Did You Miss Me? I Missed You!
Did You Miss Me?
Has it really been three weeks?
How could I have been so bad as to leave all of you fine folks hanging by a string?
First, I think I take for granted just how lucky I am to catch almost every Creighton game either in person or on local, regional, or national television. My good friends the Nicolarsens are at the fate of Chicago cable television when they want to catch a Jays game, save for the one or two games they might be able to make an appearance for in Omaha during a given season.
In this day and age of DirecTV, TiVo, and all the other robots that can juice your television up with college basketball games at all hours of the day from seemingly every college city coast to coast, I forget that sometimes the Jays get lost in the television signals and some of you can’t watch the games.
So, where were we?
Three weeks gone by, and the Jays have once again grasped the city of Omaha from a winter-induced sports boredom and made both die-hard and casual fans proud with their strong-willed teamwork and execution. It is chilly throughout most of the country — especially in the cities where most of you are reading this right now — but more than 16,000 people keep packing the Qwest Center OMAHA game after game to watch Dana Altman’s squad fend off (almost) all challengers for the top of the Missouri Valley Conference standings.
A little bit of catch-up, shall we? (Again, sorry for the delay. No excuses, really … just getting caught up in the day-to-day grind during the shortest days of the year.)
Creighton 65, Bradley 54
When I last wrote, the Jays were a couple of days removed from a difficult, we-had-it-and-we-let-it-go loss on the road to Wichita State. The Shockers came away with a 3-point win, thanks to Kyle Wilson’s hot shooting and the Jays continued tough luck on the road. However, the Jays entered the game at Wichita with a 5-1 conference record, and if you told most Jays fans on Jan. 16 that CU had split the mid-January road trip with Northern Iowa and Wichita State, most would have locked you in a closet before you could take it back.
The Jays struggled on the road early in the season, and when Bradley rolled into Omaha on Jan. 18, it marked a difficult home-court challenge during what most observers thought would be CU’s most difficult week of basketball of the season — @ UNI, @ WSU, at home against a Bradley team shooting lights-out on the season, hosting Southern Illinois, and @ Missouri State. That hurts just typing that stretch of games.
Turns out some home cooking was just what the Jays needed to right the ship, avoid losing back-to-back games for the first time during the season, and move to 6-2 in the conference race.
Nate Funk took over (25 points), Anthony Tolliver controlled the paint (13 points, 10 rebounds, Nick Bahe hit some big three-pointers (9 points), and Dane Watts pulled down 10 more rebounds. But the most important numbers after the game were 37% and 22%.
CU held Bradley’s offense to just 37% shooting from the field and just 22% from long range. Coming into the game, Bradley was one of the top three-point shooting teams in the nation. But, Creighton’s solid scoring and field-goal percentage defense prevailed, and the Bluejays pulled out a crucial mid-week game. Next up … the Ugly Dawgs.
Southern Illinois 58, Creighton 57
It hurts me to type that score, and it hurts me even more to reminisce about this game.
Everything was set. The crowd was ENORMOUS. We’re talking 17,000-plus people, which wasn’t only a record for a Creighton basketball home game, but also an all-sports record for The Phone Booth. People were in their seats early for a change, and the student section was completely full and spoken for about an hour before the game.
The atmosphere was tremendous, and the only thing that could have brought the record crowd down — other than the impending snow storm that would engulf the city during the course of the game — was a slow start by the beloved Bluejays.
Slow is being kind. How we only trailed by 5 points at halftime is still a mystery to me. CU shot 27% in the first half from the field, including 0-4 from long range. We couldn’t get a look at the basket without what seemed like two or three SIU players right in our players’ faces, and even when we got open looks it seemed as though the Jays were expecting to get knocked down or something … and the shots were hard off the back of the iron and bouncing all over the place.
But, as is usually the case in most college basketball games, the home team makes a run in the second half if they trail at intermission, and this contest was no different.
