I'm still not exactly sure when Bradley became such a heated, despised opponent, but last night was the most physical, black and blue game I can remember seeing in several years. Easily the roughest game in the history of the Qwest Center. Easily. Three technical fouls. One shoving match. A coach out on the floor pulling players apart. A cheap shot intentional foul sending Dane Watts crashing face first into the basket support. Several fans being escorted out for making comments deemed in poor taste. And, oh yeah, a pretty good ball game in between.
Jays played a lackluster first half, and were behind 38-28 going in to the break. In the first five minutes of the second half, Creighton took the fight to Bradley, both literally and figuratively. Before the first TV timeout, the game was tied and two players had scuffled -- and been Teed up. The tensions only ratcheted up from there, and the hot start extended into an 18-4 run and a lead Creighton would never again give up en route to a 80-76 win.
An alley-oop dunk to Anthony Tolliver at the one-minute mark gave the Jays a 10 point lead and should have punctuated the win. But in that last minute, Bradley scored an incredible 16 POINTS!!! In a minute!! They were raining threes from everywhere on the court, fouling to stop the clock, and then hitting more threes. I've never seen anything like it. When they cut the lead to 77-76 with 17 seconds left, I was too stunned to even speak. Had they come back to win, I might still be in that predicament. Luckily, the Jays held on in what was the second most physical game I've been witness to in person. Still can't match the Creighton-UNI game up in Cedar Falls 8 or 9 years ago where one of the Creighton players, Doug Swenson I think, actually threw a punch at a Northern Iowa player and started a brawl. I was scared for my life that night, being on the road. We were at home this time at least.
--
I had given my two free tickets to my brother and his wife, who opted to sit with me rather than go up into their upper-bowl tickets. The entire row in front of us (a big family who has like 6 seats together missed the game) was empty, so it worked out. We went to the Spaghetti Works for dinner downtown, and as it always is, it was very tasty. You bet.
When we got inside the arena, we saw a guy on press row getting wheeled off in a chair, IV in his arm, looking sicker than all hell. Turns out it was the Bradley radio announcer, a victim of food poisoning, apparently from the Omaha restaurant he'd eaten at earlier. Hope it was not the ol' SWorks, because I'd hate to think something so tasty could make me sick. Anyway, this guy had done something like 27 years and 795 straight games before having to leave last night right before tipoff. I was glad to hear the Jays offered up their broadcast signal to Bradley so at least the Braves fans back in Peoria had something to listen to.
Patrick O'Bryant is bigger in person, if that's even possible. Freakin' huge, is the only way you can describe him. He was at least four inches taller than everyone on the court, and at least as wide. What a talent. Why Bradley doesn't simply dump the ball in to him every single possession, I don't understand -- he's such a matchup problem for every team they will play. Seriously, how many Big East, Big Ten or ACC schools could successfully guard a 7'1" guy who weighs 260?? Not very many.
The big highlight of the first half was the student shootout, where the guy made 3 of 4 shots while obviously drunk. I've never seen anyone be able to replicate slow-motion action in real life -- but I may have seen it now. How any of those shots went in, I'll never know. I saw a post over on the Bluejay Cafe from the guy saying the referee told him he'd never seen anyone do so well while being so obviously lit up. Nice.
That kind of exchange, showing the refs as fallible human beings, is what makes what I'm about to say so difficult.
These guys lost control of the game. There were hard fouls, and chirping going on all night, and it shouldn't have taken a near-brawl between Jeff Day and Tony Bennett to get things under control. From what I saw, it appeared Bennett fouled Day pretty rough, Day took exception, and shoved him back. Before long, a scrum had started and Bradley coach Jim Les was on the court, pulling people apart.
I'm sorry, but anytime a coach goes on the floor its an automatic T, right?
Anyway, both players were Teed up, and things went on -- momentarily. Some pushing and shoving continued to happen almost every possession. My brother and I actually made a bet as to how long it would be before a punch was thrown. It was that tense. You just knew it was going to happen sooner or later.
At the 8:51 mark, things simmered to the boiling point. Dane Watts intercepted a pass and was breaking toward the basket for a dunk when Lawrence Wright came up from behind, and dropped an insanely hard foul on him. As both players were moving a full speed, Wright bodyslammed Watts into the floor, and by virtue of placement, the support beam for the basket. This would have been a vicious hit in football, where you wear pads and play on grass. Imagine what it was like with no pads, on wood. Good lord. And the Qwest Center exploded like I've never seen.
Doctors, lawyers, soft-spoken rich guys, casual fans, everyone screaming bloody murder. At this point the refs called an Intentional Foul on Wright, the coaches gathered the troops, and tried to calm things down.
A couple of minutes later, Sign Guy -- the guy who holds up the often-hilarious signs poking fun at the other team, 10 rows behind their bench -- was thrown out for something their bench took exception to. Not sure what, but it warrants mentioning that in a night of cheap shot fouls and near-brawls, the only guy thrown out was a fan.
By then, the crowd was pretty well in a frenzy. SuperFan, the guy in the baggy Creighton sweatshirt who runs up and down the aisles of Section 113 Hi-Fiving everyone on the aisle, was running wild. Every basket, there he was, riling people up. Hilarious.
Just a great, very rough, great game. That's the reason I have season tickets, right there. Once or twice a year you see a game like this: up and down, back and forth, both teams playing at an extremely high level, involved crowd, rough and physical play, and a drunk guy in the student shootout. Doesn't get any better than that.
You bet.
Leave a comment