2008-09 Gameday Previews: November 2008 Archives

First off, my apologies for the lack of Gameday Preview articles for both the Oral Roberts and Arkansas Little Rock games. The truth is, the Friday before Thanksgiving I was laid off my job as a graphic designer after nine years with the company. I spent last weekend at the bar, and this week making use of the extensive industry contacts I've made over the years.

Mercifully, the Jays did not play the Golden Lions of Arkansas Pine-Bluff last year. Two years ago, the Jays defeated them 74-39, and after watching their atrocious attempt at "playing basketball", I declared the Golden Lions to be The Worst Team Ever. You might have blocked out the reasons why I made such a bold declaration, and I wouldn't blame you if you did. Here's what I wrote after the game:

The Golden Lions shot 20.6 percent from the field, a new Qwest Center low. But this does not do their tremendous effort justice. They missed their first 17 shots of the second half, and at that point (the 8-minute mark), their shooting percentage for the game was -- this is not a typo -- 17%. 7 for their first 41 shots went in. The score was 28-16 at the half, and when they finally scored another point on a free throw at the 12:41 mark, it was 47-16. That's a 19-0 run, folks. Better yet, by the time their first field goal went in at the 8:17 mark, it was 56-21.

At the 2 minute warning, the Golden Lions had 29 points. That's right, in 38 minutes of basketball, they managed 29 points. Awesome. A late flurry against the mop-up squad got them 10 points in 2 minutes, and no doubt made the flight back to Arkansas a lot easier to stomach.

I don't know about you, but it kind of makes me excited to see what they do for a follow up. Maybe they'll miss their first 20 shots of the second half. Easy shooter, don't mock them...everyone has to have goals, no matter how modest.


Arkansas Pine-Bluff is a Division I school, but they exist in a different reality from much of the rest of D1. The Golden Lions will not play a home game until January when they open conference play, and are in the midst of an 11-city road trip that started last week and ends in 2009. Along the way, they'll take on Colorado, Texas A&M, Missouri, Georgia Tech, Purdue, Nebraska, and tonight, Creighton.

Their athletic director makes no bones about it: they're taking the idea of guarantee games to a new level. He told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that they're "kind of stuck in that vicious cycle. The men's basketball makes so much money through guaranteed games that to sustain a budget, it's kind of the only way possible. They have to take one for the team."

When I first came to Creighton in the fall of 1997, there was no bigger villain in the Missouri Valley than Steve Alford, especially in and around Omaha. Rivalries and great coaching showdowns are part of what makes college basketball great, and for my first two years here, Dana Altman and Steve Alford had some epic, EPIC battles.

You see, back in those days, Alford was more like his mentor Bob Knight than he is now. He was easily excitable and often temperamental, and when urged on by rowdy students and/or bad refereeing, he would pout, complain, swear, throw clipboards, and rack up technical fouls. It was all very entertaining for home and visiting crowds alike, who egged him on with equal vigor.

It was fun to root against a guy like that, especially when the rumors surfaced in January of 1998 that "someone" at SMS had asked the NCAA to investigate whether Creighton forward Nerijus Karlikanovas had accepted payment for playing overseas before enrolling in school. These allegations mysteriously cropped up days after Karlikanovas shot 4-5 from three-point range and torched the Bears for 20 points and 8 rebounds in a huge 72-70 win in Springfield.

Nerijus missed the next two games while the NCAA investigated, and his absence was a huge factor in the Jays suffering a one-point defeat at home to Indiana State, which may have cost them the regular season championship.

Whether it was sour grapes or he was acting on what he believed to be good information, Alford was no longer just the coach everyone loved to hate; his status as Public Enemy Number One in Omaha was cemented. He was booed lustily when his Bears came to Omaha in late February that year, and a big (for the time) crowd of 5300 cheered as the Jays stormed out to a 16-point lead, before nearly blowing it and holding on for a 79-76 win. A clearly rattled Karlikanovas shared barbs back and forth with the SMS bench all day, much to the delight of the student section.

In March, the teams met again in the semifinals of the MVC Tournament, and the Jays got big games from Rodney Buford and Ben Walker, taking a 12-point lead into the half. Alford was T'd up shortly after the second half began, upset with both his team's play and a perceived abundance of bad calls from the refs. The Jays beat them a third time, 78-70, as everyone in Omaha yukked it up over beating the coach they loved to hate.

After Alford took that SMS team to the Sweet 16, he bolted for Iowa, which was highly amusing to me having grown up in northwest Iowa as a Hawkeye fan. When
Alford brought his Iowa team to Omaha for the return game of a home-and-home that previous coach Tom Davis had signed, Alford made no bones about the fact that he was unhappy with the game. A column in the World-Herald by Tom Shatel even paraphrased Alford as saying he would never bring a team to Omaha again.

The game drew 9,374 to the old Civic, which at the time was the fifth largest crowd in Creighton history. Iowa was fresh off an upset of #1 UCONN in Madison Square Garden, and came into the game ranked 23rd. Best of all, our old friend didn't disappoint: Alford was T'd up as the game slipped away late in the second half. Star forward Jacob Jaacks even got in on the act, taunting the student section all day before yelling obscenities and having to be restrained after fouling out. It was one of the classic games of the Civic, and as I stormed the court with most of the student section behind me, I swore I heard Alford mutter he would never come back to Omaha.

On Sunday, he returns. The coach we loved to hate is back, and frankly, I can hardly contain my excitement.

You bet.

The exhibition season unofficially tipped off last weekend, when Creighton traveled to Ames to take on Iowa State. I say "unofficially" because the game was cloaked in more mystery than a government secret. Finding anything out about that "game" has proved just this side of impossible.

I asked someone I know who is not connected to the program but who knows a guy who knows a guy who saw someone at 38 Flavors who claimed he saw the game if he could tell me anything about it.

Me: "So, can you tell me anything about the game?"
Him: "I haven't been able to find out. But I have top men working on it right now."
Me: "Who?"
Him: "Top...Men."

This isn't the Ark of the Covenant we're talking about, but much like the Ark, the happenings of the Iowa State-Creighton exhibition have apparently been crated up and shoved into some random corner of a warehouse. And there they will stay, thanks in part to an NCAA rule that essentially killed teams like EA Sports, Global Sports, etc. that routinely provided exhibition tuneups for Division 1 teams.

As I understand it, exhibition games now must be against D-II or D-III teams. Alternatively, teams can play a "scrimmage" against a D-I team, provided no media, fans or non-team personnel are present and no details of the game are made public. As games against D-II opponents aren't expected to offer much of a tuneup -- Creighton's struggles against Nebraska-Omaha notwithstanding -- many D-I schools opted to have just one "true" exhibition game on their schedule.

Thus, we have Sunday's big Creighton-Central Missouri tilt.