Creighton gets beat - McDermott scores 7

[tornado]

McDermott goes 2-12 - George Washington Univ. found the secret to successfully guarding him..
they took their most athletic big man (Isaiah Armwood), and had him stick to McDermott like glue, even defending him from getting the pass, making every 3-pointer tough,
frustrating him and with a little luck - made him force shots all night.

Armwood normally averages 14 ppg & 8 rpg - but only had 12 & 4 last night using his energy on defense, and the rest of his teammates also chipped in with sound defense...
Creighton shot only 34% - well below their 53% season's average!
Creighton now drops to 0-2 in their last two games, and their early schedule is solid but only ONE of their first seven opponents is truly a major-conference foe. Six of them (George Washington, Alcorn St., UMKC, St. Joe's, Tulsa, & SDSU) are all low majors & midmajors.

Creighton's current RPI of 70 and SOS of 130 - are WORSE than Bradley's (RPI 56 & SOS 72)
Go BU!!!

[tornado]

The "New Big East" is 51-22 right now after going 1-5 yesterday (only DePaul won)

BUT - their combined record is bolstered by a lot of wins over weaker mid-majors -
They are only 11-16 against other power conference opponents and if you throw in the losses to other solid DI's like Wichita State, GWU, Mercer...
.. then one would conclude that their real strength so far has been in consistently beating the low-majors & mid-majors..

Plenty of big time matchups in the near future - so time will tell

[tornado]

A big surprise........
The Big East currently has ONLY ONE team inside the TOP 50 in RPI, Villanova is #7, but Butler is #51, Creighton #96, and several who were expected to be very strong teams are over 100 (Marquette, Xavier, SHU)

I just went to the Creighton message board and I was astounded - the most active new thread is actually a 10 page whining debbie-downer thread - fans actually worried because Creighton has played sub-par in three straight games!
Two were losses (SDSU & George Washington) and the win over Long Beach was said to show "issues", "lack of offensive flow", etc..

One interesting point of discussion was their lack of depth...if the ball isn't in Doug McDermott's hands then they are beatable.
Four starters average 5ppg - 8 ppg and the bench gives next to nothing...

Also over the Thanksgiving weekend (11/28-12/1) with a lot of the games were widely televised,
the league as a whole went 11-12

Looks like they'll never be happy - better institute the suicide precautions when McDermott graduates & takes Gibbs & Wragge with him.

[Canton BU fan]

I bet they eventually regret leaving the MVC. It sounds like the whole reason for leaving was to make the coach and his son happy but what happens next?

[tornado]

Big East is still just 14-16 against major conference opponents bu tthey've beaten up on enough cupcakes to hold a pretty good overall record and RPI.
And they're still winless against MVC opponents (0-1, I guess they are afraid to play us )
Once they start their conference play they're gonna get endless hype as such a powerhouse conference, but I am not so sure...
We'll see how many of their teams get past the first round or two next spring.