By SEAN BRENNAN
Special to BIGEAST.com
A clean slate.
That’s what the Creighton Bluejays were looking at when they entered the 2021-22 college basketball season. How else could they look at it? After losing the top seven players from last season’s Sweet 16 team, what Bluejays’ head coach Greg McDermott was left with was a Top 10 recruiting class, a gaggle of promising freshmen and the hope of better days down the road once those freshmen became battle tested. So that eighth slot in the BIG EAST Preseason Coaches’ Poll back in October felt about right.
So absolutely no one could have imagined the kind of season Creighton is enjoying so far thanks in large part to an uber-talented trio of freshmen in Ryan Nembhard, Trey Alexander and Arthur Kaluma.
“I don’t think you know about freshmen until you really get them in practice (and see) how quickly they pick things up offensively and defensively,” McDermott said. “There were just a lot of questions going into the preseason, but what I knew from the jump was that all three have an incredible work ethic. They have great routines outside of practice that’s allowed them to move forward with their games during the course of the season.”
And move forward they most certainly have. Try these numbers on for size: So far through the first 13 weeks of the season the Jays’ trio has accounted for eight - eight - BIG EAST Freshman of the Week honors with Nembhard snagging the award five times. They are responsible for over 40 percent of the Bluejays’ offensive output this season and they each average better than 22 minutes of playing time per night (with Nembhard being third nationally at 34.5 minutes a game) making Creighton the lone team in the nation to play three freshmen better than 22 minutes a night.
Oh, and heading into Thursday night’s tilt at DePaul, the Bluejays have had at least one freshman on the court for every second of every game this season. Talk about making an impact.
“If we were going to have any success they were going to have to do it because we didn’t have a choice,” McDermott said. “They were going to be in a position where they were going to have to play through some mistakes, they were going to have to have a short memory and move onto the next play when you have an error. And they have done a pretty good job of understanding how to do that. Obviously there’s not a ton of freshmen playing in our league this year because the league is so old, but to have three of them performing and playing such a vital role on a team that’s still in the top half of the conference standings is really a credit to them and their work ethic and their understanding of what we’ve asked them to do.”
Trey Alexander, the Oklahoma Gatorade Player of the Year and one of the jewels of Creighton’s prized recruiting class, admits he came into the season with modest expectations. Yes, not even he saw the Jays’ eye-opening season on the horizon.
“No basketball player is going to sit here and tell you they expect to lose or anything like that,” Alexander said. “I expected to come in and for this to be a building year. But it turned out to be more than I expected. It turned out to be a lot better than I expected. This is a good group of guys who are having success in our early stages of BIG EAST play.”
Nembhard, whose brother, Andrew, plays for top-ranked Gonzaga, is averaging 11 points per game while leading the team in both assists (101) and steals (31). Kaluma, a 6-7, 230-pound forward, is the highest-rated recruit in McDermott’s tenure, who had schools such as Kansas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Texas A&M and USC, among others, chasing him during recruiting season. The reigning BIG EAST Freshman of the Week is coming off a 16-point, seven-rebound, two-block outing in a win over Butler and is averaging 9.3 points and 5.0 rebounds per outing. (He is currently day-to-day with a knee injury). And Alexander, the all-time leading scorer and rebounder at Heritage Hall High School in Oklahoma City, is averaging 5.7 points, is third on the team in assists (41) and is a robust 81.4 percent free throw shooter.
It’s quite the talented package the threesome brings to Omaha and McDermott is not exactly at a loss for words in praising his fab frosh.
“Ryan Nembhard, he plays with great pace and he really fits how we like to play offensively with his ability to attack in transition and be quick in the quarter court and make good reads out of ball screen situations,” McDermott said. “And as you can see, he doesn’t ever change expression. He just plays the game and does not allow himself to get too out of kilter whether something great happened or he made a terrible mistake. He moves onto the next play relatively quickly.”
The praise is just as effusive for Alexander and Kaluma.
“Trey has as good an understanding of the defensive end of the floor and has picked things up as quickly as any freshman I’ve ever coached,” McDermott said. “And he has become a very effective player on that end despite the fact that he’s probably not strong enough. But as that changes he has a chance to be an elite defender. Offensively we’ve kind of moved him into that secondary ball handling role and he’s done a great job making the right decisions with the basketball and handling the ball and really cutting down his turnovers as time has gone on.”
“And then I think Arthur Kaluma has made the most progress of anyone on our team from the start of practice to where we are today,” McDermott continued. “I think everything was in a hurry for him before and I think he has allowed his mind to slow down and read the defense and make the right play based upon that defense. So while he has not shot the basketball the way I think he is capable of, I really believe that’s coming because I’ve seen it on a consistent basis in practice.”
So you can see why eight of the 13 Freshmen of the Week honors this season currently reside in Omaha.
“I feel like each one of us plays a pivotal role in the team’s success and I feel that success has just come from us all playing together and being able to share the ball and play as a team and that has helped us get all those Freshmen of the Week (honors),” Alexander said. “We’re just being ourselves. We’re not really trying to be one of those guys that has to be the hero. We’re just trying to help our team win.”
Helping your team is one thing, but accounting for over 40 percent of the team’s offense? From three freshmen? A rarity indeed.
“It has a lot to do with the work that we put in,” Alexander said. “I feel like we’ve been kind of thrown into the fire and that’s kind of what we were expecting. But that’s the only way people can grow, getting thrown into the deep end and I feel like that has helped us for the better and helped the team for the better, that we’ve matured at such a young age.”
Alexander said the trio is very close both on the court and off - “Those are my guys,” he said - which has helped the trio smash preseason expectations for the Bluejays.
“I feel like we’ve surpassed a lot of people’s expectations,” said Alexander, who had six points, seven rebounds, two assists and a steal in 22 minutes in a win over Georgetown last time out. “I expected us to be able to win because I’ve been with these guys since the summer and I feel like a lot of these guys want to win and that’s what’s got us to this point. We play as a collective unit so we’ve surpassed even the expectations that I had.”
Creighton heads into Thursday night’s matchup with DePaul toting a 16-8 overall record and 8-5 in the BIG EAST. A win over an improving Blue Demons team would pull the Bluejays into a tie with UConn for third place. That’s good news for Bluejays Nation, but McDermott has some news that might be a little unsettling for the rest of the conference.
“There’s still a ton of room for growth and that’s what’s exciting,” McDermott said. “You’re not seeing as many of the same mistakes as you were seeing in November and December. With each passing week that’s getting better and the only teacher for that is experience. You can watch it on film all you want or watch it from the bench all you want, but until you’re out there in the heat of the battle and you have to make the correct decisions and correct plays, it’s hard to put a price tag on that experience. It’s been great for us and they’ve played at a high level this year but it’s really encouraging as we move forward with our program in the coming years.”
But first things first. Creighton still has six games remaining in its regular season and the Bluejays have a very real chance of finishing third in the conference and grabbing a bye into the quarterfinals in next month’s BIG EAST Tournament. So can they continue to surpass everyone’s expectations for this season? Even Alexander’s?
“I feel like we have a group that can definitely surprise people,” Alexander said. “In the BIG EAST Tournament we’re probably going to have a higher seed and that’s going to help us in the long run. We have some of the best coaches in the nation so we’ll be well prepared. I didn’t think this was going to be an NCAA team but it looks like we might be able to make that and that’s a big step for any team that was supposed to be having a rebuilding year, quote unquote.”