Creighton Basketball: Life Without Doug McDermott Starts Now

The Creighton Bluejays begin life without Doug McDermott as the 2014-2015 college basketball season tips off tonight.

The 2014-2015 college basketball season will tip off tonight. Given the nature of the game as of late, you’ll see many new faces in lineups across the country. Nobody, however, will have to go through as much of a transition after losing players to the NBA Draft and graduation as the Creighton Bluejays.

For the first time in since 2009, the Bluejay starting lineup will be without Doug McDermott — the consensus player of the year in college basketball a season ago. For four seasons, McDermott was Creighton’s rock. He was the go-to guy — the superstar who could get you that bucket when you needed it most. While McDermott was in Omaha, the Creighton basketball program evolved from being one of the top mid-majors in the country to being considered one of the big dogs in the nation’s most storied basketball conference.

And now he’s gone.

Along with McDermott, Creighton also lost Ethan Wragge — one of the nation’s best pure shooters — who drew national attention after he almost single-handedly ended a game at Villanova in the first five minutes. They lost Grant Gibbs, a sixth-year senior whose role was both as a coach on the floor and the primary feeder of the McDermott scoring machine. And they lost Jahenns Manigat, an invaluable leader and defender — arguably the second most important player on the floor during Creighton’s transition from the Missouri Valley to the Big East Conference.

Last Friday night, I was at the CenturyLink Center for Creighton’s exhibition game with Sioux Falls. I was fixated on the scoreboard during the introductions of the starting lineups. Like the other 16,316 in attendance (a Creighton attendance record for an exhibition), I was curious to see what the new-look Bluejays would…well…look like. The only returning starter was point guard Austin Chatman, a solid and experienced floor general who many believe will be the deciding factor in terms of how Creighton’s season shakes out.

Aside from Chatman, what I saw was actually both surprising and exciting. The other starting guard was Devin Brooks, a former junior college transfer who wowed the Omaha crowd a season ago with his fast-paced and flashy style of play that serves as almost a tribute to his Harlem, New York roots. At one forward was Cal transfer Ricky Kreklow — a former Mr. Show-Me Basketball winner from the state of Missouri. At the other forward was Toby Hegner, a 6-9 redshirt freshman whom Creighton had won a fierce recruiting battle with Marquette, Iowa State and about a dozen other schools to land. Rounding out the starting five was the center — 6-11 senior Will Artino — a crowd favorite for his tough play underneath.

I was surprised because of the number of high-minute contributors from a season ago who were on the bench as well as some of the new faces who I thought might crack the starting lineup. I had assumed James Milliken, a junior college transfer from North Carolina by way of Cowley County Community College in Kansas, would step into the lineup and fill the role left by Manigat. I was also a bit surprised that Ronnie Harrell, an ESPN Top 100 recruit from a year ago, was not in the starting lineup.

If you are a Creighton fan, this is not a bad thing. In addition to Milliken and Harrell, you still have experienced contributors like Isaiah Zierden, Zach Hanson and Avery Dingman on the roster. Dingman may have cracked the starting lineup if not for an ankle sprain.

As the exhibition game got underway, one thing was certain: Creighton was still an offensive machine. They were letting it fly from everywhere, scoring 50 points in the first half and finishing the night 14-of-31 from three-point land. In case you are wondering, that’s 45 percent. They shot 41 percent from three as a team as season ago.

There will be no star power on this edition of the Creighton Bluejays. The strength of this team will be experience and depth as the season progresses. For a team that lost so much leadership and scoring power, the Bluejays looked surprisingly comfortable with each other last Friday. I think you can attribute much of that to Austin Chatman, but a lot of it has to do with players simply knowing their roles.

As the game wore on, you saw guys like Zierden and Kreklow filling the role previously occupied by Gibbs. Milliken and Brooks were there to replace Manigat, and it looked like the Bluejays will be a stronger offensive unit for it. Toby Hegner looks like the guy who will be filling the role of Ethan Wragge, as he is another oversized sharpshooter who isn’t afraid to take a shot from anywhere.

What Creighton doesn’t have is a guy who can step in and fill that role previously filled by McDermott. In all fairness, nobody in the country has that kind of guy, but even so, the Creighton Bluejays will need to figure out who is going to be to the go-to guy when the chips are down and they need that bucket.

Until they figure out who that player is, the Creighton Bluejays aren’t likely to be serious contenders for the Big East title. That said, there is more than enough depth and talent on this squad to finish better than the eighth or ninth place most pundits have them finishing in the conference.

More from FanSided