Funk did everything he could to will the Jays to the victory, hitting the go-ahead shot in the middle of the second half. In fact, the Jays held a 50-43 lead with just under 5 minutes to play, and couldn’t put the game away.
As is usually the case during a Creighton-SIU game, the officiating was the talk — or the scream — of the crowd, as a few foul calls late went against the Bluejays. Tolliver and Watts both fouled out of the contest while trying to guard Randal Falker and Matt Shaw, respectively, all night, and it was the loss of our post presence that cost the Jays big points on defense down the stretch.
Too painful. Just an excruciating loss. Funk had a desperation heave at the buzzer rim in and out, a shot that miraculously would have given the Jays a win and sent the Qwest Center into oblivion from the crowd noise.
But, it was simply another loss to the Salukis, a team that we just can’t seem to beat.
Creighton 66, Missouri State 62
Needless to say, I didn’t take the loss to Southern Illinois very well. And, my usually sunny disposition in life didn’t get any brighter when I looked ahead on the schedule and saw a downright angry Missouri State team waiting to host the Jays a couple days after the SIU collapse.
If you weren’t already aware, Creighton absolutely STOLE a win from MSU two days before New Years Day 2007, and I mean “STOLE” in the worst, most criminal way possible. MSU missed free throw after free throw after free throw down the stretch, Watts and Funk hit some big shots in the closing minutes, and Tolliver played tremendous, shot-altering defense to give the Jays a 1-0 start to the conference season.
So, forgive me if I didn’t think Altman could find a way to get his kids past the heartbreaking SIU loss and ready to go into a hostile environment where lately the Jays hadn’t fared so well.
But Altman didn’t really have to do much. The seniors handled that.
Funk (21 points), Nick Porter (18 points), and hometown boy Tolliver (13 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 5 blocked shots) led the Jays to an invaluable, if not improbable, 4-point win, completing the season-sweep over Barry Hinson and his Bears. Funk was nearly unstoppable, as he seemed to hit every shot he took (actually finished 7-13 from the field), and Porter gave the Jays fans exactly what they expect from him every game — a slashing, driving scoring machine who can do a little bit of everything offensively while also grabbing some rebounds.
But it was Tolliver’s night, and he made the home crowd undoubtedly jealous that MSU had let one of Springfield’s native sons leave for a Valley rival. The A-Train didn’t shoot particularly well on the evening, but everything else he did was spectacular. He had an ESPN-Top-10-Play-worthy blocked shot; even the official, after he told Anthony to calm down a bit and not get the crowd riled up, said it was a tremendous play and congratulated him on the swat. His assists after being double-teamed led to clutch baskets down the stretch. And, as always, he was an emotional leader for a group of guys trying to regroup after the devastating SIU loss.
Creighton 71, Indiana State 55
If there was ever going to be a letdown home game, it would probably come on this cold and blustery Saturday afternoon tip-off, against a lower-level Valley team. However, CU lost to this supposedly lower-level Valley team on the road, and Creighton could ill-afford to give the Sycamores the season series sweep.
So, the starters carried the load (again), led by Funk (again) who went for 20 points. Tolliver, Porter, and Watts all had big games offensively. It was a seemingly pedestrian effort for a team that seemingly had exhausted a season’s worth of effort during the excruciating 5-game stretch that preceded this lazy afternoon contest. Plus, the Jays had Peoria on their mind, looking forward to trying to secure the second conference season-sweep of the week.
Creighton 82, Bradley 71
Driving around before this crucial conference contest, I had a bad feeling: How were the Jays going to contain Bradley’s offense for a second time this season? On the road? How could the Jays get out of Peoria with a season sweep?
And then I got a flat tire.
For those of you who don’t know, tires and I don’t get along. I don’t know what I’ve ever done to them to receive the kind of treatment I get in return, but it is as if my car is magnetic and all of the random loose nails and screws in the city of Omaha are attracted to Blonda (that’s the nickname for my car, the Blue 2001 Honda).
