My buddy John has repeatedly said all year that Manny Gakou is, quote, My Boy. As in, "Your boy Manny Gakou had a stellar 46 seconds of court time there!" or "Two fouls in 12 seconds by your boy, Manny Gakou?"
First off, Manny Gakou is not my boy. If I was sitting in for Tony Kornheiser on PTI (and frankly, why not?) and Michael Wilbon accused me of this being true, I'd have the same answer. But I can see where the genesis of this accusation comes from. All year long, I have hoped against all odds that Gakou could become the solid backup post player the Jays so desperately need. That's why I try to make a point of applauding him when he shows signs of improvement or makes solid plays. That's why I even gave him the coveted Polyfro Heee-Haw POTG award a couple of weeks back.
The lack of a solid backup for Anthony Tolliver hurt the Jays chances against Southern Illinois in the game in Omaha, and it hurt them Saturday against Drexel. The Dragons are big, athletic and tough, but with Tolliver on the court, the Jays were the better team and led for most of the game. However, with Tolliver on the bench, the Dragons were a nightmare matchup. Drexel's bigs, Chaz Crawford and Frank Elegar, absolutely destroyed the Jays when Tolliver wasn't in the game, going on a decisive 14-0 run after he picked up his 4th foul midway through the second half.
As the Jays have done so many times this year, they started the game slow offensively. They shot just 32% as a team in the first stanza, but held a six-point lead because of some awfully solid defense, holding Drexel to just 28% from the field. A big factor in building the first-half lead was getting the Drexel big men in foul trouble, relegating their best offensive weapons to the bench. Had Tolliver hit the open looks he was getting with them out of the game, the score might have been worse, but alas.
The first half was quite unremarkable, actually, and save for Kyle Korver competing as a contestant in the Shell Mart Speedee Game, it was your basic, boring, run-of-the-mill performance. The Shell game was amusing though.
Host: Contestant, please tell us your name and where you're from!
K2: Kyle Korver, from Pella, Iowa!
Hilarious. Speaking of Korver, I waited in line for a half-hour before the game to get him to sign his bobble head doll. In front of us were two kids, maybe 8 years old. There's no way they have any remembrance whatsoever of Korver as a Jay. None. But the fact that he's a former Jay who is now looked up to by a generation that only knows him as an NBA All-Star is pretty kick ass. As always, a nice guy, and a wonderful representative for Creighton.
The second half began extraordinarily well for the Jays, as they stormed out of the locker room and took their biggest lead of the night at 36-25 just 3-1/2 minutes in. Bruiser Flint called for timeout, and the 17,620 in attendance were literally shaking the building. It appeared for all the world like the Jays were about to blow the game wide open and send everyone home happy.
And even though the pace slowed considerably over the next five minutes, the Jays still held a comfortable 10-point cushion at the 11:38 mark, 41-31. Tolliver, back in the game with his 3 fouls, punctuated the lead with a rebound of a blocked shot and a dunk. The Qwest was rocking, but little did the people in the building know that this would be the high point of the night.
Just 27 seconds later, Tolliver picked up his 4th foul, which left CU to piece together a post presence to combat Drexel's monsters under the basket. Without a doubt, this was where the game began to tip in Drexel's favor, as they rattled off seven successive points to cut the lead to 41-38.
On the very next possession, upset at the foul discrepancy (CU had been whistled 8 times, Drexel just 3), Coach Altman stomped his foot and yelled something in the direction of the refs, who immediately T'd him up. It was an iffy call -- he did nothing to warrant such a quick response, unless the ref was trying to flex his muscles -- but regardless of whether you agreed with the call or not, there is no questioning the impact of the call. Drexel sank both free throws, then hit a three-ball from the wing to complete a five-point possession that gave them a lead they would not relinquish.
During the media timeout, Altman had some delicious words for the ref crew, and I once again lamented my lack of lip-reading skills. Whatever he said got the point across, though, because a flurry of foul calls against Drexel soon followed, and before you knew it, the team fouls were even 8-8. They even T'd up Bruiser Flint for an even more ludicrous transgression than Altman had seemingly committed, almost as though they were evening a score.
The T on Flint came with 1:44 left, and a four-point possession cut the DU lead to just 3. Drexel helped them out further by missing their next five free-throws, but managed to somehow get the rebound after each miss. With four fouls, Tolliver just couldn't be as aggressive as necessary against Drexel's beasts, and no one else for the Jays was able to lend a hand. As a result, they lost the opportunity to come back and win.
Drexel was big, tough, physical and athletic, and exploited a huge weakness Creighton has: if you can get Tolliver in foul trouble and harass Funk into a poor-shooting night, the Jays stand almost no chance of winning. In the second half, they did both of those things, and that's to their credit. The lack of depth behind Tolliver is frustrating, because for as solid a bench player as Hibma is, he has no business guarding an NBA prospect like Elegar for huge stretches of a second half of a close game. You do have to wonder, if the circumstances that led to Ty Morrison deciding to leave the team never happened, would the Jays have beaten SIU and Drexel in Omaha? Perhaps, because a credible defender to backup the A-Train would have tipped the scales in the Jays favor in both.
I never, ever, ever thought I would say this, but I miss Jeffrey "Don't Call Me Jeff" Day. For all his maddening under achievement, he could at least be counted on for 15 solid minutes of defense a night. I will now go drink a pint glass that may or may not be filled with a solution of one part Drano and four parts water.
At the end of the night, the Jays are still 28 in the RPI, they're still 5-0 against the Top 50, and they're still guaranteed the 2 seed in Arch Madness. Tough loss? Absolutely. Does it damage their seeding in the NCAA's? Probably. Does it put them on the bubble for even getting in? No. The other conferences around the country competing with them for bids did themselves no favors this weekend either. And seeding-wise, wouldn't you rather "fall" to a 10 rather than an 8/9 as had been projected earlier in the week? I'm just saying.
Go take down Illnois State on Tuesday, knock off Wichita next weekend at home, and the only thing people will remember from this night is that they drank one helluva lot of beer. Lose to either or both of them, and people will remember this as the night the season spiraled down the drain. There's two games left, and its up to them to win them.
You bet.
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