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.
There's a certain romanticism to AM radio. I was an early-adopter to XM, but the event of turning the dials on an AM radio like a safecracker to find a far-off signal is hard to beat. I can remember on summer nights dialing in the static-dominated signals of no less than six MLB teams' broadcasts. Twins, Royals, White Sox, Cubs, Cardinals and, if the wind was blowing right, Bob Uecker's hometown call of the Brewers. As a Twins fan, though, it was mostly trying to get the WCCO feed out of the Twin Cities.
You get spoiled with XM. My AM dialing skills were rusty, to be sure, and it took a bit longer than it would have in my younger days to find AM 590 on the dial. But find it, I did, and in surprising clarity considering my distance away from Omaha, the heartwarming sounds of T Scott Marr describing a Bluejay victory came out of that ol' AM radio.
The lesson, I suppose, is if you're going to be a one-horse race instead of building a Bluejay Radio Network of affiliates, backing a megawatt horse that you can get in six states is not a bad way to go.
I'm not gonna lie to you: there were multiple times that my parents' neighbors thought I was nuts, cheering loudly for, as far as they knew, nothing. After the third consecutive turnover in the last 90 seconds tied the game, I'm pretty sure some things were yelled that weren't exactly safe for children to hear. I bet it looked really funny from across the street.
I set my super-trustworthy (sic) Cox DVR to record the game so I could watch this game when I got back in town, and I did just that late last night. A midnight viewing of the 58-56 victory allows me to make these observations, which are better than you'd get if I was just doling out observations based on a radio broadcast.
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For 36 minutes, the Jays played a solid, hard-fought, grind-it-out early season game that showed a team making significant improvement, while showing areas that still need some tweaking. Sandwiched around those 36 minutes were 4 very ugly minutes that both put them in an early hole, and saw their late lead evaporate in the span of 30 seconds.
Coming out of the gates, the Jays fell behind 7-1 before the first timeout, before rallying for to take a six-point lead into the break. Similarly, they built a lead of as much as 9 points in the second half, before three consecutive backcourt turnovers in the last 90 seconds of the game caused by Mason's press led to three easy baskets and a 56-56 tie with 30 seconds remaining. Dane Watts free throws with 7.5 seconds gave the Jays a 58-56 lead, and a defensive stop on the other end gave the Jays a victory.
36 minutes of solid basketball sandwiched around 4 really bad, ugly minutes. That pretty much sums it up right there.
I will now admit that, in hindsight, I should have seen the struggles of this team early in the season coming. Shame on me for buying into the hype. Shame. But that's what being a fan is all about, right?
As Tom Shatel noted in Sunday's OWH, Nate Funk had never played with the New Anthony Tolliver, and had played only a handful of games with point guard Josh Dotzler and 2-guard Nick Porter. But despite that, he's still the best player on the court. That's difficult to adapt to early.
There's a lot of new pieces to integrate, and by February, this team will be probably be pretty deadly. But early, they won't come out of the gates swinging. You bet.
That said, it seemed to me that this game showed some fairly significant progress in a lot of areas. The effort, both offensively and defensively, was a quantum leap ahead of a week ago in Lincoln. The shooting was much better, and it seemed they were getting better looks too.
A lot of that can be attributed to Josh Dotzler playing 22 minutes at point guard. He entered the game 3-1/2 minutes in, and 14 seconds later threw a gorgeous pass to Dane Watts slicing wide open across the lane for an easy basket. That's just the kind of court vision that he possesses, to know not only WHERE people will be but WHEN they'll be open. And then hitting them when they are. Its an unbelievable transformation between when anyone else runs the point, and when he does.
And the scary thing is that he's pretty rusty, and may not be 100% until late December.
Tolliver played closer to the basket, rather than roaming the perimeter, and had a nice day defensively. He had some lapses, but he could use some help double-teaming in the post once in a while.
One thing I noticed was George Mason's three-headed monster of WIll Thomas, John Vaughn and Folarin Campbell combined for 52 of their 56 points, and played 38, 34 and 34 minutes, respectively. Not sure if I have a point here, just something I noticed.
Dane Watts, coming off a week which had to be the low point in his CU career -- a week in which many fans were questioning his mental toughness based on his inability to shake a year-and-a-half shooting slump -- busted out big time. He had a career-high 19 points, hit 3 of 4 from beyond the arc, and most importantly, was 8-8 on free throws after approaching Brody Deren territory in terms of putrid free throw shooting over the last 35 games.
His progression into a hybrid forward that can play the 3 or 4 with occasional stints helping out down low, while stretching the defense by hitting jump shots, might well be a key to the Jays success this year. Establishing himself as a solid third scoring option beyond Funk and Tolliver will absolutely be a key to their success. Days like Saturday are Exhibit A in my case for this being key. With Funk valiantly battling a cold that sapped his strength and left many shots short, resulting in just 4 points and his first scoreless half since early in his Sophomore season, and Tolliver expending energy on defense, Watts stepped up and carried the offensive load.
Watts is the Heee-Haw Player of the Game. Has to be. His 19 points and 5 boards led the way, and to top it off, his free throws won the game. This is a no-brainer, folks. Dane Watts, I raise my 32 oz Festive Turkey-emblazoned Beverage Stein filled with rancid Heee-Haw to you.
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