So, armed with a poor disposition, a flat tire, and snow falling all around me, my fiancé and slushed our way over to Goldberg’s II to watch the game, drink a beer or two, and keep an eye on Blonda from across the street at 50th and Dodge.
It was the best flat tire I’ve ever had. Probably the only one that was followed by so much good. By the time I had dropped my car off and crossed the street, Isacc Miles and the rest of the Bluejays had seemingly let the air of the Bradley Braves’ tires. The lead reached double-digits quicker than I could say “beer and burger, please,” and the rest of the next two hours were spent trying to keep myself under control in a sparsely populated mid-town restaurant as the Jays clung to a lead.
Things got scary, but the Jays held on. Not only to the game, but to their grip on first place in the Valley standings with SIU.
Creighton 67, Drake 62
Pierce Hibma. The man. The myth. The legend.
In all seriousness, Creighton loses to Drake without Pierce Hibma. There isn’t one game so far in the 2006-2007 season that you can say the same thing, and there might not be another game the rest of the season when that statement will be true. Who knows. But again, in front of his family and friends, Hibma — from Pella, Iowa — made Des Moines’ Knapp Center his home for the second straight year, and he propelled the Jays to victory.
Creighton opened up a lead midway through the first half, and then, as they did at Indiana State and at Evansville before in the season, they gave it away. They stopped defending. Drake got hot from about everywhere on the court, and the Bulldogs took a 2-point lead into the locker room at halftime.
And I wasn’t there to see it.
I was freezing my extremities off in Chicago. As some of you know, I have a love-hate relationship with the Windy City when it comes to CU hoops. I was there for Terrell Taylor’s shot in the 2002 NCAA tournament game against Florida. I was also there for Funk’s injury and the insult that followed in a 2005 loss at DePaul.
But, thanks to the powers of cable television and a city that has more sports bars that it seems to have public restrooms for the drunks piling out of the sports bars to, um, handle their business in, I was able to gather with my friends the Nicolarsens and about 20 other Jays friends, fans, and alums to watch the contest.
And thanks to Pierce Hibma, it turned out to be a good night. He hit 4 three-point shots in 17 minutes, once of which was Korver-esque from about 30-plus feet away. To say he gave the team a lift is an understatement — they were lost for awhile, and he stepped up and got things back on track.
And then the usual suspects — Funk, Tolliver, and Watts — brought the victory home with some clutch shots and some even better intangibles. Tolliver himself took a charge and blocked a shot in the closing minutes to give the Jays the stops they needed to escape central Iowa with a victory.
All thanks to Pierce Hibma.
Creighton 79, Evansville 74
And then just like that, it seemed to be all for not.
Creighton had just one week until the much-anticipated rematch at Southern Illinois, and all that stood between the Jays traveling to Carbondale tied with SIU for the conference lead was a showdown at The Phone Booth with the Purple Aces.
Except, for the first 20 minutes, the Jays didn’t show up to the showdown. Evansville shot 65% in the first half and climbed out to a 14-point halftime lead. The Jays’ zone offense looked zoned out, and no one was rotating over to guard perimeter or mid-range jump shots. And the Aces continued to knock down the shots.
I wonder what Dana said at halftime.
Creighton, obviously realizing that a battle with SIU on ESPN2 wouldn’t be complete if they dropped this mid-week conference home game, completely switched gears. CU allowed just 26 second-half points, climbed right back in the game offensively with two big scoring bursts in the first 10 minutes of the second stanza, and completed the win by shooting 52% in the second half and 75% from the free-throw stripe down the stretch.
It wasn’t pretty, but it was pretty awesome. 11-3. Tied for first in the Valley. Going to Southern Illinois to try and steal a game at what has become a ridiculously difficult place to win a road conference game for any team in the conference.
More on that later today. I need to muster up the calm and cool collectiveness to put my thoughts into words.
