Bluejay Beat Wrap-Up Podcast:
With 0.8 seconds left in Wednesday’s game, Creighton led 85-82 with the ball. That’s a nearly impossible situation in which to lose. Their win probability was north of 99.5%, CBSSN’s Brent Stover and Bob Wenzel started congratulating Creighton for the solid win, CU’s radio crew was doing the same, and fans inside the arena were already celebrating.
Not so fast. This is Creighton basketball we’re talking about. If there’s a way to turn “nearly” impossible into realty, it seems like they will find the “nearly” more often than just about anyone else, no matter how bizarre or unique or convoluted it has to be. It’s painful to be a Bluejay fan sometimes.
But still…even for the Jays, losing up three, with the ball under the opponent’s basket, and 0.8 seconds left is nearly impossible. But not impossible. There’s a dozen or so ways to drain eight-tenths of a second. Getting it inbounds to one of your players is the best, obviously. But you can also throw an intentional interception to the other team inside the arc — there’s no time to make a pass to someone to take a three, or to dribble out there. You can roll the ball inbounds on the floor and the instant someone touches it, the game is over. You can throw it up in the air and let the fight for the ball drain the clock. You can do anything except what they did, which is to send one player deep, and attempt to throw a long ball to them. That’s a high-risk low-reward play in a moment where there’s no need for any risk.
There’s only one way to lose in that situation: throw the ball out of bounds without anyone touching it, which would give Marquette the ball under their own hoop with the same 0.8 seconds left.
The likeliest way for that to happen? Throw the ball long. And yet on Bluejay Radio, former player Taylor Stormberg correctly guessed what Mac would do — he told John Bishop during the dead-ball discussion leading up to that fateful play what he expected would happen:
“All you have to do is throw the ball deep. A little jumble or a little mixup fighting for the ball and the game’s over.”
Sure enough, that’s what happened, except for the ending. In less than 20 seconds of actual, elapsed time, Connor Cashaw threw a long pass that sailed out of bounds without being touched, Marquette’s Markus Howard inbounded the ball to Sam Hauser, and he drained a three to send the game to overtime.
“The direction was, if no one’s open, throw it up long to Martin,” Greg McDermott explained on his postgame radio interview. “He just needed to touch the ball, and the game’s over. But when we’re in that situation, with 0.8 seconds left, it’s not on the players. It’s on the coach. We didn’t execute the play that I sent them out there to execute, and that falls squarely on my shoulders.”
That sequence alone has three highly questionable coaching decisions. Why Cashaw, when your normal inbounds player, Mitch Ballock, is available and Cashaw had not played the entire night before that moment? Why instruct the team to throw it deep if you’re only sending one player, especially your biggest player, as that lone Bluejay deep? And after the turnover, why not use your timeout to regroup and make damn sure your defense is set?
The latter is perhaps the most galling, because the defense was clearly not prepared. Up three without the ball with 0.8 seconds left, the only way you do not win is to give up a three. You could foul and end the game with Marquette shooting two anti-climatic and inconsequential free throws. Or you could play it straight-up, but if you do, why would you even bother guarding someone inside the arc? For that matter, why even guard the inbounds pass? Put five guys around the perimeter and prevent a catch-and-shoot the best you can — 0.8 seconds is not enough time for even a single dribble.
Alas, Hauser caught the ball, fired up a three, and of course, it went in. That it may or may not have been after the buzzer simply twists the knife a little deeper, and let everyone feel the gut-punch for a longer period of time.
As so often happens in these situations, the rallying team steamrolls past the deflated team in overtime. Markus Howard scored the first 11 points of the extra period, including three consecutive threes on three straight possessions. And though Creighton valiantly tried to keep pace, they couldn’t, and after leading for 39 minutes and 18 seconds of regulation, they lost. That Marquette won a game they had 0.1% chance of winning with 0.8 seconds left literally broke Bart Torvik’s Win Probability Graph.
It will be a severe test of how resilient the team is. With a win, they’d have been 2-1 in the league with a winnable — yet dangerous — home game against Villanova next. Instead they’re 1-2 heading into that Villanova game, and though it’s still a very winnable game, it’s also a must-win, which makes the “dangerous” Wildcats even moreso. The loss to Marquette does not doom them to an NCAA-Tourney-less season. A loss to Villanova, with a road game at St. John’s next, probably would.
“We cannot allow this loss to define us. Too many good things happened,” McDermott noted. “It’s going to take some work on my staff’s part to make sure that this doesn’t cost us more than one game. It’s going to be a tough day tomorrow. We lost a game in as fluky of a way as I’ve ever been a part of in 30 years in coaching.”
If there’s any schadenfreude in this outcome for critics of Greg McDermott (who are becoming more numerous and more vocal, if social media and message boards are any indication), it’s this: because of the boneheaded ending to regulation, Doug McDermott’s arena record for most points in a game now belongs to an opponent instead of to his son. Howard had 39 in regulation, not even enough to surpass Colt Ryan’s opponent record of 43, much less Doug’s 45. But because overtime happened, Howard scored 14 more, and now the CHI Health Center record books will show Howard as the record holder, with 53.
Ouch.
The final 0.8 seconds, and ultimately the loss, supersede any good things that happened. They just do. That’s tough, because if those 0.8 seconds go differently, we’re talking about Martin Krampelj nearly having a double-double with 19 points and eight boards, including a positively un-Krampelj 13-of-14 from the line, and nominating his block of Markus Howard’s shot in the final ten seconds as a play-of-the-year candidate.
If those 0.8 seconds end differently, we’re gushing over Davion Mintz scoring a career-high 21 points, including 5-of-8 from three point range with zero turnovers and good defense against a shooter in Howard who made contested shots. He hit these two massive shots in the final minutes that, had the Jays won, would be celebrated.
(And yes, his defense was better than he’s being given credit for. WBR’s Patrick Marshall broke down the entire game, play by play, in this GIGANTIC and AMAZING Twitter thread. Click through to read the whole thing.)
If those 0.8 seconds end a different way, we’re happy about Ty-Shon Alexander getting back on track after a rough shooting day at Butler, and about his bank-shot as the shot clock expired in the final minute as one of the biggest shots — or perhaps moments — of the season.
And if those 0.8 seconds end differently, we’re talking about Sunday as a chance to make a serious case for Creighton to be one of the favorites to win the league.
Instead, no one cares much about any of that. A lot can change in 0.8 seconds.
A game. A season. Perhaps more.
Key Stats:
Creighton was:
- Shot 50.8% from the floor
- Hit 17 threes (51.5%)
- Shot 80.8% from the FT line (21/26)
- Only turned it over nine times
- Lost
Markus Howard was:
- 15-of-26 from the floor
- 10-of-14 on threes
- 13-of-15 from the line
- Had six assists and nine turnovers
- Scored a Big East and CHI Health Center record 53 points
