Drake 68, Creighton 60 (OT); Southern Illinois 48, Creighton 44
Reality Bites
(WARNING: The following isn’t so much analysis about the last two Jays games as it is a Sunday morning brain spill. For reviews of the game, please turn to Jays beat writer Steve Pivovar’s recaps of the crushing overtime loss to Drake and the even more frustrating defeat at SIU. If you want to know what is on my mind this morning, keep reading.)
Bear with me this morning. I’ve got a lot of Dunkin' Donuts coffee running through my veins, a lot of thoughts bouncing in my brains, and two Bluejays losses on my mind. Those ingredients comprise a volatile concoction.
When I was an immature 13-year-old, I considered 1994 the worst year of my life. Granted, that’s looking back 14 years (wow … can it really be that long ago!?!) and adding all of the weird and completely meaningless things together that I thought, at the time, were completely compelling and important, but you catch my drift. I was in 8th grade, for goodness sakes.
Starting in 1987 and continuing until the spring of 1994, I spent my formative years listening to the ferocious rock of Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction, the “grungy” albums Ten and Nevermind from Pearl Jam and Nirvana, respectively, and all of the Smashing Pumpkins and Red Hot Chili Peppers in between.
During that same time, I watched the first basketball games I can remember. Bob Harstad (#2 on CU’s all-time scoring list) and Chad Gallagher (#3 on the same list) were freshmen during the 1987-1988 season. From their sophomore seasons until they graduated, and from the time I was 8 until I was 10, all they did was win. I really had no idea what was going on, but I considered those guys gods. Duan Cole could do no wrong. The Long Distance Matts (Roggenburk and Petty) couldn’t miss a three-pointer. And the Dynamic Duo, Harstad and Gallagher, were unstoppable.
All of that came to a screeching halt in March of 1991. The Jays beat New Mexico State in the first round of the NCAA tournament, but then lost their second-round game against Seton Hall. No more Harstad. No more Gallagher. Tony Barone left for Texas A&M, and Rick Johnson was named head coach.
The next three seasons were a blur. The Jays went from winning 20 games back-to-back-to-back during the Duo’s sophomore, junior, and senior seasons to promptly losing 19 games the year after they left. Then came an 8-18 year, followed by a 7-22 season that featured a 2-5 start with the two wins coming against University of Nebraska-Omaha at the Civic and Florida A&M at Ak-Sar-Ben. That’s right … the Jays played a home game at Ak-Sar-Ben.
That was 1994. Actually, that win over Florida A&M (who, sadly enough, didn’t bring their award-winning marching band – if so, that probably would have been the highlight of the afternoon) came in December 1993. Just a few weeks before, in that same building, Nirvana (a.k.a. “My favorite band on Earth” at the time) played on a Thursday night. A few months earlier they had released In Utero, the studio follow-up to the transcendent Nevermind. My friend Danny Maxwell (check out his band Little Brazil) called me that fateful Thursday evening. His brother had an extra ticket to see Nirvana.
I passed. The Jays were hosting Nebraska at the Civic.
That’s right. A mere four months before Nirvana’s lead singer would cease to exist, I chose to watch Nate King and the Jays lose to NU by 14 points. I figured I could see Nirvana again, after the inevitable follow-up to In Utero came out a few years later and they hit the road for another massive tour.
Needless to say, that game against NU wasn’t one of Johnson’s seven wins that season, only three of which were Valley victories. And needless to say, Nirvana wouldn’t tour again. In April 1994, two of my favorite things in life — CU hoops, and my idea of the only good music that existed — were in complete disarray. No more great grunge albums were on the horizon; it was a music genre that had seen its rise to popularity stop almost instantly with the death of Cobain. This was punctuated with the opening of the movie Reality Bites in February 1994, which was the anti-thesis of what grunge music represented. It was the death blow to my favorite music and the introduction of main-stream “alternative” music, which as a term encompassed the kind of artists and music that would have made Cobain and others cringe.
And reality did bite at that time. 22 losses. I wasn’t part of the generation Cobain belonged to or wrote his music based on, but I was part of the generation who merely thought the music rocked. At the same time, I wasn’t part of the generation that really appreciated how good the late 80s and early 90s were for Creighton hoops, but I knew that seven wins weren’t going to cut it.
