January 2008 Archives

In my Gameday preview, I openly wondered what the crowd would look like in Des Moines. Would it be 30-40% Creighton fans, as it has been in recent years, or would it be representative of a Top 20 team? Well, it was most certainly the latter. In fact, I'd peg the Jays' percentage at somewhere around 5%. That place was a zoo, and it was almost entirely pro-Drake. Good for them.

I am pissed that I didn't get my free "Unleashed!" t-shirt. Because I totally don't have enough t-shirts. Actually, I'm about 18 shirts beyond the point where I needed a bigger dresser to house them, but still. I wanted my free t-shirt!

Our seats were awfully nice, courtesy of my college roommate who used some connections within the Drake athletic department to score us complimentary seats at midcourt. Upside to that is you have great seats. Downside is...there is no downside. You bet.

Did I mention I want my damn free t-shirt? Frankly, its not too late. Feel free to drop one in the mail to me.

School Databank:

Location: Des Moines, IA

Enrollment: 3,164

Famous sports alumni: Zach Johnson (PGA, Masters Champion)

Last game: Beat Northern Iowa 58-54

Last game vs Creighton: Drake won 68-60 last week in Omaha

Series: Creighton leads 86-53 (Drake leads 34-31 in Des Moines)

Well, the rematch between Creighton and Drake happens tonight in Des Moines, and looky-what-we-have-here, the Bulldogs are still rated. In fact, now they're a Top-20 team (!) and their winning streak has reached 17 games (!).

The last two games, both losses, may have represented a key turning point in the season. Going from 5-2 in the league to 5-4 puts the Jays in an unfamiliar position at the halfway point of the league season. As Otter pointed out in his typically excellent post after the SIU loss, the reality of the current Jays' squad is a rude awakening to many fans who only began following the team during their current run of success. The idea of not competing for a conference title this year is a shock to a lot of people. But you've got to look at the big picture, folks.

Maybe we're all just too close to the situation. I found the thoughts of my college roommate John, who lives in Des Moines and has only seen the Jays a couple of times this year, to be interesting.

I always get a flu shot. Well, not always, but at least going back to when I was a student at Creighton, I've got flu shots every fall. And I've not had the flu once during that span. This year, the flu shot caravan came to my office while I was on vacation in Denver, and I just never got around to getting one on my own.

So it only stands to reason that I would then contract the flu virus on the weekend of the Southern Illinois game, a game preceded by College Gameday and broadcast in HD by ESPN's "Saturday Night Primetime" crew. Of all the weekends to come down with a temporarily debilitating virus, it had to be THIS one. I had planned all sorts of pre-game Gameday previews, a live-blog of College Gameday, and I had even figured on keeping a notepad beside me during the telecast to keep track of the number of times ESPN's crew made me upset with their ignorance or arrogance. Alas, none of this came to pass.

Drake brought their cheerleaders and their mascot, Spike, with them to the game, and they roamed the court in front of my section. At times they blocked my view, and at times it was annoying when Spike walked up the aisle to talk smack. But it was kinda cool to have them there, if only because it made the game seem like a bigger event.

My dad, the Drake alum, used their presence as an excuse to exhibit carte blanche in cheering for the Bulldogs. I explained to him that such behavior was not cool in the lower bowl, and told him the tragic story the night his other son was banished to the upper bowl because of his obnoxious cheering for Northern Iowa. I didn't demand he cheer for Creighton, I just asked him to behave himself. Polite clapping is fine. Yelling is not. Telling me things like "If this gets into a free-throw contest, there's going to be a lot of sad people in this building." is not cool.

I reconcile his presence with the fact that he's come to every Drake-CU game in Omaha with me for going on 10 years, and that Creighton has won almost all of them. That and the fact that all of the food and beer was on his tab. Buy me free beer and food and you can pretty much cheer for anyone you want to.

I don't like numbers. I've always regarded math as a "necessary evil". In fact, I have a report card from 2nd grade where my teacher claims I told her so, in those exact words. But I do like numbers in one instance: if someone else does the legwork and just presents the analysis to me. Like on my 401k statement or my investment analysis.

So I asked my friend Kenny Tesla to bring some respect for the numbers today, and break down the game stats. No that's not his real name, that's just what I nicknamed him. He hates it and it pretty much pisses him off that all of our friends call him by that name now, which of course means the name isn't going away anytime soon. So without any further ado, here's Kenny Tesla's statistical analysis of last night's game. If you enjoy it, I might even invite him to make this a regular feature. You bet.

After the jump, the next words you read will be those of one Kenneth Tesla, Esq. Enjoy.

School Databank:

Location: Des Moines, IA

Enrollment: 3,164

Famous sports alumni: Zach Johnson (PGA, Masters Champion)

Last game: Beat Illinois State 79-73

Last game vs Creighton: Creighton won 67-62 on February 2, 2007

Series: Creighton leads 86-52 (52-17 in Omaha)

The Jays and Bulldogs have played 138 times, but its safe to say none of them have been as heavily anticipated on both sides of the border than this one. Drake will take the court tonight as a rated team for the first time since 1971, looking to continue steamrolling through their schedule. At 16-1 and 7-0 in the league, they are the best team in the Valley. Say what you want about Drake, but the fact of the matter is that they are in sole possession of first place, are undefeated in the league, and are the only ranked team in the MVC.

If Drake can win tonight in Omaha, they'll make the MVC a two-team race between themselves and Illinois State. But if Creighton can pull off the upset, they'll be just a game back of the leaders and make it a three-team race for the regular season championship. There are 10 conference games left after tonight, sure, but this is a big one.

Alright, lets be honest. When the schedule came out in September, and you were circling which games were "must-see" and which mid-week games you'd give your tickets away for, Drake was at the top of the latter list. A rather non-descript team with a new coach and two former walk-ons as starters doesn't do a lot to inspire excitement. Particularly in the mainstream media, who picked them to finish in the bottom third of the league.

Yours truly gave them more credit than the people who get paid to know better, but I still only picked them to finish seventh. The lesson here is that I should not be confused with Nostradamus anytime soon. Oh, watch out, you're going to knock over your water/coffee/soda/Heee-Haw glass! Its going to be a minor mess of inconvenient proportions!

Yeah, it didn't happen, did it? You weren't even drinking water/coffee/soda/Heee-Haw, were you? That prediction was worth about as much as me picking Drake seventh, or the people who get paid to know better who picked them lower than that.

The biggest reason for optimism Saturday night comes from this stat: on a night when Dane Watts and P'Allen Stinnett, the Jays' two most reliable scorers, attempted just 10 shots, the team scored 86 points. Those two combined for just 13 points. Further, Chad Millard, who has at times been able to score in bunches, spent the night hooked up to an IV in the locker room with the flu.

So how did the Jays score 86 points with that being the case? Cavel Witter and Booker Woodfox, their two JuCo transfers, combined for 41 points on 11-14 shooting. Woodfox, in particular, shot lights out. Both of them had one amazing stat apiece. Ready for it?

Woodfox shot 6-7 from behind the arc. Witter shot 11-13 from the line.

If you think those stats are unrelated, you weren't watching close enough. Woodfox was absolutely on fire from outside, and as the game went on, Indiana State had to devote defensive resources to stopping him from catching the ball. When they did that, Witter used dribble penetration to get into the paint and draw fouls. And when he got to the line, he made the free throws. It had to be a frustrating one-two punch for Kevin McKenna and the Sycamores to deal with.

School Databank:

Location: Terre Haute, IN

Enrollment: 8,537

Famous sports alumni: Vencie Glenn (NFL), Bruce Baumgartner (2-Time Olympic Gold Medalist in Wrestling), Zane Smith (MLB) and, um, Larry Bird (NBA)

Last game: Lost at Missouri State, 65-44

Last game vs Creighton: Indiana State won 62-54 on January 4 of this year

Series: Creighton leads 45-22 (25-7 in Omaha)

Tonight's game has revenge written all over it. The last time these teams met three weeks ago, Creighton turned in perhaps their laziest, sloppiest performance in years -- and it was on the heels of their worst loss ever at the Qwest Center. Those losses dropped them to 0-2 in the MVC for the first time ever under Dana Altman. Chad Millard lost his starting role after the game, after two particularly ugly plays that summed up that atrocity in Terre Haute:

School Databank:

Location: Cedar Falls, IA

Enrollment: 10,727

Famous sports alumni: Kurt Warner (NFL), Bryce Paup (NFL)

Last game: Lost to Bradley 75-73

Last game vs Creighton: Jays won 66-55 on 2/13/07 in Omaha

Series: Creighton leads 23-11 (UNI leads 9-7 in Cedar Falls)

Series notes: Creighton has won seven straight vs UNI and 18 of the last 21

Back when I was at Creighton, my brother was in school at UNI. Of course, back then you needed to invent a better word for "terrible" to describe the Panthers' basketball team, because it got old describing them as simply terrible all the time. They stunk. They only beat the Jays one time in those years, an overtime thriller at the old Civic Auditorium. I never heard the end of it.

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time up in Cedar Falls, and likewise my brother spent a lot of time in Omaha. I can't tell you how many times I enjoyed the penny beers at Suds or one of the other great college bars on "The Hill". I can still taste the greasy late-night pizza from the Stein. Cedar Falls is a good time.

After we both graduated, UNI got to be awfully good. And then the smack talk really commenced, because his boys could finally back it up on the court. I'll save you the horror stories of "interesting" bets won and lost between us over the years -- interesting because they're not the sort of bets where money changed hands, if you catch my drift...

Remember two weeks ago when all those Debbie Downer Jays fans flooded the Bluejay Cafe and talk radio with their Armageddon talk? The Jays had lost two particularly ugly games, falling to 0-2 in the league for the first time since the Rick Johnson era. Well, don't look now, but the Jays have won four straight, three of them on the road, and now sit at 4-2 in the league, 13-3 overall.

Remember two weeks ago when an interview with Dana Altman on a local radio station led a sports talk host to speculate that if a certain Freshman didn't stop whining to the refs and didn't start buying into the Creighton system, he might transfer? Again, don't look now, but that same Freshman has since gone on to be the MVC Newcomer Of The Week in BOTH weeks since that erroneous speculation, has earned a starting spot at guard, and made clutch plays down the stretch in two consecutive road wins.

Tuesday night, a national TV audience (or at least, the 1% of the U.S. not watching American Idol or Ohio State-Michigan) got a chance to see this new crop of Jays first-hand. And they saw a pretty good representation of what this team's made of.

Saturday night, I was on a birthday party bus and after failing in my attempt to get the bartender at the first bar to turn the CU game on, was finally able to get the game at bar #2. Seriously, I know its the NFL playoffs, but would it kill you to turn ONE of your 57 televisions to the Jays game? One? Anyway, once that sales pitch was successful, the next pitch was to convince everyone to stay at that bar until the game ended.

My solution was to offer to buy beer for the person in charge of making such decisions as long as we stayed at that bar. Not a cheap solution, but a solution nonetheless! You bet.

Random observations from the game (because I haven't done a post-game random thought post in a long time!):

This is getting ridiculous. For the sixth time in 10 weeks, the MVC Newcomer of the Week is a Bluejay. How about that recruiting class? Stinnett joins Kenny Lawson, Chad Millard and Cavel Witter as winners of the award, although Stinnett is the only one to win it more than once. From the official presser:

    It is the second consecutive honor for Stinnett, and third honor this season for the Las Vegas, Nev., native. Stinnett averaged 14.5 points, 5.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 2.5 steals per game as the Bluejays defeated Evansville (77-59) and Wichita State (68-65) last week.

The comparisons to Rodney Buford continue, as well. Stinnett is the first Bluejay freshman to lead the team in scoring three consecutive games since Rodney, all the way back in January of 1996.

Although I've got to be honest with you: I saw just about all of Buford's games, and I don't ever recall him taking a charge. Much less one in a tie game, on the road, with a minute left. Just sayin'.

School Databank:

Location: Wichita, KS

Enrollment: 15,000

Famous sports alumni: Bill Parcells (NFL), Antoine Carr (NBA), Joe Carter (MLB), Xavier McDaniel (NBA)

Last game: Lost to Missouri State 71-47

Last game vs Creighton: Jays won 71-54 on 2/24/07 in Omaha

Series: Creighton leads 47-39 (WSU leads 25-18 in Wichita)

Series notes: Creighton has swept the season series 8 of the last 13 years; Creighton has won 30 of the last 38 meetings; Dana Altman is 25-6 against the Shockers

Creighton has owned Wichita State of late. By "late", I mean "pretty much forever". Look at those numbers above! And what's truly amazing is that a fairly good percentage of those came against good Shocker teams. There were years where it seemed like Wichita would beat practically everybody else on their schedule and still lose to the Jays. I know it was frustrating for their fans, and with a new coach, they have optimism that things will change.

Maybe things will change, but not this year. Wichita State is (how do I say this diplomatically?)...not very good. They're a respectable 8-7 overall, and own a 1-3 record in the Valley, although they've lost to the top two teams in the league (Drake and Illinois State), so that record is a little deceiving.

A big Polyfro shout out to fellow Jesuit institution Xavier, for finally having enough of the ridiculous "Mid-Major" label and telling a major media outlet how they feel about it.

Rivals.com named point guard Drew Lavender their "Mid-Major Player Of The Week", but Xavier refused the honor, saying the term was quote "a black eye for its program."

Nice. You go, Xavier! But wait, it gets better:

    Atlantic 10 commissioner Linda Bruno backed the Musketeers' stance. "I really am puzzled why anyone would consider us a mid-major," she said. "It's a term you really don't need. It got started because the media use football terms for basketball leagues. Give people credit for what they're good at. The term is derogatory."

The media use football terms for basketball leagues. That's hilarious, and quite prescient...the media has slapped the "BCS" label on basketball leagues for years, and I've always kind of been mystified by it. What in the hell does the Bowl Championship Series have to do with college basketball? Its laziness, or ignorance, or both, to use BCS to refer to anything other than football. There are no bowls in basketball, last time I checked. Things are settled on the court, where they should be.

I'm extraordinarily perturbed by the sight of Billy Bluejay wearing a official Nike Creighton warmup jacket. In all my years of watching the Jays, the only thing Billy has worn besides his standard issue white T-shirt with blue "C" is the occasional Santa hat in December.

The jacket's blue-and-black color scheme seems jarring after years of seeing him wear a white shirt...its like Pee Wee Herman wearing anything but a gray suit and a red bow tie. Its like Steve Jobs in anything but a black shirt and jeans. Also, it raises a question. If you're wearing a shirt, and a jacket, why not pants? Just asking.

Now that this is off my chest, on to the game.

With simultaneous NFL playoff and Creighton road game action going on, it sounded like a good excuse to spend the entire day at the bar. So I called up some friends and we headed to the Crescent Moon, where we watched the Redskins get beat by Seattle on the one big screen TV in the bar. A couple of pints and one cheesy-bacon-ranch chicken sandwich later, I was properly primed for the game.

One of the good things about watching road Jays games at the bar is that you don't have to listen to the announcers. Particularly games produced by KMTV. Travis Justice is pretty limited as a play-by-play guy; I think he's solid as a color commentator on the radio broadcasts, but in the play-by-play role he's hard to listen to. It reminds me of Dan Fouts, a formerly decent commentator now struggling in a play-by-play role on ABC's college football. Justice takes a lot of heat from Jays fans, which I think is mostly unfair -- if he was paired with a polished play-by-play guy and could be the commentator, a role in which he excels on radio, everyone would be happy.

On the other hand, Scott Schumacher, the commentator on KMTV's broadcasts, is simply awful. When the trademarks of your broadcasts are uncomfortable interviews with Dana Altman and repeating what your broadcast partner just said in slightly different terms, its not a positive sign.

