I was talking to someone last week about Creighton's season opener. This guy had made up his mind to be a negative nancy, predicting a double-digit DePaul victory. His reasoning seemed sound enough: experienced guard play. Namely, DePaul had it and Creighton did not.
I found it tough to argue with, because I've always subscribed to the theory that experienced guards are a huge advantage, an advantage that is magnified early in the year. When crazy upsets happen in November every year, there is usually (not always, but usually) a common denominator: the winning team had experienced guards. And these days, its the mid-major teams who are more experienced in November because they generally don't lose players to the NBA as often as their major-conference breathern. Hence, crazy upsets.
Yet here I was, going against my own theory. So much for sticking to my guns! Something told me that even though the edge in backcourt experience went to DePaul, they weren't winning this game. My defense was, admittedly, weak at best:
"The Jays backcourt inexperience would bother me a lot more if this game were in Chicago, or even on a neutral court. As it is, I think DePaul's young players will play a bit faster than Coach Wainwright would like due to the intense heat the Friday Night Rowdies will put on them. I think they'll turn it over enough to cancel out any experience edge they might have."
Well well well, looky what we have here. Turnovers:
DePaul: 23
Jays: 12
You bet.
--
Friday night's season opener -- the first Friday game in the history of the Qwest Center -- was a microcosm of the sort of season a young team typically has, all rolled up in one game.
In other words, they had stretches where they did things that made you scratch your head, stretches where they struggled, and stretches where they looked amazing. Oh, and they fell behind 20-4 eight minutes into the game. That too.
Dane Watts hit the first shot of the year 80 seconds into the game, as I proudly told the guys I was huddled around a grainy black-and-white TV with. Not sure why that event caused me to proudly remark about it. The lesson as always is that I'm an incredible dork, apparently.
Oh, the black-and-white TV thing? Well, its like this: I had some work hanging in a gallery show that opened on Friday, and I was expected to be there. Don't you hate when real life interferes with more important things like basketball? I'm joking, of course. I think.
Initially, I'd been really upset about missing my second consecutive game, something I hadn't done since way back in February of 2002. But then the guy who I'd given my tickets to brought his nine-year old son into the office on Friday to thank me for the tickets -- and the kid was so excited to be going to the game that I actually was happy they were using my tickets. If you could have seen his face, you'd understand.
Anyway, the black-and-white TV. On Thursday, I was at the gallery helping to hang some of the work, and when I went into the Janitor's storage closet to fetch some masonry nails, I noticed a 13" Zenith hidden on a shelf. With rabbit ears! Oh boy! I asked the janitor about it, and he said he used it to watch Nebraska football games on Saturday afternoons when he had to work...and The Price Is Right. Nice. He said he didn't mind if I watched the Jays on it.
Lucky for me, this was a KMTV, er, Action 3 telecast. So that's how I came to be in a janitor's closet, huddled around a 13" black-and-white television with three buddies watching the game. During timeouts, I'd sneak out and go make the rounds, shake some hands, so that people knew I was there. Then I'd disappear to watch the game, sneak back out, over and over, for two hours. Good times.
After my proud proclamation when Watts' basket went in, my buddies turned it around on me when the Jays struggled to get another hoop. "Hopefully Watts' shot isn't the only one they get all year!" "Jeez, I can see why you were so enthused to point out who made the first shot -- a made basket is as rare as a no-hitter!"
Hilarious, aren't they?
--
The thing is, the scoreboard read 20-4 DePaul, but things weren't as bad as that would lead you to believe. The Jays had open looks, but they just weren't just hitting them. 17% shooting? Opening night jitters. Now, if that had continued, I'd have been concerned. But it turned out that 20-4 score was the low point, and Creighton would outscore DePaul 72-40 the rest of the game.
At the under-twelve timeout, I snuck out of the janitor's closet to make my rounds (and to fill up my glass with some of the tasty Upstream beer from a nearby keg). It was 20-6 DePaul, and by the next timeout and subsequent sneaking from the closet for me, Creighton had begun chipping into the lead, 25-16.
