Team: Creighton Bluejays
2025-26 Record: 16-18, 9-11 Big East
2025-26 Big East Finish: fifth, one game behind Seton Hall and one game in front of DePaul
Final 2025-26 Computer Rankings
NET: #83
KenPom.com: #76
BartTorvik.com: #85
Postseason: After falling by 11 to Seton Hall in the Big East tournament quarterfinals, Creighton accepted a spot in the College Basketball Crown event run by Fox Sports out in Las Vegas. They beat Rutgers in their first game before losing 87-70 to West Virginia in the semifinals.
Notable Departures: Well, the most notable one is the one that was suspected to happen a year ago at this time. After bringing in a coach-in-waiting in spring 2025, head coach Greg McDermott stepped down as Creighton head coach after the end of the 2025-26 season. Very specifically, McDermott and Creighton announced that before the Bluejays even went to Las Vegas for The Crown, so there was no mystery involved once they were eliminated. McDermott heads off into retirement after 16 seasons with the Bluejays and 25 campaigns as a Division 1 head coach. He was 366-189 as head coach in Omaha and walks away as one of just two coaches in Creighton history to get the Bluejays to the NCAA tournament at least five times. McDermott holds the record with 10 appearances, and with 366 victories, he is the winningest coach in Creighton men’s basketball history.
Four of the five guys that appeared in all 34 games last season leave with McDermott. We can start with Josh Dix, who was the only Bluejay to start all 34 games as well, and he was the team’s leading scorer at 13.2 points per game on top of that. Going in descending order of starting games, Creighton also loses Nik Graves, Blake Harper, and Fedor Zugic. Graves finished the season and his final year of eligibility as the team’s #2 scorer at 10.9 points, plus he also led the team in assists at 4.4 per contest even though he only started 22 times. Harper departs after bouncing from Howard to Creighton, and he’ll take his 7.7 points and 3.6 rebounds in 14 starts off to VCU. Zugic’s wild time in Nebraska comes to an end after two seasons, and he went out with 5.2 points and 2.0 rebounds on 31% three-point shooting in 16 minutes per game. Hey, remember when we were all “hey, I don’t think a guy who’s been playing in EuroLeague since 2019 should be playing in college at all?” Turns out Greg McDermott didn’t totally disagree with that idea at the end of the day, huh?
Continuing onwards!
Ty Davis has decided that he’s had enough of Omaha after two seasons. He averaged 11 minutes a night while appearing in 33 games and starting 12 times, but seeing as his minutes were heavily located in the 12 starts and in single digits most of the time after losing the starting spot in late January, I guess I understand why he’s at Samford now. Finally, there’s Owen Freeman, who was one of the most notable transfer targets in the country a year ago. His time with the Bluejays can be chalked up as a massive disappointment, perhaps possibly because of the knee injury he suffered in the summer of 2025. Maybe he was never quite right, but by Christmas, he had not only lost his starting spot, he had lost the right to play 10 minutes a game, too. By mid-January, he wasn’t even playing at all, missing eight of Creighton’s last 16 games. Now he’s at Auburn with two seasons of eligibility left to go thanks to the five years/five seasons rules.
Notable Returners: Going purely by the list of top scorers, Austin Swartz is the #1 returning guy for the Bluejays, as he tied Nik Graves for the #2 spot behind Josh Dix at 10.9 points per game. He definitely scored fewer total points than Graves because Swartz only appeared in 30 contests last season, including missing both games in The Crown. He went in and out of the starting lineup as the season went along, originally taking Graves’ spot in the starting five in mid-December. As a starter, the Miami transfer averaged 15.3 points and 3.1 rebounds per game and he was a 42% three-point shooter as well.
Jasen Green deserves honorary credit for “appearing in every game” as he only missed one contest all year and started in 30 of the 33. On top of that, the one he missed was the opener against South Dakota, and Creighton won by 16 anyway. Green averaged 10.5 points last season, and he ended up as the leading rebounder with 6.3 per contest as well. As a 35% three-point shooter, he probably should have been taking more than 1.7 attempts per game seeing as the Jays shot just 34% as a team.
