Big East Basketball: 2020-21 power rankings heading into New Year

2. Creighton 8-2 (4-1)

These aren’t your grandfather’s Bluejays. As usual, Creighton boasts a top 40 national offense, but that’s not the only way they’ve been getting it done, highlighted by a gritty 2-point win over Providence on Saturday.

Greg McDermott’s team appears to have a better commitment to defense in 2020-21. While still early in the year, Creighton’s defensive rating is 50 spots better than it finished last season but they are also 64th in the country in blocked shots and 30th in defensive rebounding.

This is a team to be reckoned with as its only losses are a 1-point defeat to Kansas and a somewhat inexplicable loss to Marquette in a game where DJ Carton went off for a career-high 20 points.

Seven players score more than seven points per game with nine guys averaging 10 minutes or more. In fact, the Bluejays have increased its depth to a point where Big East POY candidate Marcus Zegarowski’s scoring average has decreased by 2 points from a season ago and they still haven’t missed a beat offensively.

Denzel Mahoney (15.0 Pts, 5.1 Reb, 1.9 Ast) has taken a step forward and leads Creighton in scoring.

Bottom line, Creighton is not just an offensive machine that needs a fast pace to win games. The 2020-21 Bluejays can grind it out and rotate multiple guys in and out of its rotation without consequence. In the physical Big East, you’ve got to be able to do that in order to make a no. 1 or 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament a reality.