This was supposed to be a big year for Creighton.
One year removed from sharing a piece of the Big East title, the Jays were returning nearly everyone, including potential All-American Marcus Zegarowski. On the offensive end, they’d been sixth in the nation in three-point percentage last year, despite attempting more threes, proportionally, than well over 80% of teams. They were efficient, with one of the lowest turnover rates in the country. They moved the ball well, with one of the higher assist rates nationally.
In our updated bracketology this morning, they’re a projected eight-seed.
That’s getting close to bubble territory.
What’s gone wrong?
A mix of things.
Contrary to expectation, it hasn’t been fully on the team’s defense. Per KenPom, Greg McDermott’s team’s been more efficient on that end than they were last year. Their defense isn’t good. They allowed Georgetown to score 86 on Wednesday. They allowed Marquette to score 89 in a slow-paced game back in December. But it hasn’t been the whole story, and it’s an area where Creighton’s performed better than, say, Iowa.
The more surprising development has been that the offense has taken a step back. Specifically, the shooters have taken a step back.
Marcus Zegarowski is still shooting north of 40%, but Mitch Ballock’s three-point accuracy’s dropped from 43.6% to 38.5%. Ty-Shon Alexander, the one piece of the core that left, isn’t there to do his part. The team’s shooting even more threes than last season—44.6% of field goal attempts, compared to 42.7%—but they’re making fewer—37.0%, compared to 38.7%. It might not seem like a huge difference, but their turnover rate’s improved, their efficiency inside the arc’s improved, their free throws have worsened but Creighton doesn’t get to the line that often (not to discount this—it’s certaintly part of it), and the offense has still dropped from third in adjusted efficiency last year to tenth so far this season. Against Butler, Creighton managed just 66 points in an Overtime game. Against Providence, they scored only 70.
Those four losses—Georgetown, Marquette, Butler, and Providence—are cement shoes on the résumé’s feet. None of those teams are currently projected to make the NIT. Only one of the losses—the Butler one—came on the road. And with only four games played so far against projected tournament teams (Creighton is, for its part, 3-1 in those contests), there isn’t a lot to pull it up.
Creighton is better than the typical eight-seed. If that current projection holds, they’ll line up as a headache for a one-seed in the second round. But their worst performances have come at the wrong times, and their overall ability hasn’t been strong enough to keep them afloat.
The rest of the movement from the last two days:
Moving Up: Rutgers, BYU
BYU pulverized Portland last night. This is not surprising. Portland is bad. But models didn’t expect BYU to beat the Pilots that easily, and the end result is that the impression of BYU, going forward, is that they’re a much clearer second-best team in the WCC than was previously true. There are a lot of land mines between them and the dance, but their median simulation results in them claiming a six-seed in our bracket. That’s not only pretty safely in the field. It’s a spot from which you can do a lot.
Also moving up two rungs is Rutgers, who climbs to a five-seed after reaching a détente with the bubble. Rutgers’s results so far have been streaky: A five-game losing streak, lowlighted by a 23-point defeat in East Lansing, followed by four straight wins, highlighted by a 30-point victory over the guys from East Lansing. But the Scarlet Knights aren’t really a streaky team. Only one of those four wins, looking at it now, really looks like an upset. Only one of those losses, looking at it now, really looks like an upset. It was a scheduling quirk, not a bust and a boom. But to be fair, Steve Pikiell’s guys are playing a bit better now than they were two weeks ago.
Moving Down: Virginia Tech, Oklahoma State, Creighton, Florida
Our biggest movers downward (who stayed in the field, which excludes Oregon for the moment) each dropped two seed lines. We’ve addressed Creighton, and their loss was the most egregious, but there were some bad ones elsewhere as well. Virginia Tech lost at Pitt. Oklahoma State lost at TCU. Florida lost at home to South Carolina.
If we were to rank these in order of severity, Florida would probably be next behind Creighton, followed by Virginia Tech and Oklahoma State. In terms of the magnitude of the change in projection, though, they all accomplished about the same thing.
Moving In: VCU, Western Kentucky
Western Kentucky isn’t really in in our bracket. Our simulations’ median cut line is at 47, and the Hilltoppers are the projected 49th overall seed. But, literally speaking, they’re in our bracket this morning, because putting an “insert bid thief here” block in that spot would…well, I guess there’d be nothing wrong with doing that, but for the time being, that’s not what we do. Anyway, take Western Kentucky with a grain of salt. Look at the NIT Bracketology. They’re in there too.
VCU, though, is legitimately across the cut line in their median simulation. Not by a lot—they’re only an eleven-seed—but by enough. They did what was expected of them on Wednesday, winning narrowly at Rhode Island, but it had been enough of a tossup in projections that their median simulation now has an additional win to it, something that was aided by Saint Louis’s continued stagger. One win’s a lot when you’re on the bubble.
Moving Out: Oregon, Saint Louis (auto-bid)
On the Saint Louis topic, the Billikens are no longer the most likely team to win the Atlantic 10 tournament. That is now St. Bonaventure, who’s been the projected highest-seeded A-10 team for a while now. SLU is also in pretty big danger of missing the NIT, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss. What we will discuss here is that SLU has really, really struggled in their two games since returning from that long coronavirus break. Making matters worse, one of their nonconference wins—the NC State one—worsened dramatically while they were away. Will they figure it out? There’s certainly time for that to happen. But as we’ve talked about before, it’s going to be hard for the committee to parse the differing effects of Covid in a manner that’s fair to every team. Right now, SLU’s best bet is getting its feet back under it and finding a way to win an A-10 tournament, which is a tournament right now in which the Bonnies, VCU, Richmond, and even Davidson should be feeling comparably good about their chances.
As for Oregon.
Wow.
On the nights before we update the bracket, we wait up for the last game to end so we can run the simulations. Usually, this means something like waiting for Gonzaga to finish licking their lips after devouring a middle-of-the-WCC opponent, or staring blankly at the ESPN App while we wait for a Mountain West game to go final.
Last night, it meant waiting to see if Oregon would really do it—if Oregon would really lose at home to Washington State, the same Washington State that hasn’t even made an NIT in a decade, since Ken Bone was the coach (different Ken Bone from the 2016 debate guy, as you would guess).
They did it.
Oregon lost to Wazzu.
A week and a half after losing to Oregon State (also at home).
The Pac-12, however briefly, has turned into a Duck hunt.
***
We’re planning on next running the simulations overnight Saturday and publishing the update on Sunday morning, but we aren’t going to definitively promise that, because plans might change depending on what updates we’re trying to make to little details within the model, like schedules the rest of the way, which are a bit of a headache right now. So look for an update on Sunday, and if it isn’t there by lunchtime, come back again on Monday.
