Basketball is a team game. The Big East is a conference where any team can win on any night.

But as it proved Sunday against Villanova, Creighton is the best team in the conference because it has the best offensive weapon in college sports, senior forward Doug McDermott.

Simply put, McDermott is an offensive juggernaut. Forget about his 25.3 points (which rank second in the country) and seven rebounds per game. Forget his nine 30-point performances, including five in Big East play. McDermott’s most astounding quality is the efficiency with which he scores.

According to basketball wizard Ken Pomeroy, McDermott takes 38.1 percent of Creighton’s shots when he’s on the floor. That’s good for second in the nation.

Even with all of those attempts, he is still tantalizingly close to what basketball statisticians consider an immaculate shooting season: the “50-40-90.” McDermott is shooting 50.2 percent from the field, 43.4 percent from three-point range and 89.4 percent from the free throw line this season.

That efficiency not only makes McDermott the most dangerous offensive player in the Big East, but also, as Pomeroy denotes, the Player of the Year in college basketball.

Sunday night against Villanova, “Dougie McBuckets” pulled out all the stops in his best performance of the year. He scored a season-high 39 points and did it with baffling efficiency. The senior shot 13-for-17 from the field (76.5 percent), 4-for-6 from deep and made all nine of his free throws.

The Wildcats simply had no answer for McDermott. As SB Nation Villanova writer Eric Kelly wrote on Twitter, “About the only way for ‘Nova to stop McDermott right now would be to quadruple team him, and he’d still probably shoot 45% from the field.”

More than any high-profile, one-and-done talent like Jabari Parker of Duke, Kansas’ Andrew Wiggins or Kentucky’s Julius Randle, McDermott is the offensive weapon to end all weapons in the 2014 college basketball world.

How then does Marquette, desperate to add another quality win to its NCAA tournament profile before it’s too late, shut McDermott down?

The two teams meet Wednesday in what is probably Marquette’s most important game remaining this season. With a win at Villanova unlikely, the Golden Eagles have one last good shot at a win against the Top 25, having failed in their first five chances.

In the Dec. 31 matchup in Omaha, McDermott went for just 19 points on seven-for-15 shooting, but it didn’t matter, because Marquette threw up a stink bomb offensively with just 49 points.

With the offense on the mend, Jamil Wilson will need to have a huge game for Marquette to win. The senior must play foul-free defense on McDermott while igniting the offense with smart, efficient shooting.

McDermott will get his points, that’s for sure. If he has an off night though, Marquette could vault itself into the NCAA Tournament picture.