The guy who appeared in 34 games that we didn’t talk about yet is Isaac Traudt, who ended up as the minutes beneficiary of Owen Freeman tumbling out of the lineup. In the 23 games where he ended up starting, Traudt averaged 7.6 points and 3.0 rebounds per game. The rebounding from the 6’10” Nebraskan is probably the biggest problem for the Bluejays, as they were an awful offensive rebounding squad and a kind of passable defensive rebounding team as well. That leaves Hudson Greer as the only guy we saw regularly-ish last year that’s returning for next year. Greer’s not a big guy, but his minutes spiked up late in the season, and he played in each of Creighton’s last 16 games of the year. His averages in that stretch were 4.1 points and 1.7 rebounds in 13.6 minutes per game.
One more guy, as his return to the court in a Creighton uniform will be notable. Jackson McAndrew suffered a foot injury in preseason activity and it was never quite right. He ended up starting CU’s first four games of the season, but only lasted eight minutes in the fourth one and then was announced as done for the year. The good news is that his averages were a little bit up from his freshman year in the three games he played regular-type minutes in, although his minutes were up just a tad as well, too. Since his injury will be a year old by the time we get to the first week of November, I think we could expect him to be a full go.
Key Additions: Creighton has a top 100 freshman on the roster in Katrelle Harmon (6’4”, 180 lb freshman guard, Seattle, Washington). He’s at #85, and with just five returning players, there’s a pathway to minutes for him. I’m not sure if it will open up for him because we have transfers to get to, but top 100 guys should be able to do something useful right away. They have a top 150 center and a junior college center coming in as well, but between Isaac Traudt and the transfers, I wouldn’t really expect either of these guys to be prominent. Then again, Wesly Rosa is listed at 7’2” and 275 pounds coming out of Dodge City Community College, so if he can play at all, he should see minutes.
Let’s just start right off with the big man transfers that I was mentioning that might be blocking the recruits from getting on the floor. The more notable one for me is Oswin Erhunmwunse (6’10”, 240 lb junior forward, Benin City, Nigeria), who apparently enjoyed his yearly access to Runza during Providence’s road trips so much that he wants to spend an entire year (or three?) in Omaha. He averaged 6.9 points, 8.3 rebounds, and 2.1 blocks per game for the Friars last season, and that might be underselling him because he was a top 100 rebounder in terms of rate on both ends of the floor last season. I was half-tempted to put Frederick King (6’9”, 270 lb fifth year center, Mangrove Cay, Bahamas) under “Key Returners” because of the comedy value because King is a boomerang transfer. He was at Creighton for three years, played a total of 718 minutes in 103 games, then bounced to Murray State last season. King never quite popped playing behind Ryan Kalkbrenner, but he averaged 13.1 points and 8.4 rebounds for the Racers last season, so we’ll see if that pays off in terms of Big East minutes this time around. As you can tell from the math involved here, King’s ability to play is still legally up in the air because of the 5 years/5 seasons lawsuits, but as always, I think these guys should be allowed to play.
Swinging back to why I’m curious as to whether there is a pathway to playing time for Katrelle Harmon, Creighton has four transfer guards of varying histories to compete for minutes. It’s hard to discern who leads the way here, so let’s start with the easy one with a question mark attached. That’s Kayden Edwards (6’3”, 165 lb sophomore guard, Fort Worth, Texas), and since it’s on the team roster, expect to hear him called Bugg Edwards. He played just 89 minutes for TCU as a freshman last season, but 247 Sports had him as a top 70 prospect. Feels like he’s a good example of how high school prospects outside the top 50 should start looking for a place they can play right away, no matter how fancy the program recruiting them is or even if it the hometown squad. BJ Davis (6’1”, 170 lb senior guard, Modesto, California) has been at San Diego State for the last three years, but after being a starter as a sophomore, he dropped back to a bench role this past season. His minutes were mostly the same, so he’s been averaging 10.0 points, 3.1 rebounds, and 1.7 assists for the last two seasons while hitting 36% of his three-pointers. A reliable guy, if nothing else.
