All week, we’ll travel back in time two decades to look back at the first NCAA Tournament team of the Dana Altman Era: the 1998-99 MVC Tourney Champion Bluejays. Today in Part Four, the Jays lose three games on a brutal road trip, accept a challenge from their coach to take ownership of the team, and rally around a local columnist calling out their toughness to win three straight games to end the regular season.
To read the entire series, check out the series page.
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Four-Game Road Trip, Three Losses Puts Season In Peril
“I’ve got to admit I thought we would be a lot better than what we are now. Basically it’s the same team as a year ago, and we were a lot better a year ago.” -Dana Altman
Despite sitting in a tie for first place, Altman wasn’t content and continued to hammer home the message about defense. “We worked on our defense pretty hard Monday, but it’s not one of those things you’re going to be able to turn around in a day or two of practice,” Altman said. “You hope to improve a little bit in the Bradley game, then hope it’s better in the Northern Iowa game, a little better in the Southern Illinois game and finally gets to where we’re proud of it again when we get to Wichita State.”
As he alluded to, Creighton was about to embark on a four-game road trip through some of the tougher venues in the MVC. First up: Bradley, which led the MVC in scoring defense (61.0 points a game) and opponent field-goal percentage (39.9). In its past seven trips to Carver Arena – all losses – Creighton failed to score more than 65 points in all of them. This one would be even worse than that: the Jays scored just 57 in a ten-point upset loss, making only three shots in the final ten minutes of the game.
They took care of business on the second stop of the road trip, knocking off Northern Iowa 95-81 in a game played in the tiny West Gymnasium on UNI’s campus because of roof damage to the UNI-Dome. But a pair of losses to Southern Illinois (85-75) and Wichita State (98-85) left their season teetering on the brink. They’d left Omaha with a 13-4 record, tied for first place with a 6-3 mark in the MVC; they were returning at 14-7, and all alone in fifth place at 7-6 in the league.
Their offense was clicking. Their defense was atrocious. Five straight teams had shot 50 percent or better against CU and five of the past six opponents had scored 80 or more points.
By giving up 98 points in a loss to the Shockers, they gave up the most points of the Altman Era up to that point. And largely as a result, what once was a promising season was now dangerously close to ending in disappointment.
“Our whole deal right now stems from whether we’re going to guard or not,” Altman said before their next game. “We’ve scored enough points in every game we’ve been in. If we had any effort defensively, we’d be fine.”
“I’ve got to admit I thought we would be a lot better than what we are now,” Altman continued, pulling no punches. “Basically it’s the same team as a year ago, and we were a lot better a year ago.”
Jays’ Defense Smothers UNI
Altman responded with three days of practices focused almost entirely on defense. Ryan Sears told the media before their next game that their coach was “pretty clear about what was and wasn’t important” — and trying to outscore their opponents was towards the bottom of that list.
Returning home to the friendly confines of the Civic, Creighton smothered last-place UNI — they forced 13 turnovers in the first half, allowed the Panthers to attempt just 16 shots in the half, and took a 38-20 lead into the break.
“It was by far the best half of defense we’ve played in a long, long time,” Altman said. “We told them at halftime that that was much better and now we’ve got to turn it up another notch. They listened to the ‘much better’ part. They didn’t listen to the ‘turn it up another notch.'”
Ouch.
Also: true.
In the second half, they fell back on bad, old habits. UNI outscored them 40-39 after halftime, shot 13-26 from the floor (50%), and attempted 21 free throws as the Jays’ let up their intensity. “That second half wasn’t a good sign,” Sears said afterward. “We let up just a little bit, and that little bit cost us 20 more points in the second half than in the first. That’s something we need to work on. That’s not going to win close games down the stretch.”
The season’s final road game took them to Normal, Illinois for a nationally-televised battle with the Redbirds. ESPN had opted to pick up the game, and it was the first time in eight years that Creighton had appeared on anything other than regional TV — the title game of the 1991 MVC Tournament had been the last time they played to a national audience, as their NCAA Tourney games that season were shown to a small subset of CBS’ coverage map.
“We worked a hard five years to try to get our program in a position where at least somebody will show us,” Altman said. “I just hope we play awfully well and make a good showing for ourselves.”
Unfortunately, what that national audience saw was a tentative team who made dumb decisions all over the floor. Illinois State took 41 free throws. They made seven straight shots and five free throws during the decisive second-half run. And after Sears hit a three-pointer with 11 seconds to go, pulling them within a point. ISU split a pair of free throws, and without a timeout, CU inbounded the ball to Buford and hoped he could create a game-winning basket. But with time ticking away, he pulled up from 24 feet rather than drive closer to the hoop, and his would-be game-winner clanged off the rim.
