Let's Dance! (Part One)

To quote the last installment of www.bluejaybasketball.blogspot.com:

“All you need to know is that Dana Altman is undefeated in Arch Madness championship games. It won’t be 80-46 like 2003, but the Jays win. Everyone is happy. Everyone can celebrate. And God will cooperate, with sunny skies for the celebratory drive home across the Show Me State Sunday.”

Rarely do sports prognosticators, good (sometimes) or bad (most times), get to say, “I told you so.” But, this is one of those times. And you know what? It feels good to be able to thump my chest about this one.

Sunny skies across the Show Me State … it couldn’t have been closer to the truth. When all 12 of the guests in our two 2-bedroom suites at the Crowne Plaza in downtown St. Louis awoke Sunday morning to the smell of smoky bar clothes and an impending checkout deadline, the skies were Bluejay blue. It was a sign, in fact, that everything was looking up for Creighton hours before they would step on the court against the team’s most recent nemesis and replace 8 straight defeats and years of frustration with a shiny new Missouri Valley Conference Tournament Championship trophy.

A far cry from the first day of the tournament, which found hundreds of Jays fans stranded in Omaha and surrounding areas due to blizzard conditions throughout the Midwest. But those Jays fans who were able to make it to the Gateway City, and those who watched from home in between trips outside to shovel the snow, saw three straight game that represent why Dana Altman is the best coach in the conference, why Nate Funk is the best player in the conference, and why the Creighton Bluejays are the toughest draw in Arch Madness.

During the next three days, I’m going to take a look back at Creighton’s three-game streak through the Arch Madness tournament, which they capped off with a championship game win over rival Southern Illinois.

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Creighton 59, Indiana State 38

As you know, the Bluejay caravan that was packed up and set to leave Thursday morning didn’t hit the road until later that afternoon, costing us the chance to watch the play-in “first round” games at the Arch Madness tournament. No problem, we all thought; we’ll just take our time getting to St. Louis, enjoy a couple of been-in-an-icy-cooler-for-7-hours beers, and watch the highlights of the boring play-in games on the local news from the hotel bar.

Then the first phone call from The Reverend — Drake topped the century mark in an 101-96 win over Evansville in overtime. Oh, and a bunch of Drake players, Klayton Korver included, decided to shave their heads before the game. And after the game, Coach Tom Davis said that if they won the whole tournament that he’d shave his head into a Mohawk.

Was I already inebriated? I hadn’t had a drink, yet that sounded like something that I might think up while discussing the bottom half of the Valley with my roadtripping partner.

Oh well, we thought. The second game won’t be that exciting.

Except it was. Not an extremely well-played game, by any stretch of the imagination, but close and fun nonetheless. Indiana State trailed practically the entire game, yet the Sycamores chipped and chipped and chipped (like the bark/tree reference?) at the lead until fabulous freshman Marico Stinson hit a go-ahead 3-pointer with less than a minute to play to give Indiana State a win and another game to coach for Royce Waltman.

So, with a trip delayed by “thundersnow” (don’t laugh, it is what they really call it, even though it sounds like the name of an AC/DC song) and two solid play-in games missed, there was no choice but to shake our collective heads, enjoy a couple of cold ones, and prepare for what would be a bountiful feast of hoops on Quarterfinal Friday.

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Poor Royce Waltman. There’s such a thing as going out on top. Then, there’s such a thing as watching your team shoot 23% from the field, get outrebounded by 11 boards, and commit 17 turnovers in you last game as a head coach. The game was back and forth for much of the first half, but everyone in the Scottrade Center could feel that the Jays were going to push the pedal down and speed right past the Sycamores, who less than 24 hours previously had come from behind against Illinois State to secure a showdown with Creighton in the quarterfinals.

With just under 7 minutes to play in the first half, Creighton trailed ISU 18-17, but then Nate Funk took over. The Jays’ leader scored 6 points in a 15-2 Bluejay run to end the half, a run that also saw freshman Isacc Miles drain two 3-pointers.

And that was just the start. Creighton roared out of the gates after halftime, giving up just 2 points in the first 3:30 of the second frame while climbing out to a 20-point lead. The lead would fluctuate for the final 16 minutes of the game, but the outcome was never in doubt. Funk came out of the game with just under 10 minutes to play and didn’t step foot on the court again until the two teams were exchanging handshakes at mid-court.

Sycamore fans packing up? Evansville fans leaving our hotel, actually, but close enough

It was just the beginning of a long weekend for Creighton, and it marked the end of an era at Indiana State. Waltman, ISU’s coach since 1997, went 134-164 in 10 seasons with the Sycamores, with his team finishing in last place in the MVC in five of the last six seasons, and again in 2007. It was his teams in the early 2000s that gave the Jays fits, however, and he led Indiana State to the NCAA tournament as the regular season champion in 2000 and as the tournament champion in 2001. But he couldn’t continue the success.

“I’m very proud of what we did so quickly, but we failed. We were in a position to build on what we had and we didn’t. There’s nobody to blame for that except myself,” Waltman said. “We made some recruiting errors and some mistakes. I’m embarrassed by that.”

If there was ever a complete contrast to Waltman’s demise, it is Altman. The Dean of The Valley unlocked his office on The Hilltop for the first time in the spring of 1994, inheriting a team that went 7-22 in the 1993-94 season. From that season on, Altman’s teams increased their win totals for 6 straight years, culminating in NCAA tournament appearances in 98-99, 99-00, 00-01, 01-02, and 02-03. The win over Indiana State was Creighton's 20th this season, marking a league-record 9th straight year of 20 or more wins for the Jays.

Waltman didn’t build on the success of guys like Nate Green, Michael Menser, Matt Renn, and Kelyn Block. Altman built on the foundation of Rodney Buford, Ryan Sears, Ben Walker, Donnie Johnson, Matt West, John Klein, and Kyle Korver.

And Nate Funk.