UConn men’s basketball (20-1, 10-0) heads back on the road this weekend for one of its more challenging conference matchups year in and year out, as the Huskies travel to Omaha for a clash with Creighton (12-9, 6-4) at the CHI Health Center on Saturday night.
The Bluejays rank No. 65 in KenPom, with the No. 57 offense in the country, No. 105 defense and rank 69th in the NET. The team had a surprisingly poor non-conference slate, dropping five of its six high major games with its lone win coming over Oregon at the Players Era Festival. Greg McDermott was projected to have one of the best transfer cores in the country, but some of the pieces haven’t worked out and as a result the Bluejays are teetering around the bubble for the NCAA Tournament.
As for UConn, it sits at No. 2 in the AP Poll, No. 13 in KenPom, and No. 8 in the NET. They have the fifth-most efficient defense in the country and peaked as high as second in that category. The Huskies had yet another close win on Tuesday, knocking off Providence in Storrs behind some great bench performances from Malachi Smith and Eric Reibe and some timely scoring from Tarris Reed Jr. and Solo Ball.
The Huskies are looking to start 11-0 in league play for the first time since they also started 11-0 in Big East play during the 1998-99 season, UConn’s first national championship year.
Last time the Huskies visited Omaha, they picked up their first road win over Creighton in program history. Can they keep things rolling?
Date/Time: Saturday, Jan. 31, 8:00 p.m. EST
TV/Stream: FOX
Radio: UConn Sports Network, Sirius XM 83, Sirius/XM online streaming
Odds: UConn 6.5, O/U 141.5
Location: CHI Health Center – Omaha, Nebraska
KenPom Predicted Score:
Series History
The Huskies and Bluejays have played 12 times in their history, their first game coming in 2020 after UConn rejoined the Big East. Creighton has dominated the matchup, boasting a 9-3 record with a 4-1 mark in Omaha. They last faced off in the Big East Tournament semifinals last year when the Bluejays beat the Huskies 71-62. Liam McNeeley and Solo Ball led UConn with 13 points each.
Availability report
Braylon Mullins could be out for the game due to a head injury suffered during the second half of the win over Villanova last Saturday. The star freshman missed Tuesday’s game against Providence and is in “concussion protocol,” per head coach Dan Hurley. Mullins status will be revealed three hours before tip off in the Big East Injury Report.
What to Watch For
Another scoring outburst?
The two top single game scoring performances by UConn players this decade have both come against Creighton, ironically enough. Back in 2020, James Bouknight dropped 40 points in the Huskies’ Big East opening loss to the Bluejays in Storrs, the last time a Husky has reached that mark. Last year in Omaha, Liam McNeeley scored 38 points to carry UConn to its first win at the CHI Health Center in comeback fashion, still to this point he last 30 point game by a Husky.
Both Bouknight and McNeeley flat out took over down the stretch of their games and willed the Huskies, but netted different results. Bouknight scored 24 points in the second half and overtime to keep the team afloat, but that one will always be remembered for RJ Cole missing two key free throws late that would have iced the game in regulation with a UConn win. McNeeley had 21 points in the second half alone including a personal 8-0 spurt that turned a three point deficit into a five point lead.
This year’s UConn team isn’t really constructed around one guy going off like that (as I mentioned, no one has scored even 30 in a game since McNeeley’s 38 last Feb. 11), but to be fair, last year’s squad wasn’t really like that either until the star freshman decided to burst out of nowhere and deliver. Braylon Mullins would be a perfect candidate for this, but with his status up in the air its probably not likely (If he plays, it probably would be limited minutes). If i had to bet on it, I’d say if the Huskies have a scoring performance like one of those two on Saturday, it will be from either Solo Ball or Tarris Reed Jr.
Bench came through
It feels like every game since the calendar turned to 2026 one of the biggest talking points about this UConn team was how ineffective and nonexistent the bench was. The Huskies were able to win all of their games in that stretch, but did so being carried by the starting lineup, most notably in the road win at Providence where the starters accounted for 100 of the 103 UConn points.