Wes Enis (6’1”, 200 lb senior guard, Conover, Ohio) had the greenest of green lights for USF last season after two years in Division 2, and he turned 9.5 long range attempts per game into 35% shooting for the season and 16.4 points per game. He also added 3.6 rebounds, 2.4 assists, and 1.0 steals, and honestly, I’m kind of shocked he didn’t follow head coach Bryan Hodgson to Providence. Brody Robinson (5’11”, 160 lb. fifth year guard, Houston, Texas) has been all over the place for the past four seasons: Chattanooga, junior college, UT-Arlington, and then Oakland. He had a decent year as a starter for Arlington, but blew up with the Golden Grizzlies last season. I don’t know if he can replicate 17.6 points and a Horizon League-best 6.7 assists per game, which had him top 70 in the country in terms of rate per KenPom.com, but if his 5th year lawsuit goes in his favor, it’ll be fun to see him try. Robinson is also a 38% three-point shooter on nearly 400 Division 1 attempts, so he almost seems like a perfect fit for what we’ve seen from Creighton basketball in the past.
Coach: I didn’t put new head coach Alan Huss into the Key Additions section because he was hired as head coach in waiting over a year ago, so he’s not an offseason addition to the staff. He went 56-15 in two seasons at High Point after leaving his job as a Creighton assistant under McDermott, and now he’s in charge of the show here.
Outlook: The key to identifying the vibes around Creighton at the moment come down to figuring exactly what the Bluejays’ problem was in 2025-26.
First, we should point out that there actually was a problem. Ignore the part where Creighton started the year at #41 in KenPom’s rankings and ended up at #76 after falling as far as #82 at one point late in the year. Ignore the part where the Bluejays were #23 in the BartTorvik.com rankings to start the year and bottomed out at #86 before finishing at #85. Forget about the part where CU went from #119 in the first NET rankings, improved as far as #41 after beating Villanova but finished the year at #83.
16 wins was the fewest for Creighton since a 14-19 season in 2014-15, which was their second year in the Big East and first without Doug McDermott in the lineup. The Jays had won at least 20 games in every season since then. Their #76 final KenPom ranking was the lowest since ending that same 2015 season at #79, and they had ranked in the top 50 in all but one season in between…. and they were #55 in the one outlier.
It was, quite obviously, a massive departure from what we’ve come to expect from Creighton’s men’s basketball through their tenure as a Big East team.
Is it just as simple as Jackson McAndrew was never right after his preseason injury and then was done for the year combined with Owen Freeman just didn’t work out in Omaha either because of his offseason injury or a failure to mix well with what the coaching staff needed from him? Is that all it was? If it’s just a misfire on a transfer and an unfortunate injury to an expected starter, then that’s just how things go sometimes and you have to pick up and move on to something new.
Or is it something else?
How invested was Greg McDermott after announcing the hiring of his successor in Alan Huss last offseason? Was McDermott the final say on all decisions all season long, or was he ceding control of the program to Huss? Remember: When Huss’ hiring was announced, it wasn’t official that McDermott was going just one more year, it was open ended. If he was ceding decision making power, was that happening all along, or was it gradually more and more as the season went along and McDermott became more convinced that he was done after the season was over?
To put it plainly: How much of Creighton’s difficulties in 2025-26 were because Greg McDermott was checked out but still calling all the shots? If the answer is “a lot,” then perhaps the transition to Alan Huss repairs that problem all on its own.
But what if the answer is “not much,” and not because of the issues with McAndrew and Freeman? What if Creighton’s problems this past season are because McDermott was letting his former assistant and successor run the show most of the time? What if it was Alan Huss minding the store when it comes to scouting and game planning? How concerned should Bluejays fans be about Huss running the show if that was the case?
As I mentioned way up there, Greg McDermott has a pretty easy case as the best coach in program history. It’s hard to be The Guy After The Guy. That’s the position that Alan Huss is in right now. BartTorvik.com projects the Bluejays to finish in the top 45, and if that’s the case, they’ll be an NCAA tournament team fairly easily thanks to the expansion to 76 teams.
But they were supposed to be top 25 last season according to that same algorithm, and that didn’t happen. The explanation as to why that was the case might tell us what to expect in Omaha, not just this season but for the next few seasons as well.
Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media
Facebook: AnonymousEagle
Instagram: AnonymousEagleSBN
Bluesky: AnonymousEagle