Marquette Men’s Basketball Big East Preview Primer: at Creighton

Marquette Golden Eagles (5-7, 0-1 Big East) at Creighton Bluejays (6-5, 1-0 Big East)

Date: Saturday, December 20, 2025
Time: 7:30pm Central
Location: CHI Health Center, Omaha, Nebraska

Marquette Stats Leaders

Points: Chase Ross, 17.4 ppg
Rebounds: Ben Gold, 6.8 rpg
Assists: Sean Jones, 4.5 apg

Creighton Stats Leaders

Points: Josh Dix, 12.0 ppg
Rebounds: Blake Harper, 5.3 rpg
Assists: Nik Graves, 3.4 apg

KenPom.com Rankings

Marquette: #107
Creighton: #49
Game Projection: Creighton has an 81% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 79-69.

This Season So Far: It was not a fun start to the year for Creighton, as they went 2-1 with a pair of buy game wins and a 27 point loss on the road against Gonzaga. Then it got a little bit worse, as preseason all-Big East honoree Jackson McAndrew was ruled out for the rest of the season after a nagging foot injury from the preseason proved to be too much to overcome for this year.

Then the Bluejays went out to the Players Era event in Las Vegas and took on losses to Baylor and Iowa State before salvaging the trip with a win over Oregon. That W against the Ducks is their only notable non-conference win as they also lost by 19 at Nebraska in a state rivalry game and then slipped up at home against Kansas State, 83-76.

That’s things going sideways at best or downwards in a hurry for head coach Greg McDermott and head coach-in-waiting Alan Huss, but Creighton got a bit of a bright spot on Wednesday night. That bright spot was a 36-5 run bridging halftime in their 98-57 victory on the road against Xavier in the Big East opener for both teams.

Imagine being Xavier head coach Richard Pitino or any Xavier fan watching that game and seeing the Musketeers surrender a 16-2 run that leaves the score at 22-10. “Well, okay, look, that was bad, but it’s early, there’s 12 minutes left, let’s get it to 6 or 8 at halftime and see what happens.” NOPE, 27 point margin at the break and Creighton wasn’t done yet.

This is just weird to say out loud, so I will: Xavier led 10-6, and then they trailed 60-23. With about 18 minutes left. And then the final margin was worse.

Or, because this is a Creighton preview: The final margin was even bigger!

Tempo Free Fun: We do, it appears, have to give Ryan Kalkbrenner his flowers.

As much as it was fun to pile on the UConn Internet joke of “Just Tall,” we have to admit that he may have actually deserved his four Big East Defensive Player of the Year trophies. If nothing else, Creighton is, to this point of the year, not on the same defensive level that they were with Kalkbrenner patrolling the middle. Creighton was a KenPom top 40 defense in four of the last five seasons, something that head coach Greg McDermott hadn’t done since posting a #21 in his final year at Northern Iowa, and that was back in 2006. The Bluejays did slip down to #44 last season, Kalkbrenner’s last in Omaha, but still: Top 50’s not too bad, not when paired with a top 40 offense.

This year, at least right now, Creighton’s sitting at #59 in KenPom’s defensive rankings, and I’d imagine that it took a healthy bump upwards after holding Xavier to just 0.77 points per possession on Wednesday. The adjusted for opponent strength 101.1 points per 100 possessions allowed is McDermott’s worst number since a 102.6 in 2014-15, which was Creighton’s second year in the Big East and their first without Doug McDermott on the roster. In fact, the Bluejays haven’t finished a year with a defensive efficiency over 100.0 in that entire time, so this would be a notable departure for even McDermott’s lesser defensive teams over the last decade.

Part of Creighton’s defensive problems is that they’re not getting Kalkbrenner’s shot blocking and general rim protection. They’re still top 80 in defensive two-point shooting percentage, but waaaaay down in the 270s in block rate. Technically, Iowa transfer Owen Freeman is not the problem there as he’s got an individual block ranking of #111 in the country. That’s not as good as Kalkbrenner, but it should be enough to tide you over… except Freeman has played 20 or more minutes just twice this season. In fact, he’s come off the bench for the last two games, and went for 11 minutes against Kansas State and 14 in the smashing of Xavier. At a glance, his analytics look like he’s doing great for the Bluejays…. but if McDermott and Huss have decided that he can’t contribute big minutes — either because he’s still shaking off a summer knee injury or something else as they adjust to not having McAndrew as well — then the impact of the offensive talents that Freeman has are notable limited.

Another defensive problem for the Bluejays is teams connecting on three-pointers. They’re just #164 in the country there, and you can pile up points pretty quickly if your threes are going down. However, and this is bad news for Marquette’s offensive structure, Creighton is pretty good at forcing you into less than great shots. They have the 8th lowest three-point attempt rate allowed in the country — meaning they don’t give up a lot of threes — and they’re top 60 in defensive assist rate. That suggests they’re not allowing a bunch of catch and shoot three-pointers while opponents are hitting threes at a strong rate against them. That’s bad, because Marquette’s offensive system is somewhat designed to generate a lot of catch and shoot three-pointers. Even worse for MU: They’re bad at hitting three-pointers anyway this season, so Creighton forcing bad or inefficient shots has the potential to only make things worse for the Golden Eagles.

This could be a game where Marquette gets an advantage on the offensive glass. Even if you’re a bad shooting team, like MU is at #266 in the country in effective field goal percentage, crashing for second chances can help fix your offensive efficiency woes. MU is pretty solid at offensive rebounding, nothing wrong with being just a bit outside the top 100 in that department, but more importantly, Creighton’s bad at ending a possession after one shot. They’re down in the 220s according to KenPom, and at least part of that is propped up by Owen Freeman and Blake Harper leading the team from a personal rebounding rate perspective on top of being 1-2 in pure counting rebounding average. Those guys have been moved out of the starting lineup in the last two games, which mitigates Creighton’s ability to rebound the ball. In fact, the Kansas State game, the first time that Freeman and Harper came off the bench, both playing less than 20 minutes, was Creighton’s third worst defensive rebounding performance of the season.

And all of this is just how does Creighton lineup against Marquette. At some point this season, Marquette has to just go be the best possible version of themselves, no matter what possible advantages they might gain by attacking weaknesses of their opponent. Marquette has to work to get good shots. Marquette has to work to get stops. They have to execute the base level of what Shaka Smart and his staff want them to be doing on a night in, night out basis, and then, once that’s to the point where they not just get it right but never get it wrong, then the Golden Eagles can start adapting to finesse things like attacking the Bluejays where they are most struggling.

Marquette Last 10 Games: 3-7, with losses in the last three games and four of the last five.

Creighton Last 10 Games: 5-5, with the win over Xavier snapping a two game skid.

All-Time Series: Marquette leads, 60-41

Current Streak: Creighton won in Omaha last year to hold the current edge in the series. The Golden Eagles have won four of the last six meetings.

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