OMAHA – Creighton coach Greg McDemott calmly crosses his arms and watches his team run their offense. Occasionally he squats down like a catcher, then he pops back up to call out instructions to his players. He may pace down the sidelines in front of his bench, but he never seems to get too excited.
Tonight the Bluejays are off to an ice-cold start against the Samford Bulldogs of the Southern Conference. After the Bulldogs go up 7-0 on a three-pointer by Josh Davis, McDermott calls a play by raising his right fist, Antoine Young come off a screen, pops in an 18-foot jumper and at the 13:07 mark in the first half, Creighton has finally scored their first basket.
What does McDermott do? Claps his hands twice and watches him team get back on defense. That’s it, no big display of emotion, just calm, cool and collected. That’s the way he handles things. When things go well or when things fall apart he is still the calm, measured, coach of Creighton basketball.
Tonight he coached his team to a 58-40 win over their out-gunned opponent.
In less than eight months at the helm of the Bluejays, McDermott has his team starting to win, the fans coming out to games and he even has fans around Omaha talking about college basketball, which is not that easy in this football crazy state.
McDermott was named the 16th head coach in Creighton’s history on April 27, 2010. He spent the previous four seasons as head coach at Iowa State and replaced Dana Altman, who was hired as the coach at Oregon. While at Iowa State, he won 59 games where his teams were usually ranked near the top in scoring defense, but they just didn’t have enough offensive firepower to finish above .500. Going into the critical fifth year of his contract things were looking shaky for his future as a coach at Iowa State, so when the Creighton job became open, McDermott jumped at the chance to get back into the Missouri Valley Conference, where he coached Northern Iowa to three NCAA Tournament appearances in five years and won 90 games.
It is not very often that a coach leaves a BCS school to coach at a non-BCS school, but Creighton is not your average upper mid-major program. They average 15,000 fans a game, they have gone to the NCAA Tournament six times since 2000 and regularly contend for the MVC title.
So there are also pretty hefty expectations for the Creighton coach.
So far this year with the non-conference part of the schedule completed, McDermott has guided the Bluejays to an 8-4 record which includes wins over LSU and Saint Joseph’s, as well as heart-breaking road loses to Iowa State and Nebraska.
The defense is showing steady improvement as evidenced by holding three of the last four opponents to 60 or fewer points. In fact, tonight’s 58-40 win over Samford set the Qwest Center record for fewest points allowed, as well as biggest rebounding margin (45-19) for a team in the Qwest Center.
“We’ve made great strides defensively and we are still a work in progress, offensively,” said McDermott. “We have shortcomings, with our ability to pass it and our ability to shoot it, at times, but our decision-making as to what is a good pass and what is a good shot is improving. That is something that will be real important as we move forward in conference play.”
McDermott’s ability to move this team forward was developed in five years as an assistant at North Dakota State, followed by six successful years as head coach at Division II Wayne State College (NE).
But his meteoric rise in the head coaching ranks occurred in those five seasons as the head coach at his alma mater, Northern Iowa. He took over a program that had not had a winning season in four years. In just his third year, he won 21 games, followed that with another 21 wins and then his team won 23 wins.
So when Creighton AD director, Bruce Rasmussen needed a coach, he didn’t have to look far. McDermott was already a well-known quantity in the MVC.
Rasmussen said he wanted a coach with documented success, a coach with passion for the game, someone that understood Creighton and the MVC, a great family man and teacher. He got all of that with McDermott, along with that calm sideline demeanor.
McDermott keeps his emotions in check on the sideline because he wants his players to play under control and with poise during tough situations.
“If you want your players to handle adverse situations in the right way, you as a coach need to emulate that. I try not to get too high with the winds on the good plays and I try not to get too low when things are not going right, “explained McDermott. “I think there needs to be a calming effect from the sidelines for the players. These guys are young and emotional. It has always been my feeling to try to stay even-keeled.”
It is probably easier to stay even-keeled with this team than with Iowa State because this is a solid program. McDermott didn’t really need to fix a lot when he arrived; he just needed to get his players to buy into his way of doing things.
He credits the previous coach with leaving this program is good shape. “Obviously Coach Altman did a terrific job in his tenure here. It was just a matter of instituting my own things. The players have embraced that and I couldn’t be happier with how the community has embraced both myself and our family.”
He sees his team being right in the thick of things with Wichita State, Missouri State, Illinois State and Northern Iowa by the time the conference tournament rolls around in March and based upon his previous record in the MVC, McDermott has pretty good eye sight.
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