Creighton’s next opponent, UT Arlington, spent the first six weeks of the season as one of the darlings of the college basketball world, earning significant vote totals in the Top 25 polls after a 7-1 start that included a road win at BYU and a one-point loss at Alabama.
The Mavericks won 27 games and advanced to the quarterfinals of the NIT a year ago after an upset in the Sun Belt tournament left them out of the NCAA’s. This year’s team returns an awful lot of key contributors from that one, and is the most experienced squad in all of college basketball (according to KenPom, whose rankings show that UTA’s roster averages 2.