The guy who led the charge was Chad Millard, the transfer from Louisville with the sweet stroke from downtown and the nastiness to mix it up inside and grab boards. A 13-0 run for the Jays, fueled almost entirely by the new guys -- Millard, P'Allen Stinnett, Kaleb Korver, Cavel Witter, Booker Woodfox, et al -- cut the DePaul lead down to 25-21 at the 7:32 mark.
A Josh Dotzler layup with just under two minutes left tied the game at 32; Draelon Burns and Karron Clarke scored six points in the last minute to push the lead back out to six at the break, 38-32.
Halftime gave me a nice 15-minute break to go out, mingle, and talk to enough people to make it seem plausible that I was actually there for the entire night. If enough people remember talking to you at some point in the evening, they will never doubt you weren't there. Words to live by, my friends. Thank me later.
As it turns out, its a good thing I spent those fifteen minutes mingling, because the second half was riveting enough that I scarcely budged from the milk crate I'd turned into a makeshift chair in the janitor's closet. Before you laugh at me, one of my buddies was sitting on a wooden crate that looked mysteriously like the crate the government used to box up the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark; another sat on a burlap sack housing who knows what.
While Chad Millard was the player who kept the Jays in the game in the first half, it was P'Allen Stinnett who took over the game in the second half. Stinnett had no points at halftime, and scored 23 in the second half. For the record, that's half of the entire team's output for the half, and its unofficially the most points ever scored in a debut game by a Bluejay.
And the thing is, he was scoring from everywhere. Hitting threes from the wing, driving inside and taking it to the hole, hitting jumpers from the top of the key...he was simply unstoppable. DePaul had no answer. A Big East team whose fans had been bragging on their message board all week about their superior athleticism and talent had NO ANSWER for stopping Stinnett.
Its one game, but man, he looks to me like the real deal -- and the embodiment of the type of player Creighton never used to be able to recruit. Which is why it was nice to see Pierce Hibma start the game, a symbolic comparison between the kind of player Creighton used to recruit and the sort of player they recruit now.
How special was his performance? Over a nearly nine-minute stretch, he scored 15 of the Jays' 17 points on a dizzying array of threes, drives and jumpers. In his first collegiate game. Ever. I was glued to my milk crate seat, as it were, riveted by Stinnett literally putting the game in his hands.
At the end of that 15-of-17 run, Creighton had a 25-point swing on their hands and a 57-48 lead. Needless to say, I didn't do a heckuva lot of mingling during the second half.
Immediate analysis: Stinnett gets a lot of points one-on-one, but also does an amazing job working away from the ball to get open looks. I read someone on the Bluejay Cafe compare his halfcourt-offense ability to a quicker Kyle Korver with better assist ability. Its one game, and I refuse to make such crazy comparisons to heretofore the greatest Jay I've ever seen.
I reserve the right to change my mind on that, though.
You bet.
--
For the first Polyfro Heee-Haw Player Of The Game this season, I'm going to do something that will be extraordinarily unpopular. Namely, I'm not giving it to P'Allen Stinnett. I know, I know: 23 points, all in the second half; 15 of 17 points in one stretch; 3 assists, 3 steals, 4 boards. Impressive stuff.
But I can't get this idea out of my mind that Stinnett's heroics would have gone for naught had Chad Millard not kept them in the game in the first half when nobody's shots were falling. Millard, for the game, contributed a very solid 15 points, 4 assists and 5 boards, but it was his 11 first-half points that kept the game close enough to P'Allen to carry them the rest of the way. Call me crazy, but when the team seemed tight and nobody was hitting open shots, Millard did.
That ought to not go unrewarded. Therefore, Millard gets the 20 oz. Tower Of Superiority, the Plastic Jug of Tastiness, the lime-green bottle that says not only am I Awesome with a capital A but I know a good fiscal deal when I see one...that's right, he gets the Polyfro Heee-Haw Player Of The Game Award.
You bet.
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