Creighton player who grew up 9 miles from KU returns Tuesday to face Jayhawks
Aside from making sure he has 10 tickets available for immediate family members, Mitch Ballock has faced no stressful moments heading into Tuesday’s Creighton-Kansas men’s basketball game at Allen FIeldhouse.
“There are not really any extra emotions right now,” Ballock, the leading scorer in Eudora High hoops history now a senior at the Omaha, Nebraska school, said of his mindset for the 4 p.m. game, which will be televised on ESPN.
“I am probably trying to slow play it a little bit until I actually am in the moment. Honestly it’s just another game,” the 6-foot-5, 205-pound guard added of the battle between No. 5 ranked KU (4-1) and No. 8 Creighton (3-0).
“It’s a good opportunity to see where we are as a team, what we need to work on, what we can do to keep getting better,” Ballock noted.
Ballock, who held a media conference call with reporters Monday, has been asked a lot about how he feels about playing a game in the fieldhouse for the first time in his college career.
As a major college recruit, he figures he attended “30 to 35 games” in KU’s tradition-rich building. Of course those games were contested before 16,300 fans. Just 2,500 spectators will be admitted Tuesday amid the pandemic.
“I would honestly say I’ve never been nervous before a game. You kind of have that adrenaline and have those feelings of not uneasiness, not nervousness. At the end of the day I’ve put in the work,” said Ballock. A starter, he averaged 36 minutes a game his junior season, most minutes of any player in the Big East Conference in 2019-20.
“Come Tuesday, nothing I do now is going to make me a better player going into tomorrow, outside of the mental aspect and the preparation for the game. My physical work is done. At the end of the day you’ve just got to approach it like any other day — any other game.”
Ballock — he’s averaged 8.7 points, 3.7 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game while playing 29.3 minutes per contest through three games — said he understands why folks would be curious about his mental state playing a college game just nine miles from his childhood home in Eudora.
“I was actually talking to my girlfriend the other day. She asked me that same question (about nerves),” Ballock said. “Obviously you want to perform and you want to play well and you want to do everything you can to win. At the end of day we are just playing basketball.
“If you approach it like that, do what you are supposed to do, take care of your business, everything else will follow and everything else will play into itself. I haven’t been nervous in the past. I don’t really see myself being nervous going forward, just come out have fun,” he added.
Ballock, who chose Creighton over KU, Kansas State, Iowa State, Oklahoma and others in recruiting, said the most memorable game he’s witnessed in Allen as a fan was the Jayhawks’ 109-106 victory over Oklahoma on Jan. 4, 2016.
“It was triple overtime. Buddy Hield went crazy. I think he had 46, 47 (points),” Ballock said of the OU standout who indeed had 46 that day. Ballock said another overtime game, a 90-84 KU victory over Kentucky on Jan. 30, 2016 was a close second favorite game he viewed from behind KU’s bench.
Ballock confessed Monday he almost chose KU as his college choice.
“It’s kind of hard not to. Obviously you’ve been in Allen Fieldhouse. It’s an unbelievable atmosphere, and the way they do things is … I’m not saying it’s the right or wrong way, but they win,” Ballock said.
“When you have a program that wins games like that at the level at which they win, then it’s appealing to a recruit especially when you are 15 and 16 years old. Just seeing that so close to home it was just an opportunity for me to play at the next level and play in front of that atmosphere and those fans.
“At the end of the day, I don’t think it fit me as a person overall,” Ballock added of KU. “I thought Creighton … the opportunities it posed for me right away and the opportunities it posed for me down (the line) in my future, I thought it was a better situation for me. I think it’s going to be more beneficial for me playing out.”
He added: “I’ve been here for three years. This is my fourth year. I’ve had an unbelievable experience here at Creighton so I have no regrets. Kansas has done an unbelievable job the past four years so I don’t think they miss me that much. It’s been fun being at Creighton.”
Creighton coach Greg McDermott said it’s been a pleasure to coach Ballock.
“He is one of the few people I’ve coached through the course of my career he could have zero points or 28 points and you could not tell by his body language how his personal game is going,” McDermott said. “He is about winning. He is about impacting winning.
“We’ve blessed to have him here,” he added of Ballock, who has a personal best mark of 11 threes made in a game (versus DePaul his sophomore season).
Also, his 93 makes from beyond the arc in 214 attempts ranked him fifth nationally in three-point percentage (43.5) for players with over 200 attempts a year ago. ”He’s done a lot for this program in the three-plus years he’s been here. I’m hopeful we can have some semblance of a normal season for him to end on,” McDermott said.
The unusual season, one played during a pandemic, continues Tuesday when just the 2,500 fans will be allowed admittance into the fieldhouse instead of the usual 16,300.
That makes it even more impressive he landed 10 tickets. He had an allotment of four as a participant, a teammate gave him four and Ballock’s mom located two more in Eudora.
“This is going to be the first game where I actually have a majority of my family,” Ballock explained. “My brother down in Florida, my sister in Brazil (will attend). I’m going to have 10 total people from my family just with niece and nephews, sister in laws, brother in laws type thing — 10 total and hopefully some other faces I can pick out in the crowd. It will be fun to see some familiar faces and hopefully see some people I don’t expect to see.”
This story was originally published December 7, 2020 at 1:01 PM with the headline "Creighton player who grew up 9 miles from KU returns Tuesday to face Jayhawks."
