Gameday: Creighton at Indiana State

An awful lot of folks, myself included, changed our hopes for this team after the conclusion of the non-conference schedule. Going 9-1 will do that. But above all else, what Saturday night made painfully obvious is that this is still a young team susceptible to hiccups and bumps in the road. Fact is, a lot of the mistakes of Saturday are not recent developments; they've been making them all year. The competition, with a couple of exceptions, were just not able to exploit them.

Coach Altman has been trying to convince us of this in his postgame comments, but a lot of people -- again, myself included -- chalked it up to "Ah, its just Dana being Dana...he's always negative!"

If you can be sure of anything at this point, its that the team had a couple of rough practices after the Illinois State game. The cliche prediction, and indeed the popular sentiment, seems to be this: "They just got their worst home loss in a decade, so they will come out mad as heck and blow out the Sycamores."

Not so fast, my friend. A couple of tough practices won't fix the 35 points allowed in the paint. And even the fact that the Jays own a 45-21 lead in the series, including 16-13 in Terre Haute, is of little importance. Their coach is now Kevin McKenna, Bluejay Hall of Famer and Altman assistant for nine seasons. "The Shot Doctor" knows just about everything there is to know about Altman's system and style of coaching, and this is not to be ignored.

When McKenna was at Nebraska-Omaha, his Maverick squads played exhibitions against Creighton three times. Running a system that looked at times like a mirror image of the Jays, the Mavs pushed Creighton to the precipice of defeat all three times. The 2002 Creighton team that would ultimately win 29 games and be ranked in the Top 10 struggled to beat UNO, 75-72, and were behind with three minutes remaining. The next year, UNO led by as many as 15 points before Creighton rallied to force overtime, where the eventually prevailed.

It would be a stretch to say those UNO teams were in the same ballpark talent-wise as Altman, but much like his mentor, McKenna seemed able to coax the most out of what he had. Compiling an 89-33 mark in four years at D-II UNO, he now leads a Sycamore team that has been down in recent years. Don't let that lull you into thinking this will be a cakewalk.

While the talent may not be there yet, the Trees are a well-coached, fundamentally-sound team that goes nine-deep and has a couple of decent scorers. They're undefeated at home, and they're coming off a road win in the conference. In other words, the Jays had better be ready to play. I think they will be, but it won't be nearly as comfortable as you might hope for. After Saturday night, we should be looking simply for improvement and a win, not for style points.

Prediction: Jays 58, Sycamores 51