Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
You worry less about their resiliency because they are invested in each other. Yes, they have their own personal goals, but they have that commitment to one another and it ought to be really special on this year's team.
The core group of Bluejays who’ll lead the nationally ranked Creighton women’s basketball team this year have already accomplished a lot together.
But coach Jim Flanery thinks there’s more to come. He joined From the Mall and talked about how special this group is.
An Elite Eight in 2022. Three straight NCAA tournament bids. A weekly spot in the Top 25 national polls. Scoring records, and record crowds.
The Jays enter the 2024-25 season picked to finish second in the BIG EAST and ranked No. 21 nationally. They bring back seven of their top 8 scorers from last season — and five of those student-athletes have been on the team for four-plus years.
So, there’s plenty to get excited about when Creighton opens the season on Friday. Nov. 8 at South Dakota State.
In his appearance on the From the Mall podcast, Flanery talked about biggest strength of his talented team, the increased popularity of women’s basketball and his memories from his days as a student. Scroll down to read a snippet of the conversation with the program's all-time winningest coach.
Listen to the full From the Mall episode to learn more from Flanery, including:
- How season ticket sales are going (really well!)
- Why he’s not afraid to empower his younger assistant coaches
- The ways he tries to balance building team culture and the desire to win
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The following questions and answers have been edited for space and clarity.
What are you looking forward to about coaching this year’s team?
Just how much they've invested and how mature they are. I think that's a big piece. We had a big team dinner (recently) and just to look around the room and see how much experience there is. How much maturity there is. The longer a group stays together, the more committed they become. We have five seniors who've been with us. Lauren Jensen joined us in Year 2, so this will be her fourth year with the other four. Then we added two other fifth-year seniors.
When you have a group that's been together long enough, they value their own journey, but they also want the best because of the relationships that they have with those teammates. And I think, as a coach, you worry less about their resiliency because they are invested in each other. Yes, they have their own personal goals, but they have that commitment to one another and it ought to be really special on this year's team. And we have talented basketball players, too — people who push each other in practice. They're highly competitive.
How much do you pay attention to the growth of the sport, and does it impact the way that you're building your program?
I'm glad it's here, but I wish it would've happened 15 years ago because I just think people have been missing the boat. The game has evolved even in those last 15 years that I'm talking about — but people are now recognizing how good the product is and how easy it is to invest in young women who play at such a high level.
Women's basketball is in a great place right now. Caitlin Clark left, but you've got Juju Watkins and Paige Bueckers and Hannah Hidalgo, and these players are going to be potentially more household names than on the men's side because they stay four and five years. On the men's side, a lot of times if you're really, really good, you're gone in a year or two. And so I think that's going to help the growth of our sport.
As a Creighton alum, you’ve talked about wanting your players to have a well-rounded college experience like you did. What made it special for you?
It was about having relationships with professors. I majored in philosophy, and there were probably three philosophy professors who would go to the Kiewit Center and play rec ball. And I just thought that was cool. You'd have them in class, and then you'd sit there after playing pickup basketball with them and have that relationship. You built connections with the people who worked at the cafeteria and in the library.
I was a fairly decent student, a studious kid, but not at the level that a lot of my classmates who were pre-med or just way past where I was going to be. But there's a commitment to excellence at Creighton that you could grab onto and realize. When I sat in my first calculus class at Creighton — and I came from a small town, and I was really good in math in high school — but then I'm like, ‘Oh, there's a lot of really good people in math at Creighton. So, Creighton's commitment to excellence across the board, especially academically, resonated with me. And I think that that's something that you want your players to genuinely feel.
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