Creighton 63, #25 Northern Iowa 55

You’d think that after a win against a conference rival, a team coming to Omaha ranked for the first time in school history, the words would just pour on to the blank page on the computer screen.

But words are hard to come by after the last two home games at the Qwest Center – or The Phone Booth as some Jays fans are referring to it lately. The usual clichés apply when talking about the frenzied crowd participation and the stunning turn of events as the Jays clawed back from deficits against Wichita State and the Panthers.

I don’t think the city of Omaha has ever seen anything like this in my 25 years on this earth. I might be wrong, but when was the last time nearly 15,000 people came out for an 8 p.m. Valley game (no Huskers or Cyclones involved) on a school night the first week of February? When was the last time there were dance-offs between animated Creighton fans on the Jumbotron, cementing certain people as crowd mascots?

It took two and a half years, but the atmosphere at the Q is steadily ascending in volatility. The first season of the new digs, a veteran team lost its court leader after a 10-0 start and underachieved the rest of the season, ending in the NIT. Last year, fans continued to get comfortable in their new seats, watched the Jays lose a couple heartbreakers at home early in the year, and then picked up the intensity in sync with Creighton’s late-season flourish.

From the outset, this year was supposed to be different. A team chalked full of talent, with a poster child for the Valley (Nate Funk) and an exciting home schedule (Xavier, Nebraska, Dayton, and the usual cast of characters in the conference), all of which contributed to a buzz that collected volume and fans in mid-November.

The crowds this year have been amazing; with at least three of the university’s top 5 largest Omaha crowds coming this season. But people aren’t just coming to watch the Huskers or Funk, who is out for the season with a shoulder injury. People are coming to watch because this team grabs your heart and doesn’t let go.

It might sound corny, but it is true. This team is defying odds right now, and the Phone Booth Phanatics love it. Everyone on the team seems like a genuine, likeable kind of guy. Dominic Bishop and Anthony Tolliver and Jimmy Motz flap their arms like condors, getting the crowd on its feet and feeding a fan frenzy that grows louder by the game.

Josh Dotzler and Johnny Mathies and Dane Watts play hard-nosed, full-contact hoops, with the hard-working ticket holders eating every minute of it. Then there are the excitable and always-smiling Brice Nengsu and Manny Gakou, foreigners both by birth and to a welcoming and caring city always looking to take care of its out-of-towners.

Take Nick Porter, for example. He played arguably his best game in a Bluejay uniform against UNI, and you could almost feel the brimming Qwest Center thinking, in unison, “I knew he could play like this!”

Porter came to Omaha as a sort of enigma. His pedigree was that of a true scorer, a big-bodied guard hardened on the courts of some of the best junior college basketball west of the Rocky Mountains. However, a complicated and nagging knee injury kept him off the court all last season, while the Jays continually searched for someone to become the third scoring threat behind Funk and Mathies.

Porter looked sluggish and slow in his first couple games as a Jay this year, but he entered the starting line-up when Funk, Motz, and Pierce Hibma all missed time congruently with injuries. After becoming a starter, Porter has emerged as not only a solid offensive threat still learning the ins and outs of Valley-brand basketball, but more importantly as a go-to, lock-down defender.

Porter still has defensive lapses, as any guy new to Division I basketball would, but in two games against Valley preseason Player of the Year Ben Jacobsen Porter has had a huge hand in shutting down Sioux City’s second best Valley player.

Jacobsen ended with 8 points on 3-15 shooting from the field (including 0-5 from long-range distance), marking the second time Creighton denied him double-digits. It is not a coincidence the Jays swept the regular season series, and it magnifies the most important aspect of this Jays team.

Defense. When all else fails, play defense. Porter, Dotzler, Hibma, Mathies, and Bishop all shared defensive switching duties on the Panthers’ perimeter players, and it was the communication and tight guarding that allowed the Jays to come back from a 5-point halftime deficit.

During that comeback, and the second half that saw the Jays shoot 65% from the field and 71% from 3-point land, the crowd applauded numerous defensive stops with standing ovations. The Jays – and the fans – get it now; defense needs to be this team’s calling card the rest of the year.

But I’m sure Dana’s been telling them that since practice started in October. Think he knows a thing or two about basketball, huh?