When Jasen Green plops down in the chair that overlooks the music studio he’s created within his room, he’s often bringing some things to the chair that he’s looking to free himself of these days.
Green says that between Creighton putting together a season in which its 15-16 record–which has it set to win less than 20 games for the first time since the 2014-15 season–and his increased role in the team’s results, this has been the most stressful year of his life.
When the Creighton forward sits down at that keyboard, though, the realities that surround him appear to disappear for a while.
“It’s a really good way to kind of clear my head and start thinking about other things besides school, basketball and stuff like that,” Green told Basket Under Review. “But, yeah, I love music so much.”
The proper description of Green’s music is a mix between EDM and hiphop with some ethno beats mixed in, his dad says. The Creighton standout says his favorite artists are ASAP Rocky, Kid Cudi, Drake. His favorite genres are hiphop, R&B, alternative and indie are his favorite genres–although he says there’s not a genre that he won’t listen to.
Green caught the music inclination as a five year old when his parents put him into piano lessons. The musical background that Green was building really started to manifest itself while he was a junior in high school and he–as well as a few of his friends–downloaded the free version of a music program called FL Studio. When Green downloaded it and started playing around with it, he realized he had a natural ability because of his piano background.
Before he knew it, Green was working with the program every day and felt himself improving. Green’s dad says that the music wasn’t something that his son shared with people until his freshman year of college–even though his parents bought him a piano to take to college and an old coach gave him a beat machine. In his head, Green had to get to a point where his music was proficient enough to share.
“I was like ‘wow, this is really good,’” Green’s dad, Rob, told Basket Under Review. “We thought he would continue to play and we bought him a piano when he went to college, but there's no way that I thought that he would be dabbling in music.”
These days, Green shows his Creighton teammates what he creates and clearly believes in himself as an artist. Green says music will likely always be a hobby to him–even when he’s done with basketball–because of the volatility of the field. If he ever got a chance to make a living off of it, he says it would be “amazing” because of how passionate he is about it.
For now, though, Green is lasered into doing what he can to turn this from a relatively disappointing Creighton basketball season into a memorable one as it enters Big East Tournament play on Thursday. There will be plenty of time for music once this is all over.
In the days following Creighton’s regular season finale, Green did something that is a near rarity in college basketball. The Creighton forward left campus to have breakfast with his family, and nobody had to take a road trip or board a plane to make it happen.
Green didn’t have to go far to play his college basketball, and he’s got extra equity in this as a result. Millard North High School saw Green emerge as a champion and local three-star prospect. Four years later, he’s having his breakout season 18 minutes away from his high school.
One of Green’s sister’s teammates had Creighton season tickets and took him to his first Creighton game–which also served as his first college or NBA game–while he was in sixth grade. From there on, he was hooked on the fast-paced play that he saw and was picturing himself on the floor. Picturing himself on the floor was a surreal experience, Green says, because he was sitting in the nosebleeds watching Greg McDermott’s team run the show.
Green says his favorite Creighton players growing up were Doug McDermott and Justin Patton. Green’s love of Patton represents a full-circle moment of sorts. The current Creighton forward gravitated towards Patton because the former Creighton big man was a local kid turned Blue Jays star. It appears as if Green is on a similar trajectory.
“He just sticks his nose in there and he just goes hard every time and I think the community appreciates it,” Green’s high school coach Tim Cannon told Basket Under Review. “This is a community of a lot of hard workers. We've got everybody from factories and laborers in that way to people in business jobs. That work ethic is there in this part of the country.”
Cannon says Green embodies the city because he’s not the player on Creighton’s roster that’s in the limelight. Instead, he’s made a role off of grinding his way through games and being a glue guy of sorts. Green has the highest block percentage of anyone on Creighton’s roster, has played in all but one game and is the team’s leader in rebounding percentage among qualified players.
In a way, Green’s profile as a local three-star recruit that was tasked with redshirting makes him all that more appealing to the Omaha community. So does the idea that he’s consistently played three different positions throughout his career and has become Creighton’s longest-tenured player.
“As he’s developed, the city has really embraced him,” Green’s dad said, “And he’s obviously embraced the city, as well.”
Rob Green always told his son that it was his destiny to do what he’s doing these days and while Green didn’t always embrace that, his dad feels as if he is these days. In a way, Green’s dad feels as if his son being a local three-star recruit rather than a national five-star made him less well known initially, but now he’s receiving a bigger spotlight because of where he’s from.
