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How To Watch, Stream, Listen
Game time: 8:00 p.m. CT
Location: Omaha, Nebraska - CenturyLink Center Omaha
Watch: CBSSports Network
Listen: 1620AM the Zone - Omaha / 620AM Sun Devil radio - Tempe / Sirius/XM 119
Stream: Check out live stats via StatBroadcast!
Odds & Ends
Creighton is favored by 6.5 points via Oddshark.
Over/Under: 155.
Moneyline: Creighton opens at -286 while Arizona State sits at +225.
Other Hot, Steamy, Words about Sports
Check out White & Blue Review on the internet because the folks over there work extraordinarily hard at producing some excellent #content. Also give their basketball beat writer, Matt Demarinis, a follow on Twitter because he's good at writing about hoops and sports.
Click the hyperlink to visit the House of Sparky, a blog about an avid marijuana user who lives in his mom's basement.
Be sure to keep up to date with the Omaha World~Herald, a dying news medium that is barely scraping by with year-round Nebraska Cornhusker Football coverage. Also make sure to follow that guy I sometimes make eye contact with who happens to be the Creighton beat writer for the World~Herald - Steve Pivovar.
Things to Watch
Arizona State used to be pretty good at hoopball. This year, they've got losses to Marquette in overtime and Sacramento State. At first, I thought that losing to Sacramento State might be sort of embarrassing for the Sun Devil hoops program. Then I thought a bit deeper about it; it's just the first game, it was a fluke, no way is Arizona State actually that bad, there's got to be an anomaly here perhaps an outlier. Nope. Sacramento State lost to South Dakota, who lost to Wright State and Northern Illinois which sent Arizona State plummeting to 110th in RPI. That's... not good.
The Sun Devils are led by Gerry Blakes, Tra Holder and Savon Goodman. Each are averaging under 15 points per contest. Only one game so far this year has ended with a Sun Devil win with a margin of more than 10 points (Kennesaw State 91-53) yet beat NC State and Belmont while losing to our lovely Marquette Golden Eagles.
New head coach Bobby Hurley inherited a pretty talented team that's laden with experienced players (8 combined juniors and seniors) yet the changing of the guard and the implementation of a new offensive and defensive scheme has stymied any new production. Something seems amiss when a Blue Devil is attempting to make a Sun Devil perform at a high level. It's sort of like when your two step dads start fighting over whether or not you should play football or learn how to play clarinet. You can't be in the band and tossin' the pigskin around at the same time, but the two demonic forces trying to get you to do a thing eventually both lose out when you decide to sit around and play Madden for hours while listening to clarinet solos. Sure, it feels like a compromise, but in reality you're just farting off both of your authority figures and scoring mad points on rookie mode while Benny Goodman lays down some sick riffs on his clarinet.
With all of this being said, I advise you to keep your eyes peeled. Creighton is favored in this one yet this has all the makings of a trap game for the Bluejays. In their last affair against Western Illinois, the Bluejays absolutely dominated on the boards while Geoffrey Groselle played one of the best games of his career. I recall Coach Mac saying before the Indiana game that any given player on his team can have an outstanding night. In the Vegas tournament against Rutgers it was all Cole Huff. In the Western Illinois game it was Groselle and Khyri Thomas. With Maurice Watson Jr., running the point and spreading the ball to everyone on the court, McDermott's statement rings particularly true.
The funny thing about Creighton is that they're so well coached that trap games just seem avoidable. In Creighton's game against Indiana, there were no exploitable weaknesses that were blatantly obvious. It would be difficult to gameplan for because, being so early in the season, the scouting reports were rough. Yet you bring a team like ASU into the building, who has lost to a Big East foe and a not-so-good Sacramento State team, and you have quite a bit of gamefilm to craft a brilliant gameplan.
Swing on, Benny.