#8 Creighton (21-11, 10-8, 3rd BE), #9 K-State, Fri, 5:50

[hilltopwildcat]

1) If they're hot from 3 remember LaSalle.
2) Can we get some steals and easy buckets?

[KsJoey]

I just hope Dean is playing at 100%. If so, he'll either get a ton of points, or a ton of assists. Probably both. Creighton just doesn't have the bigmen to stop both Makol and Dean. The Khyi and Marcus duo does scare me a bit though. But i feel better knowing Brown will be on Marcus ...nothing will come easy for him.

[BlueJayVisitor]

1) If they're hot from 3 remember LaSalle.
2) Can we get some steals and easy buckets?

Number 2 might be a tall order. Creighton is 5th in the country in Assist-to-Turnover ratio.

[tmcats]

defend creighton as well as they defended against tcu and the cats will be fine. this is a good defensive team only getting better with the development of mak and diarra. x has gotten way better on that end as well.

[wild@nite]

I just hope Dean is playing at 100%. If so, he'll either get a ton of points, or a ton of assists. Probably both. Creighton just doesn't have the bigmen to stop both Makol and Dean. The Khyi and Marcus duo does scare me a bit though. But i feel better knowing Brown will be on Marcus ...nothing will come easy for him.

I agree that Creighton is thin on experienced big men, but I'm not truly confident our HC will expose that. I'm being dead serious here. All too often we have ignored our big men or not "force" them to be the focal point of our offense. It's perplexing when this happens because sometimes Weber stands there with jaw open and palms up like somebody just said a naughty word when the entire world knows who in the heck should be getting the ball. He was forced to get Mawein the ball vs. KU and found out "by golly" getting it inside may be a good idea, but again, I'm not confident he will make it a priority again. Probably doesn't realize Creighton is thin on experience with the bigs. After all, he didn't know KU sometimes ran a 2-3 zone.

[AJcat7755]

1) If they're hot from 3 remember LaSalle.
2) Can we get some steals and easy buckets?

Number 2 might be a tall order. Creighton is 5th in the country in Assist-to-Turnover ratio.

That is a misleading statistic. That stats takes into account 2 different stats. A team that scores a lot and gets a lot of assists can have a high A2T ratio despite having a lot of turnovers.

More appropriately:
Creighton has 11.19 turnovers per game, 34th in the nation
Creighton allows opposing teams to get 6.06 steals per game, 174th in the nation
In conference only games, that is giving up 11.56 TPG (3rd in Big East) and 6.28 SPG (6th in the Big East)

Kansas State forces opponents in 14.33 turnovers per game, 63rd in the nation
Kansas State has 7.76 steals per game, 20th in the nation
In conference only games, that is forcing 14 TPG per game (1st in Big 12), and 7.72 SPG (1st in the Big 12)

[Puffdad]

Good stats ACJ. The stats behind the stats. Stuff that most fans don’t dig into. Another thing about assists. People don’t usually account for the fact that it doesn’t totally reflect how good a passer a kid is. Because the receiver first must have good enough hands to catch it and then second must be able to score. .

[AJcat7755]

More fun stats (via @Cole_Manbeck):

Creighton lost Martin Krampelj, its third leading scorer and leading rebounder (11.9 ppg/8.1 rgp), in game 19 of the season. Started off 15-4 with him, finished 6-7 in its last 13 games once he went down. Which includes, as mentioned above, only 1 win over a NCAA or NIT team (1 seed Nova).

Creighton is 332nd out of 351 D1 teams in offensive rebounding %. The Blue Jays rebound less than 21% of its missed shots. This is significant as K-State has been killed by 2nd-chance points this year (307th in defensive rebounding %).

Creighton ranks 15th in the country in points per possession at 1.13. Only 2 K-State opponents this season (KU, TCU) have a higher offensive efficiency.

[WichitaCat]

For everyone who wants to do their own scouting. Since Big East basketball is on Fox, these are the only recent videos I could find.
Creighton vs. Marquette Feb 17 (with Harrell):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49-duGq ... L&index=49

Creighton vs #3 Villanova Feb 24 (without Harrell):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT1rlvQ ... L&index=50

Creighton at Marquette Mar 3 (without Harrell):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuH5XMv ... L&index=51

[AJcat7755]

Not to look ahead, but it was just announced that Virginia's De'Andre Hunter, and ACC 6th man of the year, will miss the NCAA tournament with a broken wrist. He was averaging their 4th leading scorer at 9.2 ppg, 5th in minutes per game, and 3rd in rpg. For an offense that averaged 67.5 ppg, that is 14% off their ppg that needs to be replaced.