Tennessee basketball is preparing for a Creighton program that it hasn’t faced in over 75 years ahead of Friday night’s Sweet 16 matchup in Detroit.
The Vols have no recent experience taking on Greg McDermott’s Blue Jays program, but there is one team in the SEC that Tennessee faced twice this season that has some similarities to Creighton.
“I would say that we have Alabama in our league. Creighton is a top four team in offensive efficiency,” Tennessee associate head coach Gregg Polinsky said on Wednesday. “They score in transition at a high rate. They have players that are very skilled, can dribble, pass and shoot. Three elements that are really good for any basketball player.”
“Just like Alabama, they’re trying to score within the first seven seconds so they have the same mentality with what they have in transition and early open looks they’re looking to take them,” associate head coach Justin Gainey said.
Both Creighton and Alabama are elite offensive teams and they shoot the three-pointer at extremely high clips. The Blue Jays’ score 39% of their points from the three-point range while Alabama scores 36% of its points from deep.
Both teams shoot a lot of triples and are good at them, ranking in the top 35 nationally in three-point shooting percentage.
“They take more threes than Bama which is hard to do,” Tennessee assistant coach Rod Clark said.
There’s similarities on the defensive end of the court. Both teams want to run you off the three-point line and force you to take mid range jump shots. That’s Alabama’s identity under analytics driven head coach Nate Oats.
That’s how Creighton has played to take away the three-point shot, using drop coverage in ball screen actions to push ball handlers to center Ryan Kalkbrenner at the basket who is fantastic without fouling.
“How they guard ball screens is similar and the shots they want to force in ball screens is similar to how Bama wants to guard them,” Clark said. “It’s a lot of similarities that come with the two.”
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“Forcing you into tough twos,” junior guard Jahmai Mashack said of Creighton. “People underrate how good of a mid range shooting team we are.”
But there’s plenty of differences between the two teams to. First, Creighton is a much better defensive team than Alabama and it comes in large part do to the three-time Big East Defensive Player of the Year Ryan Kalkbrenner.
Kalkbrenner makes everything at the basket difficult for opponents and combined with forward Baylor Scheiermann, the Blue Jays are an elite defensive rebounding team.
“He’s always in the paint,” Gainey said. “He’s always lurking whether he’s involved in the play or not he’s always lurking, he’s always around. He’s a great vertical guy. The blocks might not show that he’s a rim protector but if you watch him and how he goes vertical and alters shots, or deters guys from shooting at the rim— you feel his impact.”
Even offensively, Creighton goes about things a lot differently than Alabama. The two teams like to take the same types of shots but they get there in much different fashion, especially once they settle into half court sets.
“In transition Alabama is more of a push ahead team with the ball instead of the pass where Creighton pushes in transition with the pass more than not,” super senior wing Josiah-Jordan James said.
“They get to it differently,” Gainey said. “I think Alabama was more of drive, kick out where Creighton will do that some but they also have a mixture of off ball screening stuff to get guys shots. They do have some similarities but there are enough differences where you can’t just copy and paste the game plan from Alabama and paste it on to this Creighton prep. It is two totally different ways of going about how they get to those shots.”
Tennessee hopes that playing Creighton will look similar to playing Alabama. The Vols swept Alabama in the regular season, knocking off the Crimson Tide 91-71 in Knoxville and 81-74 in Tuscaloosa. Tennessee’s win at Alabama is perhaps its best win away from home all season.
Creighton and Alabama also met on the hard wood back in December with the Blue Jays earning a thrilling 85-82 home victory.
Tipoff between Tennessee and Creighton is at approximately 10:15 p.m. ET on Friday night. TBS and truTV are broadcasting the game.
