Four Keys to Victory as a Red-Hot Creighton Team Comes to Providence on Tuesday
Now this is a big one.
Love certainly won’t be in the air when Providence spends Valentine’s Day at home hosting the Big East’s hottest team in Creighton. Currently riding an eight-game winning streak, Greg McDermott’s club is looking more and more like the team that was ranked in the top ten of the preseason Associated Press poll.
It was a winning streak that kicked off with a mid-January victory over Providence. Creighton raced out to a 45-29 advantage early in the first half, thanks in large part to South Dakota State transfer Baylor Scheiermann’s 17 first half points, before the Friars tied the game at 54 around the eight minute mark.
Ultimately, the Jays were too much to handle on the interior in their 73-67 victory over PC. Creighton hit just 3-16 from beyond the arc that afternoon, but made 22 field goals at the rim, shooting those at a 76% clip.
Division 1 teams typically take around 30% of their shots at the rim. Creighton took 53% of theirs from in-close against the Friars.
With the victory, Creighton handed Providence its first conference loss of the season. The Friars had started 6-0, which marked the program’s longest winning streak to kick off conference play.
Providence is 4-3 since that Creighton loss, and coming off of what Ed Cooley described as a “listless” performance in a road loss at St. John’s. In fairness, two of those three losses came on the road to two of the top teams in the Big East — #10 Marquette and #13 Xavier.
Creighton entered this week’s games with a #20 ranking in the latest AP Poll, a number that should only rise after they soundly defeated Seton Hall in Newark (75-62), and outlasted Connecticut, 56-53, at home on Saturday.
Tuesday night brings an opportunity for Providence to notch a resume-building top 20 victory.
Here are some key questions heading into Tuesday: