Bluejay Beat:
Buzzer-beating, game-winning dunks aren’t unheard of. Crosstown UNO won a game on one by Matt Pile a few weeks ago. One of the most famous plays in college basketball history is a game-winning dunk — NC State’s Lorenzo Charles throwing down an alley-oop slam in the 1983 national title game and sending Jim Valvano running around the court looking for someone to hug. But it remains an unusual way to win a game; buzzer beaters are usually coast-to-coast layups, tip-ins of a missed shot, desperation 3-pointers or off-balance jumpers. In other words, pretty much every other way to score except for a dunk is more common than winning on a dunk.
Saturday’s game-winning dunk by Christian Bishop is even more incredible than most. It didn’t come in the half court, or as a putback of a missed shot — it came in the frenzy of transition, a mere seven seconds of real time after Providence’s Noah Horchler had completed a 12-point comeback for the Friars by tying the game on a drive to the rim.
Rather than call timeout, Coach Greg McDermott let the game play out. He told the media afterward that beyond the X’s and O’s consideration, taking a timeout would also have let Providence set up their press. Left unsaid: Creighton’s recent history with inbounds plays at the end of games has been filled with nightmares, even in games they ultimately won, including this one. Better to try and catch the defense off-balance, and let your players make a play.
“We had one of the best players in the country with the ball in his hands, and we knew if he could get to 14 or 15 feet he’d either make a pull-up jumper or make a good decision for a teammate,” McDermott said. “Obviously, he made the right decision. And we were able to do all of that because of how we practice. We don’t need to call timeout because they know I trust them to make the right play in those situations.”
Marcus Zegarowski had beaten the Friars a year ago on a game-winning shot of his own. This time, he beat them by facilitating a game-winner for a teammate. Taking the inbounds pass up the floor like a rocket ship, he had the Friars defenders scrambling, trying simultaneously to stop his dribble and make sure Creighton’s shooters were covered. He manipulated the entire Providence defense and created the space needed for Bishop’s drive. The result: as Bishop trailed the play, the Friars had devoted so much attention to Zegarowski and those shooters that the lane was wide open.
Pass. Catch. Two steps. SLAM.
“I saw Christian trailing me so in my head, I’m thinking, I’m going to go attack Nate Watson, Bishop’s defender,” Zegarowski said. “The key was to bring (the defense) in. Christian was trailing me at the perfect time. He timed it great. I just saw him in the corner of my eye and flipped it back to him. Christian made a hell of a play to win the game for us.”
The FOX camera shots said it all. Multiple Providence players stood with hands on their heads, mouths on the floor, in disbelief about what had just happened. Creighton players celebrated before the shot even went in — watch Antwann Jones, Ryan Kalkbrenner and Jett Canfield in the back row of the bench on the replay. The moment they see what’s about to happen they can’t contain their excitement. They know they’re about to win.
“Marcus made an unbelievable play at the end,” McDermott said. “Talk about maturity to understand the clock and the situation and to know exactly where everybody was, and it enabled him to make a perfect pass to Christian for the dunk.”
As incredible as the final play was, and is, it shouldn’t have needed to happen. After trailing by as many as seven points in the first half, the Jays unleashed a 15-0 run to seemingly take control of the game. Damien Jefferson and Mitch Ballock scored nine of the team’s 15 points during the span, and the Jays’ defense forced turnovers on five consecutive Friar possessions. Jefferson was everywhere, coming up with two steals, two offensive rebounds and an assist too. By the time Providence finally ended the run, Creighton had turned a 24-18 deficit into a 33-24 lead.
While Jefferson was doing a little of everything, Ballock was doing what he does best: sink three-pointers from anywhere on the floor. From a step in front of the bench:
To one that was so deep it was out of frame for FOX’s camera:
To one from the logo, just for hell of it.
And on the final play of the half, with the Friars having clawed back to within five at 37-32, he drained his longest yet — a buzzer-beating three from 40 feet that didn’t touch any part of the rim. It’s a shot made possible because of Providence’s A.J. Reeves assuming Ballock wouldn’t make a shot from that far out (despite ample evidence to the contrary just moments before), so he didn’t even bother to defend it. Watch the replay — he takes one lackadaisical, half-hearted step forward as Ballock makes a break for the ball, and then stands there watching him drain a 40-footer. It was a rough day for Reeves, who was on the receiving end of buzzer-beaters at the end of both halves.