Has it really been three weeks?
How could I have been so bad as to leave all of you fine folks hanging by a string?
First, I think I take for granted just how lucky I am to catch almost every Creighton game either in person or on local, regional, or national television. My good friends the Nicolarsens are at the fate of Chicago cable television when they want to catch a Jays game, save for the one or two games they might be able to make an appearance for in Omaha during a given season.
In this day and age of DirecTV, TiVo, and all the other robots that can juice your television up with college basketball games at all hours of the day from seemingly every college city coast to coast, I forget that sometimes the Jays get lost in the television signals and some of you can’t watch the games.
So, where were we?
Three weeks gone by, and the Jays have once again grasped the city of Omaha from a winter-induced sports boredom and made both die-hard and casual fans proud with their strong-willed teamwork and execution. It is chilly throughout most of the country — especially in the cities where most of you are reading this right now — but more than 16,000 people keep packing the Qwest Center OMAHA game after game to watch Dana Altman’s squad fend off (almost) all challengers for the top of the Missouri Valley Conference standings.
A little bit of catch-up, shall we? (Again, sorry for the delay. No excuses, really … just getting caught up in the day-to-day grind during the shortest days of the year.)
Creighton 65, Bradley 54
When I last wrote, the Jays were a couple of days removed from a difficult, we-had-it-and-we-let-it-go loss on the road to Wichita State. The Shockers came away with a 3-point win, thanks to Kyle Wilson’s hot shooting and the Jays continued tough luck on the road. However, the Jays entered the game at Wichita with a 5-1 conference record, and if you told most Jays fans on Jan. 16 that CU had split the mid-January road trip with Northern Iowa and Wichita State, most would have locked you in a closet before you could take it back.
The Jays struggled on the road early in the season, and when Bradley rolled into Omaha on Jan. 18, it marked a difficult home-court challenge during what most observers thought would be CU’s most difficult week of basketball of the season — @ UNI, @ WSU, at home against a Bradley team shooting lights-out on the season, hosting Southern Illinois, and @ Missouri State. That hurts just typing that stretch of games.
Turns out some home cooking was just what the Jays needed to right the ship, avoid losing back-to-back games for the first time during the season, and move to 6-2 in the conference race.
Nate Funk took over (25 points), Anthony Tolliver controlled the paint (13 points, 10 rebounds, Nick Bahe hit some big three-pointers (9 points), and Dane Watts pulled down 10 more rebounds. But the most important numbers after the game were 37% and 22%.
CU held Bradley’s offense to just 37% shooting from the field and just 22% from long range. Coming into the game, Bradley was one of the top three-point shooting teams in the nation. But, Creighton’s solid scoring and field-goal percentage defense prevailed, and the Bluejays pulled out a crucial mid-week game. Next up … the Ugly Dawgs.
Southern Illinois 58, Creighton 57
It hurts me to type that score, and it hurts me even more to reminisce about this game.
Everything was set. The crowd was ENORMOUS. We’re talking 17,000-plus people, which wasn’t only a record for a Creighton basketball home game, but also an all-sports record for The Phone Booth. People were in their seats early for a change, and the student section was completely full and spoken for about an hour before the game.
The atmosphere was tremendous, and the only thing that could have brought the record crowd down — other than the impending snow storm that would engulf the city during the course of the game — was a slow start by the beloved Bluejays.
Slow is being kind. How we only trailed by 5 points at halftime is still a mystery to me. CU shot 27% in the first half from the field, including 0-4 from long range. We couldn’t get a look at the basket without what seemed like two or three SIU players right in our players’ faces, and even when we got open looks it seemed as though the Jays were expecting to get knocked down or something … and the shots were hard off the back of the iron and bouncing all over the place.
But, as is usually the case in most college basketball games, the home team makes a run in the second half if they trail at intermission, and this contest was no different.