But just as one part of my life was seemingly come to an abrupt end, another was being rescued. Less than a week before Cobain killed himself and effectively ended the music genre I loved, Dana Altman was introduced as the 14th head coach in the history of Creighton Bluejays men’s basketball.
The rest, as they say, is history, but for some Jays fans it is the only history they know. There are some Jays fans that spent their formative years watching Altman resurrect the CU hoops program. For them, the reality that right now we are an average basketball team does more than bite … the unfamiliarity is scary. Ten years after Harstad and Gallagher started their Creighton careers, Altman and Rodney Buford led the Jays to 18 wins and a second-place MVC finish. For the 8-, 9-, and 10-year-old Jays fans running around the Civic during that season, they know nothing but victories.
Freshmen and sophomores at Creighton right now who grew up in Omaha haven’t seen the Jays finish lower than 4th place in the conference since they’ve been paying attention to CU hoops. They haven’t seen the Jays lose more than 4 conference games more than once or twice in their lives (the Jays are currently 5-4 in MVC play). They’ve seen seven trips to the NCAA tournament. They’re also the ones probably freaking out the most after back-to-back losses to Drake at home and Southern Illinois on the road.
The reality is that the Jays are in the middle of the pack of a tough conference; not only in the standings but in the statistics, as well. But this isn’t an underachieving team full of veterans; these Jays are inexperienced. That is the reality. P’Allen Stinnett has shown some amazing abilities on the basketball court. But he has played like a freshman more often than he has played like a veteran. Realistically, were this year’s Jays the MVC team best suited to leave Carbondale with a win? Probably not. Does this year’s team have the composure suited to pull out a close overtime win against a team that has one loss so far this year and has won more than just a few close games? Probably not. That’s the reality.
But you know what else is a reality? Dana Altman almost always has his teams playing their best basketball of the season toward the end of the year. February starts next week, and that is usually where Altman and the Jays make up the most ground. This Creighton squad is young but talented, inexperienced but getting accustom to MVC play, and on the wrong end of some close scores but competing hard. Reality bites right now, but if history is any predictor things will get better. They seemingly always do.
(WARNING: The following isn’t so much analysis about the last two Jays games as it is a Sunday morning brain spill. For reviews of the game, please turn to Jays beat writer Steve Pivovar’s recaps of the crushing overtime loss to Drake and the even more frustrating defeat at SIU. If you want to know what is on my mind this morning, keep reading.)
Bear with me this morning. I’ve got a lot of Dunkin' Donuts coffee running through my veins, a lot of thoughts bouncing in my brains, and two Bluejays losses on my mind. Those ingredients comprise a volatile concoction.
When I was an immature 13-year-old, I considered 1994 the worst year of my life. Granted, that’s looking back 14 years (wow … can it really be that long ago!?!) and adding all of the weird and completely meaningless things together that I thought, at the time, were completely compelling and important, but you catch my drift. I was in 8th grade, for goodness sakes.
Starting in 1987 and continuing until the spring of 1994, I spent my formative years listening to the ferocious rock of Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction, the “grungy” albums Ten and Nevermind from Pearl Jam and Nirvana, respectively, and all of the Smashing Pumpkins and Red Hot Chili Peppers in between.
During that same time, I watched the first basketball games I can remember. Bob Harstad (#2 on CU’s all-time scoring list) and Chad Gallagher (#3 on the same list) were freshmen during the 1987-1988 season. From their sophomore seasons until they graduated, and from the time I was 8 until I was 10, all they did was win. I really had no idea what was going on, but I considered those guys gods. Duan Cole could do no wrong. The Long Distance Matts (Roggenburk and Petty) couldn’t miss a three-pointer. And the Dynamic Duo, Harstad and Gallagher, were unstoppable.
All of that came to a screeching halt in March of 1991. The Jays beat New Mexico State in the first round of the NCAA tournament, but then lost their second-round game against Seton Hall. No more Harstad. No more Gallagher. Tony Barone left for Texas A&M, and Rick Johnson was named head coach.
