It wasn’t supposed to end like this. In April, Doug McDermott came back for one more year, and in July, he was joined by his running mate, Grant Gibbs, who’d been granted an unexpected extra year by the NCAA. They talked about unfinished business, about how the best was yet to come. Mostly, they talked about the elusive Sweet 16 — they made no bones about it, that was the goal, the expectation. And for nearly every moment since the start of practice last September, it looked like they might get really get there, to advance further into March than any of the giants whose shoulders they stood on.
To have that achievement be denied in a 30-point blowout loss that honestly seemed less competitive than the score indicates was, in a word, devastating. It was a devastating thing to witness as fans, and based on the tears that were shed on the sidelines and on the bench, it was an even more devastating thing to experience. To watch Coach Mac embrace his son as he exited a collegiate game for the final time, both men finally giving in to the tears they’d successfully choked back on Senior Night, was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen happen to a sports team I’ve followed closely.
Athletics are a trivial thing in the grand scheme of the greater world at large, but as someone who watched every minute those four seniors had played, got to know a little about them as their careers progressed, and watched them grow on and off the court into not only great basketball players but great men, they felt like extended family. We cheered and watched them perform feats in person, we welcomed them into our homes on television to cheer them on when we couldn’t be there, and we took great joy as that trivial thing — that joyous diversion that sports is so charitable about offering to us — blossomed into something we could be proud of, either as alums of the school, or as Omahans, or simply as basketball fans.
Ethan Wragge grew from a lanky, clean-shaven kid from a Minnesota suburb into The Lumberjack, a player whose legendary three-point shooting prowess will only become more amazing as the years pass, and whose nine 3-pointers at Villanova, including seven in a row, made the team and the school a national sensation. Jahenns Manigat grew from a player recruited by just two D1 schools into The Canadian Red Bull, a player with infectious energy that wore his heart on his sleeve, gave his teammates confidence through positive reinforcement and maximized his talent to become a great defender with a nice shooting stroke. Grant Gibbs grew from an injury-riddled transfer from Gonzaga into one of the greatest passers in school history, a player with an uncanny knack both for getting the ball to teammates in position to succeed, and for getting under the skin of opposing players. And then you have Doug McDermott.
Doug McDermott grew from a skinny, barely recruited second-banana to Harrison Barnes on their Ames High team into Dougie McBuckets, the fifth-highest scoring player in the history of college basketball. He grew from a player many thought would redshirt his freshman year into the team’s leading scorer by the end of that year. He grew from a good scorer with quirky moves his sophomore year into a player that by his senior year could not only create his own shot, but had an arsenal of moves unmatched in the college game. He scored over 1,000 more points than the next closest Bluejay, Rodney Buford, and made scoring 25 points in a game seem routine and scoring 30 a disappointment because he didn’t get 40.
Together, those four — along with an array of teammates who made invaluable contributions — won 107 games in four years, won two MVC Tournament titles, a MVC Regular Season title, and went to three consecutive NCAA Tournaments and won a game in each. They shepherded the team from the Missouri Valley into the Big East, and didn’t miss a beat.
The ending to that story was supposed to be a happy one, not an ending with towels draped over their faces to hide their red eyes and damp cheeks from the TV cameras.
But as I think about it a day later, it occurs to me that maybe there is a happy ending. Maybe that unfinished business, that stuff about how the best was yet to come…maybe that’s still true. Maybe that stuff doesn’t happen while those guys are at Creighton, but because of them. Because of what they’ve laid the foundation for. Because of what they’ve built.
Five or six years ago, when I’d wear a Creighton shirt in a city outside of a 100-mile radius of Omaha, if I got any comments from people it was to ask what Creighton was, or where it was, or if they knew it was a college, they wondered what my connection to the school was because they’d never met a Creighton fan before. That doesn’t happen anymore. From New York City to Philadelphia, from Cincinnati to Indianapolis, from Chicago to California, people know about Creighton. They know about them because of basketball. Because of The Lumberjack, and The Canadian Red Bull, and the 24-year old guard with bum knees, and Dougie McBuckets. They illuminated a place that we’ve known for years to be special and unique, and shared it with everyone else. They let the rest of the country in on the secret.
Creighton is a special place where 18,000 fans come to home games and will their team to victory. It’s a place where thousands of fans flock to St. Louis or to NYC to watch them in the conference tourney, and thousands more follow them to Texas, or to Philadelphia, or to North Carolina, for the NCAA Tourney, giving them a decided home-court advantage even halfway across the country. It’s a place where students can get an education at the top-rated private university in the Midwest, and student-athletes can succeed and grow on and off the court. People outside of Omaha didn’t know that story before this group of players shined a light on it.
I’d like to think that’s what they meant. That whatever achievements they had this March, whatever memories they made for themselves and for everyone who supported them along the way from the first game in November through last night’s heartbreak — that was just the start of something greater than any of us can even imagine.
Doug was right last April when he said that.
The best really is yet to come.