Riding the momentum of their strong finish to the first half, the Jays kept Providence at arms length for most of the second, and even built a double-digit lead at one point after a dunk by freshman Ryan Kalkbrenner.
That dunk put them ahead 59-48, but they couldn’t seem to put the Friars away. Their best chance came a couple of possessions later, with a 63-51 lead and just under five minutes left. Ballock missed a wide-open three, Jefferson grabbed the offensive board, and Zegarowski missed a wide-open three, too.
“If either one goes in, it ices the game,” McDermott said.
Instead, mistakes began to pile up. Denzel Mahoney and Jefferson made foolish turnovers. Bishop missed a layup at the rim off of an inbounds pass. Mahoney missed the front end of a one-and-one twice. Jefferson committed a foul with 15 seconds left while trying to rebound the second of those missed free throws. Antwann Jones fumbled an inbounds pass out of bounds, though the pass itself from Mahoney was partially to blame, delivered below the waist to a player running toward him — and in fact the box score credits the turnover to Mahoney, not to Jones. That’s a whole helluva lot of mistakes in four minutes, and the result was that 63-51 lead evaporating behind a 14-2 Providence run leading up to the final possession.
“We made some mistakes that are very uncharacteristic,” McDermott said. “They’re going to have the pleasure of watching those mistakes with me in the film room Monday. My team understands we have to fix this. The way this game ended could have been extremely costly.”
Indeed, it could have been. Probably should have been. Instead, the lingering memory of this one is not the litany of mistakes but the sight of Christian Bishop putting A.J. Reeves on a poster. WBR’s Matt DeMarinis noted on this week’s “Scurry and The Scrub” podcast that he doesn’t sweat this team down the stretch, and he’s right. Experience is a great teacher, and this group of players has come a long way — it was just two years ago that they found a way to lose with the ball, up three, and 0.8 seconds left against Marquette. The countless other times that winter that they let a lead slip away were lessons that made them better and tougher, and are a big reason plays like the one that won this game are possible.
“These aren’t beautiful paintings that we’re creating here, but they’re ending up as wins so that’s the most important thing,” McDermott summed it up. “In this league you don’t apologize for anything, you just take the ‘W’.”
Key Stats:
Denzel Mahoney struggled offensively, making just 2-of-12 from the floor and missing all seven 3-pointers he attempted. His two missed front end of one-and-ones in the final minute could have been catastrophic. But his defense was superb, holding David Duke to 13 points on 19 shots.
“Sometimes if your focus is there, you burn a lot of energy on that end and it affects your offense,” McDermott noted. “And with (starting point guard) Jared Bynam exiting in the first half, it put the ball in Duke’s hands all the time. Now you don’t even get a chance to catch your breath because you’re guarding him as he brings it up the floor. While he didn’t have his best offensive game, defensively he did as good a job as he has in any game this season. Denzel made Duke’s looks really, really difficult.”
Damien Jefferson had another stellar game of filling the stat sheet, scoring 18 points with eight rebounds (five of them offensive!), three assists and six steals. He made 9-of-13 shots. As has become the norm, but should never be taken for granted, Jefferson caused havoc everywhere on the floor for all 31 minutes he was in the game. Some focused on his mistakes late in the game. That’s a shame, McDermott said.
“It was almost comical to have someone who has played the game the way he does for such a long time make mistakes like that. He’s human like everybody else. You can focus on that, or you can focus on all the good he did everywhere else.”
Mitch Ballock was finally the Ballock Jays fans have come to expect, draining long threes and opening room for everyone else because of the respect defenses have to pay him. Marcus Zegarowski looked like the Christmas break was a reset, looking like the All-American Preseason Big East Player of the Year instead of the rusty, rehabbing player he resembled through the first nine games. He had 20 points, made 6-of-11 from three, had seven rebounds, four assists, made the right reads to set up offense for his teammates consistently, and was in the right spot defensively. And the game’s winning play was vintage Zegarowski, moving the defense like he had them on marionette strings.
And while the bench as a whole didn’t contribute a ton, Ryan Kalkbrenner impressed once again. In 16 minutes, he had six rebounds and four blocks, playing solid defense against a Providence team that isn’t easy to defend in the paint.
“I wish I would have gotten the bench in earlier, but in the first half around the time when the bench would normally have come into the game, we were rolling so well I didn’t want to break it up. Then you get into the guts of the game and it’s hard to make those substitutions. But we wouldn’t have won the Xavier game without those bench guys. So we’ll keep them focused going forward because we can’t do what we need to do without them.”