I hesitate to criticize, even when the camera operators fail to do simple things like check the white-balance on their cameras (seriously!), because I remember all too well the days when the Jays were never on TV. I also have a decent idea of what it costs to put on one of these broadcasts (hint: its not cheap). And looking at the ads during the games tells you businesses aren't exactly waiting in line to advertise. Its the same four or five advertisers, over and over again, and commercial breaks typically have just two or three spots -- as opposed to the usual four or five on FSN or ESPN games.

What I'm saying is...eh, I'm shutting up now. Thank you for broadcasting the games, whatever the production quality! Anyway...

School Databank:

Location: Springfield, MO

Enrollment: 17,425

Famous sports alumni: Bill Mueller (MLB), Ryan Howard (MLB), Jackie Stiles (WNBA)

Last game: Beat Bradley 91-80

Last game vs Creighton: Jays won 75-58 in MVC Semifinals

Series: Creighton leads 25-22 (MSU leads 15-5 in Springfield)

Series notes: Creighton has won 18 of the last 25, including a three-game sweep last season

Coming into the season, just about everyone was ignoring Creighton, believing this would be a rebuilding year. Then they rattled off nine wins in their first ten games, and all of a sudden the media was ready to put the target on their back as favorites to win the league. If the last two games prove anything, its that the Jays are who we thought they were (apologies to my boy Denny Green). They're a young team that will play really well at times and beat teams they shouldn't, and they'll play terribly at times and lose games they should win. Is that the definition of a rebuilding year? I don't know.

Taking a voluntary sabbatical to chew on this game, and to drink a few beers, saved me from dropping some raw language on my readers. The distance of 36 hours does not make this game any prettier; it remains one of the ugliest, worst played CU games I've ever witnessed. From another slow start, to P'Allen fouling out in just 15 minutes, to Chad Millard's frustrated elbow-to-the-face and subsequent technical foul, it was YOUGLY.

An awful lot of folks are in glass cases of emotion after this one. Myself, I was so upset I thought I heard the distant wails of a long-lost canine friend, and asked him out loud to bark twice if he was in Terre Haute, even though I knew deep down he couldn't hear me. These are the things one does in the heat of the moment, when your team is 0-2 in the league for the first time since the immortal Rick Johnson was the head coach. You remember Rick Johnson, don't you? The strapping lad who took over for Tony Barone, won just 28% of his games, and was fired after just three years and a 24-59 record? That's Rick Johnson. He started 0-2 in the Valley during all three years of his tenure; up until this year, it hadn't happened since. Even in his first sad year, Altman went 1-1 to start the conference season. Whenever you have to bring up Rick Johnson in a comparison, you know its not good.

School Databank:

Location: Terre Haute, IN

Enrollment: 8,537

Famous sports alumni: Vencie Glenn (NFL), Bruce Baumgartner (2-Time Olympic Gold Medalist in Wrestling), Zane Smith (MLB) and, um, Larry Bird (NBA)

Last game: Won at Evansville 70-56

Last game vs Creighton: Jays won 59-38 in MVC Quarterfinals

Series: Creighton leads 45-21 (16-13 in Terre Haute)

Someone asked me today, "What would you most like to see in tonight's game?" Contrary to popular belief, its not a different starting lineup. Its defense. Hard-nosed, grind-out, steel-will defense. A game played in the 50s with Indiana State shooting 35% from the field would be music to my ears, after that pathetic reappearance of "The Ministry Of Silly Defense" on Saturday.

No uncontested layups. Recognition of a shooter with a hot hand. Simple things. You bet.

While Saturday's debacle was pretty much forgettable, P'Allen Stinnett did have two rather badass dunks. So in an effort to cheer you up on this New Years Day, here they are. Also, the sooner I can get three more posts up here, the sooner the recap of that horror movie from Saturday night will disappear into the archives. You bet.

The first dunk came on a fast break in the first half, and of particular note is where he takes off from -- that's Sir Rodney Buford territory, right there. And the cocked-and-loaded action of pulling the ball back before the dunk...good times.

The second dunk came when the game was pretty much out of reach. Its more of a garden-variety power slam, although its tough to understand how there was no foul called -- look at how he gets hacked! No worries, P went Marshal Law on him and threw the defender into the basket stand. Not the most sportsman-like move, but I enjoyed it, anyway.