November 2006 Archives

Usually when a person claims something is the "worst ever" (or the "best ever", for that matter), its hyperbole. As the immortal Napoleon Dynamite once said, "Yeah, like anyone could know that!" But had Napoleon watched Arkansas Pine-Bluff play on Wednesday night, even he might have admitted that in this case, you can indeed identify the worst team ever.

The Golden Lions played hard and gave a solid effort from start to finish; they just had the unfortunate problem of having what basketball experts call "an extreme lack of discernible talent". They were so bad, this was the first game that I've drank THREE 24oz PBR's -- because I needed that extra 24oz just to make it to the end of the game. Horrible basketball is much more palatable with an extra 24oz of PBR.

I know what you're saying. "Come on now, they couldn't have been that bad!". Well, they were, and I've brought along an old nemesis called "Math" to back me up.

Over the weekend, Creighton welcomed a Final Four team to Omaha for the first time since DePaul in 1980. Unfortunately for yours truly, it was Thanksgiving weekend and I was hundreds of miles away at my parents' house in northwest Iowa. Fortunately for me, Big Sports 590 has an ungodly range and you can get a decent signal even up there.

I'd given my tickets to a buddy of mine, who took his wife to the game. When she found out he had my tickets for the Mason game and they were going, she made him go to the mall with her to buy her a Creighton sweatshirt at Lawlor's. Between the sweatshirt for her, one for himself, and the lunch at Fernando's I made him buy me in exchange for the tickets, he figured this game was costing him $75 before he ever set foot in the Qwest Center.

I had given some consideration to either hooking up to the webcast of the game, or better yet, setting up a connection to send the cable TV feed of KMTV's broadcast over the net to my MacBook. Alas, I was stuck at 1pm hanging lights on the roof of my parents house. So instead of high-tech webcasts or super-tech TV over Net, I was left with the decidedly low-tech option of transistor radio picking up grainy AM signals from 175 miles away.

No school can claim 100% of their fanbase is classy, nor vice versa. Nebraska has long had a sign outside Memorial Stadium that says, "Through these gates walk the greatest fans in America". But the fact of the matter is, every school has great classy fans, and every school has jerk fans who sully their fan base's rep every time they open their mouth. Even Nebraska. They have some great, passionate, classy fans. Lots of them. They also have some real jerks. Just like Creighton. Just like everybody else.

I'm not looking forward to work this week, because the Nebraska fans in the office will give me hell. But six years ago when I started there, I gave them some good-natured ribbing after CU won, and I expect nothing less from them now that the tables have turned. Its a dangerous trap to fall into if you paint all Nebraska fans like the ones who've polluted the waters of the Bluejay Cafe after the Nebraska win.

All the same, this is a rather amusing story of an encounter with one such jerk Saturday night.

Things are never as good as they seem when its going good, and things are never as bad as they seem when they're going bad. Nebraska shot 67% for the game, and 77% in the second half, despite pretty decent defense from the Jays. I know some fans will disagree with me, and I know Coach Altman claims they are "simply a bad team right now". But there were several times that they held Nebraska to a rushed shot at the end of the shot clock, and twice where they threw up desperation threes. Both of those went in. The defense was decent, not terrible and not good, decent. I'll grant you there were too many breakdowns that led to open shots, but the body of work as a whole was not terrible.

To have a team shoot lights-out, and only be down 2 points with 6 minutes left, is awfully good. Typically, even against atrocious defense, a team might shoot 60% on a great night. 77% is once-in-a-season stuff. As I said yesterday, you don't need to look any further than March Madness to see examples of a seemingly inferior team winning. How do they often do that? Insanely red-hot shooting.

Apparently there's a big football game this afternoon. Michigan and Ohio State? Yeah, I think I heard something about that. But you know what I'll be watching? Wichita State at George Mason on ESPN2. The Patriots are raising the Final Four banner before today's game.

But then, I've always liked college basketball more than football. Hell, that Texas-Michigan State game was just fun to watch, even though I had nothing invested in the outcome. College Basketball season is just great to watch unfold. In my mind, the tournament at the end of the season makes it the best sport in America. There is nothing in sports with more excitement than March Madness.

If Louisville and Rutgers are playing in football, am I watching? No. Never. Who cares about that? The Big East? Whatever. But if Maryland and St. John's are playing in basketball from MSG, I'm watching that. Two eastern teams there, and yet, I care about that. And its because of the NCAA Tourney, which includes pretty much every team who's any good at all.

And there's so much strategy involved in hoops. That's why I don't care one iota about the NBA. A lot of the players piss me off, and there's just too much perfection. It sounds crazy, but I prefer the imperfection of the college game. I love watching Dana Altman bring a team decimated by injury together. I love watching him get in someone's grill if they don't play defense. I love seeing him get on someone about shot selection.

There's nothing quite like a Dana Altman press conference to let you know just how bad the team is, how much work they have to do, how Evansville and Illinois State are better than their preseason rankings. And like clockwork, in Monday morning's World-Herald game preview, Coach Altman delivered a doozy. Apparently, the team is terrible, they've already tuned out the coaches, they're not accountable for their sloppy play, et-cetera et-cetera.

Clearly, Creighton was destined to lose to Mississippi Valley State, a team picked for 7th place in the worst conference in America, the SWAC. Clearly.

Its easy to over-react after last night's so-called debacle. After all, Creighton is the 19th ranked (sic) team in the country, and they struggled mightily to beat Nebraska-Omaha, a Division II school so banged up they only played 7 guys.

On the walk to my car, at the bar after the game, everywhere I went the conversation overheard from people around us was pretty much the same: This team is fat and happy, figuratively speaking. They've read too many stories about how great they are. They don't work hard enough. That there's no magic "on" switch they can simply turn on once the regular season starts. That you play how you practice, and they practice sloppy, unenergetic, uninspired basketball.

Come on, everyone. Back off the ledge before the fire department shows up with the cherry picker and a trampoline. Lets talk, and see if can gain some perspective.

Well, there's certainly no lack of things to improve on, is there? Man alive, that was some sloppy playin'.

After seven months of buildup and anticipation (yes, seven months -- you could look it up, or count on your fingers like I did...April, May, June, July, August, September, October, seven!), Creighton came out looking very rough around the edges in a gutty four-point overtime win.

With experienced players Josh Dotzler and Pierce Hibma out with injuries, the Jays' rotation of players with D1 experience incredibly numbers just 4 -- Anthony Tolliver, Dane Watts, Nick Porter and Nate Funk. Against EA Sports, Watts and Porter had terrible games, and Funk showed the rust of not playing a competitive game since early January. That left Tolliver alone to carry the team on his giant shoulders, and he did just that. 24 points, 8 boards, and an assist for good measure in 37 minutes. Funk, despite the rust, was a fine sidekick when all was said and done, as he finished with 15 points, 4 boards and 5 assists in 40 minutes.