To Creighton’s fanbase, Green means far more than his 10.4 points and 5.9 rebounds per game would indicate.
Green says that this place raised him and that the city of Omaha has helped him to find out who he is and what his values–valuing family, friendship and relationships, namely–are. That’s why his situation isn’t lost on him.
“It's always been an awesome experience to be able to play in Omaha,” Green said. “It's given so much to me and I've been able to give it back a little bit just by playing for Creighton. It’s an honor to be able to wear the jersey as a representative of Omaha cause I've been here my whole life and it’s given so much to me. It's really good to be able to give it back.”
The vision was always for Green to be a hometown hero in this place, but the path appeared to be foggy as he navigated his first summer within the program. About halfway through, Green says, he could tell that Creighton’s veterans were significantly faster and stronger than he was at his size.
Green’s decision to redshirt was difficult on him despite the supposed inevitability of it, but he knew that if he was going to become what he is these days–one of Creighton’s four double-figure scorers and its leading rebounder–that it was almost necessary. His dad says what made the transition more difficult was the idea that Green had been the go-to guy just about everywhere prior to college. That was a far off reality at this level at that point, though.
So, while Creighton was in the midst of a 24-win season that ended in the Elite 8, Green was sitting on the bench in sweats and going through the extra steps that redshirts have to every time their team plays. That’s an essential piece of how Green got here and has a chance to take a step forward next season, though.
“I wouldn't change it at all,” Green said, “Because I grew so much during that year.”
Green’s dad says that the redshirt year was overwhelmingly beneficial for his son and that it’s paying off significantly these days. His son wasn’t equipped with everything he needed to be a college basketball player at that point.
What Green found out quickly in his first post-redshirt season was that, well, he needed to grow a whole lot more if he was going to become more than a bench player. Green says he was determined to become more than that and had to keep his goals in mind as he went through a sophomore season in which he played just 7.1 minutes per game and averaged 1.6 points per game.
Green’s development is the rare nearly-linear development in college basketball in which a player gets better and is developed within the confines of one school while demonstrating patience in the process.
Patience was needed again in Green’s second post-redshirt season as he averaged just 4.9 points per game and played just over 20 minutes a night. Green started plenty of games down the stretch and was getting closer to fulfilling his potential, but he still appeared to be an offseason away from being a go-to guy.
Now, though?
"He's been a Swiss Army knife for us," Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said in the preseason. "Wherever we've needed to plug him in, whether it's the small forward, the power forward, he's played some center for us in the past. He's been a guy that we can count on in a lot of different ways."
Green is nationally ranked in the top 500 of KenPom’s offensive rating, effective field goal percentage, true shooting percentage, offensive rebounding percentage and two-point percentage metrics. The metrics indicate that Green’s development allows him to hold up against the type of players that he didn’t used to be able to.
This isn’t it for him, either.
“I'm in a pretty good position right now,” Green said, “But I'm gonna just keep [working] for next year, as well.”
22. That’s the number of power-conference players that joined their respective programs as freshmen and made it to senior day this season with that same program. Just three of those players are Big East players.
A year from now, Green has a chance to be among college basketball’s biggest area of rarity; four-year players. In fact, he’d be one of only a few fifth-year seniors that didn’t leave when things got difficult.
Green tells Basket Under Review that “as of right now,” he plans to return to Creighton for his fifth season.
There’s a multitude of reasons as to why Green feels as if it’s the right move to stay within this program and why he’s felt that way in the past. The community he feels he has as a hometown standout is one that he cites. So are the connections he has within the Blue Jays program. Green also says he doesn’t take for granted the way Creighton’s fanbase shows up despite the program’s record.
It says something about the place that Green feels compelled to come back to it after a season like this. It says something about him, too. The Creighton forward wants to leave a legacy at Creighton when this is all said and done. That’s something money can’t buy him.
“He's a very loyal guy,” Cannon said. “He doesn't care about the limelight. He's always about the team, just a super, super leader and is about what's gonna help the team be successful.”
Perhaps that’s why this 2025-26 ride has been weighing on Green to a high degree. The odds are that regardless of what happens around him, though, Green will be a core piece of this thing moving forward.
If his trajectory indicates anything, he'll take another leap.
“Being able to stay for this long and constantly improve I feel like will just be kind of a framework for a lot of players that wanna come to college or wanna come to Creighton,” Green said. “I wasn't the best player when I first got here, but just hard work will eventually pay off. Next year will be just an amazing year for our team for me in general just to show all the strides that we've taken.”