The next three seasons were a blur. The Jays went from winning 20 games back-to-back-to-back during the Duo’s sophomore, junior, and senior seasons to promptly losing 19 games the year after they left. Then came an 8-18 year, followed by a 7-22 season that featured a 2-5 start with the two wins coming against University of Nebraska-Omaha at the Civic and Florida A&M at Ak-Sar-Ben. That’s right … the Jays played a home game at Ak-Sar-Ben.
That was 1994. Actually, that win over Florida A&M (who, sadly enough, didn’t bring their award-winning marching band – if so, that probably would have been the highlight of the afternoon) came in December 1993. Just a few weeks before, in that same building, Nirvana (a.k.a. “My favorite band on Earth” at the time) played on a Thursday night. A few months earlier they had released In Utero, the studio follow-up to the transcendent Nevermind. My friend Danny Maxwell (check out his band Little Brazil) called me that fateful Thursday evening. His brother had an extra ticket to see Nirvana.
I passed. The Jays were hosting Nebraska at the Civic.
That’s right. A mere four months before Nirvana’s lead singer would cease to exist, I chose to watch Nate King and the Jays lose to NU by 14 points. I figured I could see Nirvana again, after the inevitable follow-up to In Utero came out a few years later and they hit the road for another massive tour.
Needless to say, that game against NU wasn’t one of Johnson’s seven wins that season, only three of which were Valley victories. And needless to say, Nirvana wouldn’t tour again. In April 1994, two of my favorite things in life — CU hoops, and my idea of the only good music that existed — were in complete disarray. No more great grunge albums were on the horizon; it was a music genre that had seen its rise to popularity stop almost instantly with the death of Cobain. This was punctuated with the opening of the movie Reality Bites in February 1994, which was the anti-thesis of what grunge music represented. It was the death blow to my favorite music and the introduction of main-stream “alternative” music, which as a term encompassed the kind of artists and music that would have made Cobain and others cringe.
And reality did bite at that time. 22 losses. I wasn’t part of the generation Cobain belonged to or wrote his music based on, but I was part of the generation who merely thought the music rocked. At the same time, I wasn’t part of the generation that really appreciated how good the late 80s and early 90s were for Creighton hoops, but I knew that seven wins weren’t going to cut it.
But just as one part of my life was seemingly come to an abrupt end, another was being rescued. Less than a week before Cobain killed himself and effectively ended the music genre I loved, Dana Altman was introduced as the 14th head coach in the history of Creighton Bluejays men’s basketball.
The rest, as they say, is history, but for some Jays fans it is the only history they know. There are some Jays fans that spent their formative years watching Altman resurrect the CU hoops program. For them, the reality that right now we are an average basketball team does more than bite … the unfamiliarity is scary. Ten years after Harstad and Gallagher started their Creighton careers, Altman and Rodney Buford led the Jays to 18 wins and a second-place MVC finish. For the 8-, 9-, and 10-year-old Jays fans running around the Civic during that season, they know nothing but victories.
Freshmen and sophomores at Creighton right now who grew up in Omaha haven’t seen the Jays finish lower than 4th place in the conference since they’ve been paying attention to CU hoops. They haven’t seen the Jays lose more than 4 conference games more than once or twice in their lives (the Jays are currently 5-4 in MVC play). They’ve seen seven trips to the NCAA tournament. They’re also the ones probably freaking out the most after back-to-back losses to Drake at home and Southern Illinois on the road.
The reality is that the Jays are in the middle of the pack of a tough conference; not only in the standings but in the statistics, as well. But this isn’t an underachieving team full of veterans; these Jays are inexperienced. That is the reality. P’Allen Stinnett has shown some amazing abilities on the basketball court. But he has played like a freshman more often than he has played like a veteran. Realistically, were this year’s Jays the MVC team best suited to leave Carbondale with a win? Probably not. Does this year’s team have the composure suited to pull out a close overtime win against a team that has one loss so far this year and has won more than just a few close games? Probably not. That’s the reality.
But you know what else is a reality? Dana Altman almost always has his teams playing their best basketball of the season toward the end of the year. February starts next week, and that is usually where Altman and the Jays make up the most ground. This Creighton squad is young but talented, inexperienced but getting accustom to MVC play, and on the wrong end of some close scores but competing hard. Reality bites right now, but if history is any predictor things will get better. They seemingly always do.
posted by Creighton Otter at 2:24 PM
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