KU’s first true road test
For the first time this season, Kansas will play a true road game tonight in Omaha, facing the Creighton Blue Jays. Things haven’t started smoothly for the Jays, who’ve been bitten by the injury bug early and have already lost three games, none of them to teams in the KenPom top 25. Rough start aside, this is still a talented Creighton team with paths to beating Kansas, even if they do sit at 5-3 right now, rated KenPom’s 53rd best team (Bart Torvik ranks them 40th for those who lean toward his ratings). Here are three things to keep an eye on as you watch tonight’s game, which starts at 7:30pm Central Time and can be viewed on FS1.
1) Is Ryan Kalkbrenner fully healthy?
Creighton’s 7’1 senior center is a unique player. He has the height to match Hunter Dickinson and the rim protection ability to affect how opponents try to score. He also has the speed and endurance to keep up as Creighton plays in about the 75th percentile for pace, with the big man routinely playing 30+ minutes. However, Kalkbrenner sat out Creighton’s last game with an unspecified lower-body injury, which leaves some concern for the Blue Jays who don’t have a seasoned replacement for him at center. The feeling seems to be that Kalkbrenner is going to play tonight, but how bad is the injury that kept him out against Notre Dame? If sitting him was more precautionary and he’s near 100%, it could make Hunter Dickinson’s night much tougher, with his ability as a help defender in drop coverage also making things tougher on players like AJ Storr, who pressure the rim as part of their offensive presence. If Kalkbrenner is fighting through an ailment and unable to run up and down the court for his normal 30+ minutes, it’s a big boost to KU’s chances.
2) Is Creighton due for a hot shooting night?
I apologize up front for leaning on the gambler’s fallacy, but regression to the mean is a real thing, and Creighton just isn’t going to keep shooting 31.4% from three all year. Despite their early-season struggles, the Jays continue to fire away from three, ranking 9th in D1 basketball by taking just over 52% of their shots from deep. This is a Greg McDermott team. They have the shooters and those shooters have the green light. So far only Steven Ashworth (40.7% on 59 attempts) has been feeling it, but Pop Isaacs (who fans may remember from his two years at Texas Tech), freshman Jackson McAndrew (a 6’10 gunner unafraid to bomb away when he gets the ball in rhythm, sitting at just 31.1%), and Isaac Traudt (another 6’10 shooter who hit 42% last year but is just at 31% this year), will all continue to fire away from three. We all remember the 2018 game against Villanova well enough to know that if a team that takes this many threes starts hitting a lot of them, it doesn’t really matter what else you do. If Creighton hits a low or even decent number of threes, this game likely leans toward a Kansas win. If they find their groove and finally click from outside while taking half their shots from the perimeter, the calculus swings quite a bit in their favor.
3) How will Kansas handle their first true road game?
Neutral sites haven’t bothered the Jayhawks much, picking up wins over both Duke and Michigan State in such settings, but we don’t know how this team will handle the road quite yet. Bill Self is famous for overachieving on the road, but although this is an experienced team, it’s still made up largely of new pieces and hasn’t found a consistent rotation and minute allotment quite yet. That makes the prospect of facing a team with Creighton’s talent level, playing in front of 17,000 fans, a little concerning. While Omaha isn’t much of a drive and Kansas will likely have some representation at this game, this isn’t a battle-tested group that’s fought through a raucous crowd together yet. If Creighton hits a few threes and the crowd really gets into it, we don’t yet know exactly how prepared this Kansas team is to weather the storm. The best way to avoid that scenario is to stay in control of the game and keep the fans sitting down. That may be tough given the raw talent Creighton is working with.
Prediction
As you can probably tell, I believe this Creighton team is better than their record and their rankings. If the team weren’t so cold from three to start the season, their resume would likely look quite different right now, given their reliance on perimeter shooting. They get to try and find their shooting groove in a home environment tonight, and with the height of some of their key shooters, the fact is that no defensive gameplan is going to entirely run the Blue Jays off the line. If they get hot and stay hot, all bets are off.
That said, they haven’t been hot yet, and they aren’t guaranteed to turn it around in this game. Even if Creighton shoots somewhere in the upper 30s from three, this is going to be a battle. If Kalkbrenner is less than fully healthy, Creighton is going to have a tough time limiting Hunter Dickinson’s effectiveness and keeping KU’s slashers from getting to the basket. This year Kansas can shoot the three as well, with multiple players being given the green light to shoot when open and is hitting a respectable 34.5% as a team. Creighton doesn’t rebound particularly well, they don’t force turnovers, and given their propensity to shoot threes, they don’t get to the line much. They will play an up-tempo game, but Kansas’ pace so far this year is very similar. For the most part I think Kansas matches up well with Creighton and I think they win a close game in Omaha. Once again, a red-hot shooting night changes everything, but outside of that scenario I think Kansas gets another quality win, even if it’s a stressful one.
Kansas 80, Creighton 77