Funk did everything he could to will the Jays to the victory, hitting the go-ahead shot in the middle of the second half. In fact, the Jays held a 50-43 lead with just under 5 minutes to play, and couldn’t put the game away.
As is usually the case during a Creighton-SIU game, the officiating was the talk — or the scream — of the crowd, as a few foul calls late went against the Bluejays. Tolliver and Watts both fouled out of the contest while trying to guard Randal Falker and Matt Shaw, respectively, all night, and it was the loss of our post presence that cost the Jays big points on defense down the stretch.
Too painful. Just an excruciating loss. Funk had a desperation heave at the buzzer rim in and out, a shot that miraculously would have given the Jays a win and sent the Qwest Center into oblivion from the crowd noise.
But, it was simply another loss to the Salukis, a team that we just can’t seem to beat.
Creighton 66, Missouri State 62
Needless to say, I didn’t take the loss to Southern Illinois very well. And, my usually sunny disposition in life didn’t get any brighter when I looked ahead on the schedule and saw a downright angry Missouri State team waiting to host the Jays a couple days after the SIU collapse.
If you weren’t already aware, Creighton absolutely STOLE a win from MSU two days before New Years Day 2007, and I mean “STOLE” in the worst, most criminal way possible. MSU missed free throw after free throw after free throw down the stretch, Watts and Funk hit some big shots in the closing minutes, and Tolliver played tremendous, shot-altering defense to give the Jays a 1-0 start to the conference season.
So, forgive me if I didn’t think Altman could find a way to get his kids past the heartbreaking SIU loss and ready to go into a hostile environment where lately the Jays hadn’t fared so well.
But Altman didn’t really have to do much. The seniors handled that.
Funk (21 points), Nick Porter (18 points), and hometown boy Tolliver (13 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 5 blocked shots) led the Jays to an invaluable, if not improbable, 4-point win, completing the season-sweep over Barry Hinson and his Bears. Funk was nearly unstoppable, as he seemed to hit every shot he took (actually finished 7-13 from the field), and Porter gave the Jays fans exactly what they expect from him every game — a slashing, driving scoring machine who can do a little bit of everything offensively while also grabbing some rebounds.
But it was Tolliver’s night, and he made the home crowd undoubtedly jealous that MSU had let one of Springfield’s native sons leave for a Valley rival. The A-Train didn’t shoot particularly well on the evening, but everything else he did was spectacular. He had an ESPN-Top-10-Play-worthy blocked shot; even the official, after he told Anthony to calm down a bit and not get the crowd riled up, said it was a tremendous play and congratulated him on the swat. His assists after being double-teamed led to clutch baskets down the stretch. And, as always, he was an emotional leader for a group of guys trying to regroup after the devastating SIU loss.
Creighton 71, Indiana State 55
If there was ever going to be a letdown home game, it would probably come on this cold and blustery Saturday afternoon tip-off, against a lower-level Valley team. However, CU lost to this supposedly lower-level Valley team on the road, and Creighton could ill-afford to give the Sycamores the season series sweep.
So, the starters carried the load (again), led by Funk (again) who went for 20 points. Tolliver, Porter, and Watts all had big games offensively. It was a seemingly pedestrian effort for a team that seemingly had exhausted a season’s worth of effort during the excruciating 5-game stretch that preceded this lazy afternoon contest. Plus, the Jays had Peoria on their mind, looking forward to trying to secure the second conference season-sweep of the week.
Creighton 82, Bradley 71
Driving around before this crucial conference contest, I had a bad feeling: How were the Jays going to contain Bradley’s offense for a second time this season? On the road? How could the Jays get out of Peoria with a season sweep?
And then I got a flat tire.
For those of you who don’t know, tires and I don’t get along. I don’t know what I’ve ever done to them to receive the kind of treatment I get in return, but it is as if my car is magnetic and all of the random loose nails and screws in the city of Omaha are attracted to Blonda (that’s the nickname for my car, the Blue 2001 Honda).
