Ballock and the Bluejays Making a Move
By SEAN BRENNAN
Special to BIGEAST.com
It’s good to be Mitch Ballock these days.
If last Saturday wasn’t memorable enough for the Creighton junior marksman, when he dropped five 3-balls on then-No. 8 Villanova in a 76-61 road win for the Bluejays - the first time a BIG EAST team had won at Nova in two years - then Sunday’s Chiefs victory in Super Bowl LIV was most definitely the slam-dunk perfect finish to the weekend for the native son of Eudora, Kansas.
“Oh yeah, big Chiefs fan,” Ballock said. “It was a great weekend.”
It was Ballock’s clutch delivery of big shots in the Bluejays’ win over Villanova, shooting 5-of-7 on three-pointers, that lifted Creighton into the conversation with the likes of Seton Hall, Villanova and Butler for programs with designs on a BIG EAST championship.
But the fact that Ballock landed at Creighton three years ago would have seemed a longshot at best during his high school days. The Gatorade Kansas Player of the Year in his senior season at Eudora High School was actually a huge fan of a particular team right in his own backyard. One, he said, he always hoped to play for one day. The Kansas Jayhawks.
“I grew up about six miles from Lawrence so I went to a lot of Jayhawks’ games,” Ballock said. “Then as I got older I always wanted to play at KU. I grew up a Jayhawk fan but when I took my official visit to Creighton, the culture, the atmosphere, the people around campus and the whole community, it was what I was looking for. And it’s a great academic school, so it was just the perfect world both on and off the court. So I figured that it was the best situation for me so I just jumped on it.”
Ironically, his commitment to Creighton came on Super Bowl Sunday of 2016.
“I took my visit that weekend and my parents and I were driving back home Sunday,” Ballock said. “I had had breakfast with Mac (Coach Greg McDermott) and (former Creighton assistant) Coach (Darian) DeVries, who is now the head coach at Drake, and I told them I was ready to go. I’m ready to commit. But just don’t say anything because I want to tell everyone else, all the other coaches who recruited me, thanks for recruiting me. I didn’t want them to find out from it being on social media. So I said give me a week and we can release it.”
But Ballock barely lasted a day before he officially made Creighton his college home.
“On the way home I started contacting coaches and telling them I’m going to Creighton and thanks for everything,” Ballock said. ”So by the time the Super Bowl came around I had called all the coaches that I needed to and I just said, ‘Screw it. Let’s do it.’”
Ballock chose the Bluejays over Maryland, Indiana, Iowa State, Oklahoma and, of course, those Kansas Jayhawks. So which Super Bowl Sunday was the better, the one where he committed to Creighton or the one where his beloved Chiefs won their first Super Bowl in 50 years?
“They are both pretty close,” Ballock said. “But I think I’d have to go with this one. This one was a lot better with the Chiefs winning.”
And with the Bluejays remaining in Philadelphia after their victory over the Wildcats before busing to Providence Monday for their game with the Friars Wednesday night, Ballock and the Bluejays had their own Chiefs’ viewing party Sunday evening.
“We went to the Hard Rock Cafe, about 30 of us,” Ballock said. “The whole team, the coaching staff and the people travelling with us. So we watched the first half there and then the second half, there’s four kids on the team from the Kansas City area (Christian Bishop, Jeff Canfield and Nic Zeil are the others) so the four of us watched it in our room when we got back to the hotel. It was unbelievable.”
Ballock’s unforgettable weekend was in direct contrast to a week earlier when the long-time Kobe Bryant fan was shocked at the news of the former NBA star’s death in a helicopter crash in Southern California. It hit Ballock, who wears No. 24 out of his admiration for Bryant, very hard.
“That kind of threw me for a loop,” Ballock said. “It kind of took the wind out of you. Obviously being a big Kobe guy, you think guys like that are just indestructible and invincible. So when you hear something like that you don’t really believe it.”
Ballock said it was teammate Marcus Zegarowski who broke the news to him.
“We were getting ready to play Xavier at home and I walked by Marcus and he said, ‘Did you hear? Kobe just died,’” Ballock said. “There were about five of us around him and we’re like, ‘Quit lying.’ But then we all hovered around a phone and saw that it was true. That was about an hour and a half before the game. Then as I tried to get ready for the game I was just out of it. I had a lack of focus and I wasn’t really locked in because I couldn’t get the Kobe thing off my mind. It still didn’t even feel real until a couple of days ago when I watched the tribute the Lakers did while I was in the hotel in Philly. That’s when it all came to life and I realized this was real.”
What’s also real is Creighton as a legitimate contender for the BIG EAST crown. The Bluejays currently sit in third place with a 6-3 mark in conference play, just a game behind second-place Villanova and two lengths behind front-running Seton Hall. That road victory over the Wildcats? It can have a lot of positive ramifications for a team going forward.
“Obviously our goal is to win the BIG EAST,” Ballock said. “That’s why I came to school here. You have schools like Seton Hall and Nova, who have the culture and foundation of just doing it every year. They’re both in the Northeast and they are a more BIG EAST-type of school while Creighton is in the middle of nowhere so we don’t really get that much publicity. But we’re not really looking for that. We just want to be prepared every day and I think we’ve done a good job of that the last couple of weeks. Winning a game like that at Nova really builds our confidence and hopefully we’ll show it again on Wednesday (at Providence) and just keep the ball rolling.”
But Ballock is not anointing Creighton as the team to beat in the BIG EAST this season. Quite the contrary. He thinks the league is as wide open as ever and sees any number of teams who could finish at the top when all is said and done.
“I know Seton Hall has one loss and Villanova has two and we have three, but we’re just at the halfway point in the BIG EAST and you never know what’s going to happen,” Ballock said. “Anybody can go into anybody’s place and beat anybody. Seton Hall has been playing really well since the start of conference play. But teams like Providence and Xavier are playing good basketball and they also just won on the road against good teams. So yeah, I think it’s wide open this year.”
Providence took down Butler at Hinkle Fieldhouse while Xavier handed Seton Hall its first conference loss with a win in New Jersey last Saturday when all three ranked BIG EAST teams lost at home.
Creighton’s win over Villanova also moved it back into the latest AP Top 25 poll as the Bluejays are nesting on the No. 21 perch. Also moving up a list was Ballock, whose five three-balls against the Wildcats gave him 209 in his career, placing him sixth on Creighton’s all-time list.
And while Ballock appreciates those accomplishments, they pale in comparison to where he hopes to help bring the Bluejays this season.
“Creighton has never been to a Sweet 16 so we want to be the first team to reach the Sweet 16,” Ballock said. “We don’t want to just get (to the NCAA Tournament). We don’t want to just get there and play in the first or second round. We want to make a run and if we keep playing like we have been and stay focused and prepared, I think we can do that.”