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How to Watch, Stream, Listen, Follow
Game Time: 7:00PM CT
Location: CenturyLink Center, Omaha, NE
TV: CBS Sports Network
Radio: 1620AM the Zone & 101.9FM the Keg in Omaha / 570AM WMCA & 970AM WNYM in New York
Other Blogs: White & Blue Review - Creighton / Rumble in the Garden - St. John’s
Tweeters:
Creighton - Rob Anderson / Creighton MBB / Tom Nemitz / “Patrick Marshall” / Matt DeMarinis / Corey Lathrop / Jon Nyatawa
St. John’s: Andrew Padyk / St. John’s MBB / Kim Adams / East Coast Bias (RitG) / Rumble in the Garden
Odds & Ends
Creighton is favored by 11 points according to Odds Shark.
If you’re thinking about putting some of your cold hard cash on this game, might I suggest taking that money and using a pay phone to call your mother and thank her for everything she’s done. Or buy her some flowers, whatever works for you.
Previous Meeting
#10 Creighton 85 - St. John’s 72 - 01/04/2017
Justin Patton dumped in 25 points and caused the whole world to momentarily to implode on itself as he slammed home dunk after dunk, rocking the Carnesseca Arena to the tune of 25 points on 11-14 shooting.
It was a pretty good rout from the tip, the Johnnies having no presence inside to stop the monster that was Patton that evening, though Marcus LoVett managed to pour in 23 points, and as poorly as the Johnnies shot in the first half, they caught fire midway through the second.
For a Jays fan it was a beautiful ~27 minutes of gameplay as the offense and defense clicked at an alarming rate while St. John’s couldn’t hit a bucket to save their lives. The final 13 minutes was a dream for fans of the Queens-based squad as they slowly began to hit the shots they’d been missing, relying on their incredibly young talent to get things cooking, showing all the promise and hype that they’ve now built to this point.
Call it a break-out game for Patton, but Shamorie Ponds and LoVett were masterful in short spurts, gaining a tremendous amount of respect for the young guards from Creighton fans.
Verba de Ludis
This will be the final home game for Isaiah Zierden, Zach Hanson, and Cole Huff, which will bring about an emotional conclusion to their illustrious careers.
Hanson, the big man from South Dakota whose presence was first realized in the NCAA tournament blowout against Baylor, has been a serviceable center for the Jays and offered size and strength down low when they needed it most. He has a great smile and is very soft spoken and eloquent in his eloquent speeches about reaching the distant stars to mine planets for their natural resources to use here on earth.
He also battled injuries, with a knee surgery in the past offseason mixed with an ankle/foot/lower extremity injury in the Paradise Jam tournament. His absences were felt tenfold in the throes of the season, with young man Justin Patton having to eat a lot more minutes to fill his shoes and grow up to be an NBA star.
If anything, Hanson should be remembered for his lack of ability to catch passes in the post in his tenure, forcing me to deride him of what I called, “hands of concrete.” He has since moistened his hands and learned to utilize his footwork - a cornerstone to Coach McDermott’s coaching ability - to become a formidable big man in the BIG EAST.
Isaiah Zierden, another senior who battled injury for the majority of his college career, whose father is an assistant coach for the Wizards, who had a knack for nailing treys and playing some hearty defense, will most likely be remembered for being slotted in as a point guard for some fucking reason.
He liked to shoot threes and was lauded in high school for his ability to do so. Much like Hanson, he was able to play in the final year of the Dougie era, making occasional appearances before the knee eating monster of the Cintas Center took its first Bluejay as a victim.
There was his Hibma-game against DePaul last season, with his father watching in the crowd, where he poured in 31 points and stole the ball three times. It was his peak performance, looking every bit the part that he’d been built up to play, but even before and after that day he’s been pretty alright.
Last but not least there’s Cole Huff. I’d never known what a perfect jumpshot looked like until I saw Cole Huff huck a basketball at the rim. The shooting stroke, his hands well above his head, that feisty look in his eye as he released the ball. A pure scorer, the transfer from Nevada, the laid back Cali kid whose hunger for the game was predicated on sheer will and determination. Huff is an absolute joy to watch play the game.
I remember last season, with the Jays playing in The Men Who Speak Up tournament in Las Vegas, where he went off for 26 points. Everything clicked, his mid-range game bursting through the screen like Shrek 3 in 3D. It was easy to fall in love with Cole Huff’s game, watching him moving about the floor like a stream in the woods, a calming beauty and sense of ease in the way he approached it.
Soft spoken and relaxed, yet abated by a knee injury that he didn’t quite have the time to recover from, Huff had the ability to cement himself as a Bluejay great. Perhaps there’s still time for him to cement his legacy, as we were witness to in the BIG EAST tournament against Seton Hall where he outclassed Ismael Sanogo by dumping in 35 points against the vaunted defensive stopper, but it’ll be hard to forget a guy with a game like his.
Just don’t let him play on a neutral court.
Oh, shit, right, St. John’s. Uh, well, sure they’re good. Shamorie Ponds, Marcus LoVett, Tariq Owens’s short shorts and headband, they’re fine.
Chris Mullin seems like a pretty good coach now.
Whatever.