Things changed in the right direction on Tuesday. Malachi Smith and Eric Reibe each had their best games of Big East play, fueling the Huskies to the victory. Smith buried four threes and dished out seven assists in a season high 29 minutes, providing great energy and depth that was needed with Braylon Mullins out. Reibe scored 14 points on a perfect 6-6 from the field, getting wide open looks underneath all night thanks to off-ball screens set in the paint. The 26 bench points were the most the Huskies had in league play and the most overall since 27 against East Texas A&M in early December.
Major transitions down low
In every single game between UConn and Creighton that has happened, there’s been one constant variable on the court for the Bluejays:
Ryan Kalkbrenner
If you haven’t been able to catch a Creighton game this year or are just unaware, the seven footer is no longer playing college basketball after 169 career games over five full seasons, 12 of which against the Huskies. Kalkbrenner averaged 11.1 points, 6 rebounds and 1.8 blocks per game against UConn and was a force inside all five years he played in Omaha.
Having someone who you can just pencil in at center for so long made McDermott’s job easy, but replacing him hasn’t been such a smooth ride. Owen Freeman transferred in from Iowa and was expected to be the main guy taking up the minutes in the middle, but after being looked upon as one of the top transfers in the cycle he has fallen out of the rotation completely and hasn’t appeared in any of the Bluejays past three games. Rookie Kerem Konan has filled some of that void, but only plays backup minutes.
Most of the time Creighton has ran with a small ball lineup with either Jasen Green or Isaac Traudt serving as the five, both enjoying breakout seasons in the scoring department. It hasn’t been picture perfect at the center spot for Creighton this year, especially after the luxury of Kalkbrenner for what feels like forever, but McDermott is doing the best with what he has.
Grab your popcorn
If you don’t remember how the last game between UConn and Creighton ended, let me refresh your memory. Jamiya Neal had a fastbreak opportunity with time running out in a seven point Bluejay lead and threw down a dunk that broke one of the “unwritten rules” that the Huskies took offense to, specifically Hassan Diarra. The screenshot of Diarra squaring up towards Neal went viral on social media. Both Diarra and Neal received technical fouls and that was that.
Diarra said after the game that he “felt it was disrespectful to the game of basketball” and Neal later apologized saying he “got caught up in the moment of the game with a lot of emotions going on.”
After a frustrating game that saw the Huskies shoot just 43% from the field, this interaction/altercation/whatever you want to call it was the cherry on top to a night the team wanted to forget, losing for the ninth time in 12 matchups with the Bluejays over the past five years.
Now, both of those players may be gone from their respective programs, but it will be interesting to see if the juices are still flowing 10 1/2 months later when the teams share the court once again.
Chasing records
Alex Karaban continues to etch his name all over the UConn record book and approaching some pretty impressive benchmarks. After Tuesday’s win, the captain passed Jerome Dyson and Mike McCay for 16th place on the all-time leading scorer list in Storrs and realistically can pass both Donyell Marshall and Khalid El-Amin on Saturday, whom he’s 12 and 14 points behind respectivally.
From the perimeter, Karaban is just five triples shy of tying Shabazz Napier for third all-time in Huskies history and would just need five more after that to tie Christian Vital for second and 11 after that to tie Rashad Anderson for first, a number he will likely surpass at some point in mid-to-late February.
Lastly, Tuesday marked the 131st career start for Karaban, putting him four shy of Jake Voskuhl’s record 135. Assuming there’s no funny business and he stays healthy, pencil in the Feb. 14 showdown with Georgetown for the record breaking night. Assuming Karaban plays every game the rest of the way, he would be at 141 career games and would at the bare minimum tie Napier for the all time games played record with one Big East Tournament game and one March Madness game, but here’s to hoping there will be much more than that.
