can’t quite get to the levels that it was at the last few years. When you partner that with an offense that doesn’t have an Easy Button, you’re in big trouble. Creighton’s not hitting threes like they did last season even with Steven Ashworth cashing 40% of his attempts overall, and McDermott’s Let It Fly style is, y’know, kind of dependent on hitting those threes, all the way to the point of shooting more than half of their shots behind the arc this season. They’re also turning the ball over a metric ton, posting what is easily the second worst turnover rate of McDermott’s entire time in Omaha, going all the way back to 2010-11. The ball is usually taken from them in a live ball turnover situation, as Creighton has the 17th worst “get it stolen from us” rate in the country. They don’t get offensive rebounds and they don’t get to the foul line, but those problems are by design and on purpose under McDermott’s direction. Again: They don’t do anything easily, they don’t have a reliable thing that they do, and even “throw it to the big guy” is not that great of an option, because if it was, Ryan Kalkbrenner would have attempted a shot at the rim against Nebraska.
The one thing about the Bluejays that should maybe worry Marquette is the fact that Creighton is #27 in the country in two-point shooting defense. Some of that is purely because Ryan Kalkbrenner can park in the lane and work on his top 100 block rate. Look no further than Kalkbrenner’s five blocks last year in Omaha when Marquette trotted out the exact same starting five that you’re going to see on Friday night because Tyler Kolek was injured and Oso Ighodaro was sick. Two catches to that: I suspect, given how much Creighton turns the ball over, that they have a truly outstanding halfcourt defense…. because they’re giving up a bunch of liveball turnovers that become layups and dunks at the other end. Gotta balance that out to get to #27 in the country on twos somehow, right? The other catch: Ben Gold shot 1-for-8 from behind the arc in that game last March, and the score was 67-65 Bluejays when we hit the five minute mark in the second half. I suspect that if Ben Gold can maximize his chances — and if Kalkbrenner’s going to camp out in the paint, there will be chances for Gold — then that’s going to cause Creighton to alter how they defend Gold, and that means Kalkbrenner gets out of the middle, and hey look, more space for Chase Ross, Stevie Mitchell, and Kam Jones.
“But Andy,” you say, “isn’t Ben Gold struggling with his shot this season?” Well, kind of. November Ben was shooting 31% after a 4-for-21 start. December Ben shot 48%, and is coming into Friday night on a 6-for-11 heater across the last three games aka in Big East play. Go ahead, leave him open and let me know how that works out for you, Bluejays.
Oh, and one more thing. In the Summer Check-In, I spent some time wondering how 6’6” Montenegrin Fedor Zugic fit into this roster after a late summer addition. Turns out, the NCAA wasn’t 100% sure about a guy who has been playing with pro teams in Europe since he was 15 actually being eligible as a freshman in the States. Zugic made his Creighton debut on December 21, so he’s played in two games for them…….. for a total of 10 minutes. I would greatly appreciate it if Friday night was not the day that “everything finally clicked for Zugic here in America.” Thank you.
Stat Watch #1: Kam Jones needs 1 point to pass Wesley Matthews for sole possession of the #10 spot on the all-time scoring list. He needs 16 points to pass Tony Smith for 9th, 18 to pass Brian Wardle for 8th, 19 to pass Travis Diener for 7th, and 27 to become the seventh Marquette player with 1,700 career points.
Stat Watch #2: David Joplin needs 4 points to pass Tony Miller and Dwayne Johnson and enter the top 50 on the all-time scoring list. He needs 17 points to pass Ron Curry for 48th and 19 to pass Rube Schulz for 47th. A 30 point game would jump him all the way to 45th.
Marquette Last 10 Games: 8-2 with three straight wins and victories in four of the last five games.
Creighton Last 10 Games: 5-5, but coming off back-to-back Big East home victories.
All-Time Series: Marquette leads, 59-40.
Current Streak: Creighton’s victory in Omaha with Tyler Kolek and Oso Ighodaro out of the lineup last season snapped a three game Marquette winning streak against the Bluejays. Creighton has won six of the last 10 meetings.
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