Creighton had gone from a tie for first place into a tie for fifth in the span of two weeks, with losses in four of the previous six games putting a once-promising season on the brink of massive disappointment. Altman and his players would be the last to use it as an excuse, but there’s no doubt the schedule did them zero favors. As they prepared to host Southwest Missouri State on February 17, the Jays had played at home just four times since the calendar switched to 1999 — including four straight road games, and seven of the last 10 away from Omaha. The closest he came to even mentioning it came on that week’s MVC Coaches’ Teleconference, where he called it “less than ideal” and lamented their lack of control because of the Civic Auditorium’s busy schedule before appearing to catch himself and backing off that line of thought. “You just kind of have to take what they give you,” he said. “But finishing up with three at home you hope can be an advantage to us.”
Indeed, all those road games meant a long homestand had to be coming at some point, and the Jays would end the season with three straight at the Civic. Back in friendly environs, they notched three straight wins — 79-76 over SMS, 73-67 over Drake, and 76-65 over Wichita State.
Developing a “Mean Streak”
Heading into the first of three home games in six days to close out the regular season schedule, Creighton sat at 15-8 overall and 8-7 in the MVC. Their toughness — or lack thereof — was the big talking point heading in the regular season’s final week.
Altman acknowledged the team was comprised of players who were perhaps too quiet, too willing to lead by example instead of through words, and lamented that he’d been unable to develop leaders that would motivate each other. Doug Swenson agreed, telling the Omaha World-Herald that “we’re probably too laid back. I know I am. We don’t demand enough of each other, and we’re afraid to hurt other people’s feelings. You can’t have that. You’ve got to be able to criticize people, and people have to be able to accept it.”
So Altman did something drastic, something he admitted the next day he’d never done before. At the team’s scouting report meeting the night before the SMS game, he left, telling his senior guards to run the meeting. If they wouldn’t seize the leadership mantel organically, he was going to force it to happen — or go down trying.
“It’s up to them,” he said after the fact. “There’s nothing I can say, nothing I can do. I’ve spent so much time this year getting them ready. I don’t have anything left. It’s up to them. I’ve been trying to pump them up, always talking to them. But, you know, as a coach, it wears off. The ESPN loss (to Illinois State last Sunday) had a lot of people talking about they can’t do this or that. It’s time to take ownership of this team…It’s the last two weeks of the season.”
With the season on the ropes, a scathing column from Tom Shatel piled on. The OWH scribe wrote a piece comparing the divergent paths Nebraska and Creighton had taken over the season, chalking up Nebraska’s late-season rally to toughness –and Creighton’s late-season swoon to a lack of it.
To put it mildly, the column pissed the team off.
Altman said it “got the players going. It got their attention.” Ben Walker said “it bothered all of us.” Rodney Buford said “We’re not afraid to fight.” The message: they were upset at being labeled as soft, and determined not to let it stick.
Creighton missed nine of their first 23 shots against SMS, but rebounded 12 of the 14 missed shots. They outrebounded SMS 20-4 in the game’s first 12 minutes, setting a tone that would last. They finished the game with 20 offensive boards. They had 12 steals. The catalyst was Walker, who was particularly offended by the “toughness” criticism and took it personally. He had 21 points and seven boards, playing with a contagious fire that rubbed off on everyone else.
Three nights later against Drake, Walker continued to bruise his way through opponents, and eight minutes into the action he flew high attempting to block a shot despite being six inches shorter than the player he was defending. He flipped over a teammate, landed on his head, and spent the night in the hospital with a scary-looking concussion. But the message was sent — and eventually CU built a 54-28 lead by out-muscling, out-working and out-toughing their opponent. Drake would go on a late run against the end of Creighton’s bench to make the score close, but the result was a second straight win.
Then two nights after that, they capped the regular season with a 76-65 win over Wichita State to secure the #2 seed in Arch Madness. A blizzard nearly wiped out the game, though. The teams were in town ahead of the storm, but the officials were not — and until the third referee on the crew, Paul Janssen, arrived 35 minutes prior to tip, contingency plans were being put together. Delay the game until later that night? Push it back a day? Play with two officials? Luckily Janssen arrived just in time, the game tipped off in front of a small crowd of brave souls willing to brave the elements, and the Jays sent their seniors out in style.
Walker returned to the lineup just 48 hours after his concussion, and he had 14 points, four assists and three steals in 26 minutes. His toughness lit the fire once again, and the rest of the team followed. The Jays forced 19 turnovers. They had 13 steals. They beat up the Shockers on the boards.
“Our seniors were focused, and we knew what we had to do,” Buford said afterward. “We had to guard and rebound. Once we came out and did that, we felt pretty good about what we were going to do the rest of the night.”
Or, as Altman put it, “It just makes a tremendous difference when you try to guard.”
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Tomorrow in the series finale, Creighton wins three games in St. Louis to earn a trip to the Big Dance, and upsets Louisville in Orlando to advance to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.