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So, who do you got? Kyle or Dougie?

Tyler McKinney or Antoine Young? Brody Deren or Gregory Echenique? Grant Gibbs or Michael Lindeman? Dana or Mac?

It's still January, but judging by the sights and sounds around Creighton basketball, you'd think it was March 1.

The talk around some Bluejay huddles is not whether CU can outduel Wichita State in a monthlong staredown. It's which team is better, the 2003 Jays or this year's blue man group?

Meanwhile, if you don't get up-to-the-minute RPI updates on your iPhone and can't recite the Nashville bracket on Joe Lunardi's latest Bracketology, you're not really a Creighton basketball fan.

This is the world we live in. Legacies are handed out — or shattered on the hardwood floor — in March.

You want to know how the 2011-12 Jays can get a leg up on the celebrated 2002-03 group?

Win the Missouri Valley regular-season title.

Oh, yeah. And an NCAA tournament game.

It's an interesting thing. The "2003" team, which won 29 games, is thought of as the greatest Creighton team since the Tony Barone days, and some might give the Kyle Korver team the nod over Bob Harstad and Chad Gallagher.

And yet the 2003 Jays finished second in the Missouri Valley. They won the Valley tournament title, but were upset in the first round of the NCAA tourney by No. 11 seed Central Michigan in Salt Lake City.

Doug McDermott and the boys can do that team two better. And it starts with the Valley. It starts with the grind of January and February.

The Jays and Wichita State are locked in a first-place tie at 8-1. If Drake loses at Northern Iowa on Sunday, the Jays and Shockers will have a three-game lead with half the season left. In other words, it will be a monthlong dance-off between two rivals, culminating with WSU's trip to Omaha on Feb. 11.

Or maybe the bigger drama is monitoring Creighton's RPI status and what Joltin' Joe Lunardi says about the Jays' seed come Monday.

That's not right. But that's college basketball today.

Look, I'm not here to tell you a conference title means more than an NCAA tourney run. College hoops today is March Madness. That's how teams are judged, success or failures. That's how coaches make their name, move up the ladder.

It's also a maximum six games, where your chances for winning hang on the matchups provided by a committee in a board room and then play out over three weekends on neutral courts.

I'm not here to say winning a conference title is harder. But it's undervalued today. It's underappreciated.

And that should never be the case at Creighton.

Just check out the banner high atop the CenturyLink Center. Since CU ended a 29-year absence from conference play in 1977-78, the school has won six conference regular-season titles (1978, 1989, 1991, 2001, 2002 and 2009). Six league titles in 34 years. And three of those six were shared.

The point is, there's something going on here besides getting in Bracketology. Something that shouldn't be overlooked.

"It's not (overlooked) in this locker room," Creighton coach Greg McDermott said. "If you do, you're asking for trouble. That's natural, I think, for fans to do that. It happens in football, too, where fans look ahead to the bowl game.

"But there is way too much time left. You can never take a night off in this league, especially in a league where teams live for basketball. They put a lot of money into it, a lot of attention. That makes it really hard to win. This year is no exception."

Compared to March Madness, the degree of difficulty of winning a conference title is just different. You're going against your neighbors, your rivals, the schools you recruit against. Schools who know you better than you know yourself.

You also have to play nine games in front of hostile crowds, some more creatively nasty than others, some who know how to do Internet research on their favorite opposing players.

So being the best team doesn't always mean anything.

Being the toughest team does.

That's what makes the conference chase, the league grind, an accurate measure of greatness for those involved.

"Everybody seems to focus on the NCAA tourney already, but not us," Creighton junior Grant Gibbs said. "The regular season does get undervalued. That's where you set yourself up for March. It also tells you who the best team in the Valley is. And that's our number one goal.

"When you have to play two games a week, traveling, and playing in front of other crowds, to win the league shows a lot of toughness. You have to be a model of consistency, and that's what we're trying to build here."

The stage is set for the 19th-ranked Jays. At 18-2, they have 10 regular-season games left, including the BracketBuster game, and five Valley road games. Creighton already won at WSU. The Jays should be favored to win every game.

But they'll have to bring their guts. The boys in blue will be the biggest game of the year on just about every Valley campus. The Feb. 4 game at Northern Iowa is already sold out. Others will follow.

Fortunately, this CU team looks built for the long haul. The Jays' elongated bench was on display in Saturday's 75-49 win over Indiana State, last year's Valley tourney champ.

Thirteen Creighton players scored and eight had at least six points. The starters were hardly taxed — McDermott played 26 minutes, Echenique 22, Gibbs 24, etc. This is not a team that should be worn down. It's a team that should thrive, especially with a push-the-ball style, when February legs get weak.

"They always seem to make the right play," Indiana State coach Greg Lansing said. "They don't put a bad player on the floor."

It's a special team having a special season. We'll measure that in March, of course. February, too.

Contact the writer:

402-444-1025, tom.shatel@owh.com

twitter.com/tomshatelOWH

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