So, armed with a poor disposition, a flat tire, and snow falling all around me, my fiancé and slushed our way over to Goldberg’s II to watch the game, drink a beer or two, and keep an eye on Blonda from across the street at 50th and Dodge.
It was the best flat tire I’ve ever had. Probably the only one that was followed by so much good. By the time I had dropped my car off and crossed the street, Isacc Miles and the rest of the Bluejays had seemingly let the air of the Bradley Braves’ tires. The lead reached double-digits quicker than I could say “beer and burger, please,” and the rest of the next two hours were spent trying to keep myself under control in a sparsely populated mid-town restaurant as the Jays clung to a lead.
Things got scary, but the Jays held on. Not only to the game, but to their grip on first place in the Valley standings with SIU.
Creighton 67, Drake 62
Pierce Hibma. The man. The myth. The legend.
In all seriousness, Creighton loses to Drake without Pierce Hibma. There isn’t one game so far in the 2006-2007 season that you can say the same thing, and there might not be another game the rest of the season when that statement will be true. Who knows. But again, in front of his family and friends, Hibma — from Pella, Iowa — made Des Moines’ Knapp Center his home for the second straight year, and he propelled the Jays to victory.
Creighton opened up a lead midway through the first half, and then, as they did at Indiana State and at Evansville before in the season, they gave it away. They stopped defending. Drake got hot from about everywhere on the court, and the Bulldogs took a 2-point lead into the locker room at halftime.
And I wasn’t there to see it.
I was freezing my extremities off in Chicago. As some of you know, I have a love-hate relationship with the Windy City when it comes to CU hoops. I was there for Terrell Taylor’s shot in the 2002 NCAA tournament game against Florida. I was also there for Funk’s injury and the insult that followed in a 2005 loss at DePaul.
But, thanks to the powers of cable television and a city that has more sports bars that it seems to have public restrooms for the drunks piling out of the sports bars to, um, handle their business in, I was able to gather with my friends the Nicolarsens and about 20 other Jays friends, fans, and alums to watch the contest.
And thanks to Pierce Hibma, it turned out to be a good night. He hit 4 three-point shots in 17 minutes, once of which was Korver-esque from about 30-plus feet away. To say he gave the team a lift is an understatement — they were lost for awhile, and he stepped up and got things back on track.
And then the usual suspects — Funk, Tolliver, and Watts — brought the victory home with some clutch shots and some even better intangibles. Tolliver himself took a charge and blocked a shot in the closing minutes to give the Jays the stops they needed to escape central Iowa with a victory.
All thanks to Pierce Hibma.
Creighton 79, Evansville 74
And then just like that, it seemed to be all for not.
Creighton had just one week until the much-anticipated rematch at Southern Illinois, and all that stood between the Jays traveling to Carbondale tied with SIU for the conference lead was a showdown at The Phone Booth with the Purple Aces.
Except, for the first 20 minutes, the Jays didn’t show up to the showdown. Evansville shot 65% in the first half and climbed out to a 14-point halftime lead. The Jays’ zone offense looked zoned out, and no one was rotating over to guard perimeter or mid-range jump shots. And the Aces continued to knock down the shots.
I wonder what Dana said at halftime.
Creighton, obviously realizing that a battle with SIU on ESPN2 wouldn’t be complete if they dropped this mid-week conference home game, completely switched gears. CU allowed just 26 second-half points, climbed right back in the game offensively with two big scoring bursts in the first 10 minutes of the second stanza, and completed the win by shooting 52% in the second half and 75% from the free-throw stripe down the stretch.
It wasn’t pretty, but it was pretty awesome. 11-3. Tied for first in the Valley. Going to Southern Illinois to try and steal a game at what has become a ridiculously difficult place to win a road conference game for any team in the conference.
More on that later today. I need to muster up the calm and cool collectiveness to put my thoughts into words.
posted by Creighton Otter at 10:35 PM
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