Creighton v Western Illinois - Preview

How to Watch, Stream, Listen, Follow

Game Time: 7:30pm CT

Location: CHICO, Omaha, NE

TV: FSN (check your local listings)

Stream: Fox Sports GO

Radio: 1620AM the Zone in Omaha / 94.3FM in Macomb

Other Blogs:

White & Blue Review - Creighton

Tweeters:

Creighton - Rob Anderson / Creighton MBB / Tom Nemitz / “Patrick Marshall” / Matt DeMarinis / Corey Lathrop / Jon Nyatawa

Odds & Ends

Creighton is favored by 20 points according to Odds Shark. KenPom predicts a score of 85-65, with the Jays holding a 96% chance to win. The over/under is pegged at 150.

Series History

Creighton and Western Illinois have played four times in their history with the Jays winning all four contests.

The first matchup between these two schools came about in Hilo, Hawaii on December 30th, 1993. The Jays won 81-63 to open the Big Island Invitational. Since then, the Jays have thumped the Leathernecks by 13+ points in each contest, the largest margin of victory coming on November 17th, 2002 when the Jays poured on 106 points to the Leatherneck’s 50.

Verba de Ludis

Ah, the sweet smell of college basketball. It smells so familiar. It smells so new. It smells so amazing. It smells like Mike Few. College basketball is here and we should all celebrate properly:

by voting

for someone

to do something

because it’s our civic duty.

I had an ATM tell me to go vote. A car wash had a sign telling me to vote. It’s difficult to live a normal live without seeing something telling me to vote. These idiots don’t know I voted early like a responsible person. I just don’t know why the ballot box made a weird whirring noise when I dropped my ballot in. I don’t know why the ballot box had a gasline running to it. I don’t know why the ballot box had smoke being emitted from it.

My vote counts. An internet personality told me it did. Did an internet person tell you your vote counted? They were probably lying to you. Did they look you in the eye and tell you that it counted? That’s how you can for sure trust someone.

Western Illinois is a basketball program rich in tradition I guess. They traditionally finished 12-16 overall last season while managing to acquire three wins in the Summit League. Counterbalance that with their eleven losses and I guess you’ve got something resembling tradition.

The Leathernecks return very long man Brandon Gilbeck. Gilbeck, a senior seven-footer, made 62% of his shots from inside the arc last season. He’s a big, mobile guy that can punish teams that are relatively thin down low.

Kobe Webster is who you’re gonna want to worry about if you’re coaching the Creighton Bluejays. He’s quite good, a 6’ sophomore who splashed six threes and scored 22 points in an exhibition against Iowa Wesleyan. Combining his talents with the very tall man, two other returning starters in CJ Duff and Isaac Johnson, and the Leathernecks can look awfully intimidating on the offensive side of the ball. Ben Pyle, who scored 10 points against Wesleyan, looks to be a solid forward and three-point scoring threat even at 6’7.

Last season, WIU allowed opponents to shoot 37% from three and 49% from inside the arc. They rarely force turnovers and averaged roughly 18 seconds per possession last season.

This is a solid basketball club and one should be sort of worried about them potentially upsetting the Bluejays, but we thought the same thing about Yale last year, so who knows. It’s just nice to have college hoops back, right?

Did you remember to vote?

Cool.

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