On November 5, Creighton Men’s Basketball faced South Dakota in their 2025-26 season opener.  

Creighton comes into this season with high expectations, after a summer full of transfers and five straight seasons making the NCAA March Madness Tournament.  

This season, Creighton is adding Owen Freeman and Josh Dix from Iowa along with Blake Harper from Howard, Nik Graves from Charlotte and Austin Swartz from Miami.  

The stacked lineup of newcomers is accompanied by returning players Isaac Traudt, Jason Green, Fedor Zugic, Ty Davis and Jackson McAndrew.  

The roster, put together by 16th year coach, Doug McDermott has shown enough potential to start the season as the twenty-third ranked team in the country.  

The Bluejays, led by Owen Freeman, finished the game with a strong win over South Dakota 92-76. 

 Freeman had the most points with 19 points making 9 of his 11 shots from the field. Familiar face Jackson McAndrew chipped in with his own 13 points and 7 rebounds while new addition Nik Graves found his own 15 points.  

Creighton showed great depth from the bench with 11 of the 12 players who touched the court scoring.  

While South Dakota isn’t the strongest opponent, being a Summit League team, Creighton put on good performance for their first game settling in with 5 new transfers.  

Along with the transfers, Creighton lost multiple important players from last season including NBA players, Ryan Kalkbrenner and Steven Ashworth.  

The Bluejays’ win was number 500 for Greg McDermott in his division 1 coaching career. As Creighton kicks off their season, we can only wait to see if McDermott will add some March Madness success to his storied career.