{"id":61791,"date":"2025-08-06T04:33:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T04:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/61791\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T04:33:04","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T04:33:04","slug":"a-new-cast-but-high-expectations-remain-for-the-jays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/61791\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Cast, but High Expectations Remain for the Jays"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It seems laughable now, but there were legitimate questions about how Creighton would fare in the Big East following the graduation of National Player of the Year Doug McDermott in 2014.<\/p>\n

The Jays were terrific in their first season in the Big East, winning 27 games behind the second-rated offense in the country and earning a three seed in the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n

The year after McDermott graduated, the Jays fell off \u2014 hard. They went from 14-4 in the conference to 4-14, and finished that season 14-19 overall. Their downturn was short-lived, however.<\/p>\n

Creighton has won at least 20 games in every season since then. <\/p>\n

Greg McDermott has proven himself to be much more than than Doug\u2019s dad over the past decade, and as he winds down an outstanding career he faces some big question marks heading into the 2025-26 season \u2014 namely, how his Jays will look following the departure of four-time (!) Big East Defensive Player of the Year Ryan Kalkbrenner.<\/p>\n

Kalkbrenner\u2019s arrival vaulted Creighton from one of the better programs in the Big East into one of the best in the country. They are one of a handful of teams to win at least one game in the NCAA Tournament in each of the past five seasons \u2014 a stretch that includes a pair of Sweet 16 runs and an Elite 8 appearance. <\/p>\n

They were a blown call away from the Final Four in 2023 (when they could have faced off against a Connecticut program they\u2019ve fared very well against in the national title game).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Their Big East win-loss records this decade are beyond impressive: 13-5 (the year before Kalkbrenner\u2019s arrival when the season was cancelled due to the pandemic), then 14-6, 12-7, 14-6, 14-6, and 15-5.<\/p>\n

Kalkbrenner isn\u2019t the only significant loss from a year ago. Gone are all-world shooter Steven Ashworth, a tough scoring guard in Jamiya Neal, as well as Pop Isaacs and a steady center in Frederick King.<\/p>\n

Regardless, thanks to McDermott\u2019s success and a talented transfer portal haul, Creighton is widely anticipated to be the league\u2019s third best team behind St. John\u2019s and UConn in the season ahead.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look at what\u2019s changed and their outlook for next year.<\/p>\n

Creighton will defend differently and welcomes promising newcomers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It seems laughable now, but there were legitimate questions about how Creighton would fare in the Big East…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-61791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}