Three years ago, Creighton and Southern Illinois played on ESPN Game Day. The full TV crew spent an entire Saturday inside SIU Arena, while Bluejays and Salukis fans alike soaked in the atmosphere — their teams, their schools were in prime time, finally recognized outside of March Madness as a premier matchup.
The final score that night? 48-44, SIU. To call the game ugly would be an insult to all things less than desirable. It had to have been Doug Elgin’s worst nightmare, right? Aside from the Valley not placing multiple teams in an NCAA Tournament since 2007. Right?
Much has changed since that late January evening. The 48-44 win was the Salukis’ tenth straight regular season victory over the Bluejays — CU’s only two wins during that stretch came in Arch Madness championship games in 2003 and 2007. But just a few weeks later, during a Sunday night broadcast on ESPNU, the rivalry between the two programs took a turn in a different direction. That night, a happily stunned Qwest Center audience saw the Bluejays pounce to a 45-26 halftime lead en route to a 72-53 victory.
Fast forward to 2011. Following Sunday night’s win against SIU (another 19-point victory), Creighton has won seven straight against the Salukis. The Bluejays haven’t set the landscape of college basketball ablaze this year, or any other year lately; CU hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2007. But it could be worse, Jays fans. Just look at the fortunes of SIU, perennial Big Dance attendees-turned-absentees.
From 2001 through 2007, SIU posted seasons with 28, 24, 25, 27, 22, and 29 wins. Chris Lowery took over for Matt Painter in 2004, and his first team advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. He advanced his team to the NCAA Tournament the next two seasons, too, before things headed south — 18-15 in 2007-08, followed by 13-18 the next year. Last year’s team finished at .500 (15-15), and it would take a hot finish to this year for Lowery’s team to replicate that feat. But his team is 2-8 in their last 10 games, including yesterday’s blowout loss to the Bluejays.
Again, I understand that things have been far from peachy in the Bluejays program the past season-plus. But comparing the two rosters, and the two benches, Sunday night was an exercise in identifying complete opposites. Decimated by some suspensions, injuries, and a few years worth of defections and transfers, Lowery’s team is a shell of what it once was. Meanwhile, Greg McDermott has a few bright spots on a team that’s seen its own share of similar personnel shakeups — both on the court and on the sideline — in the past few seasons.
From the minute Lowery came out of the tunnel wearing a black suit with a black shirt and a black tie, the mood hovering around the Saluki bench seemed dim and morose. It didn’t help, I’m sure, that 20 minutes into the game CU had a 12-point lead on the scoreboard, a 14-rebound lead on the glass, and had made the types of hustle plays the great SIU teams of the 2000s were known for.
With just Mamadou Seck, Carlton Fay, and Davante Drinkard available to try and stop Gregory Echenique, Doug McDermott, and Kenny Lawson, the focus for Greg McDermott’s offense was clear: pound the ball inside, make initial shots or grab offensive rebounds and score on put-backs. Seck hurt the Jays a few weeks ago when the two teams played an overtime game in Carbondale, but he wasn’t up to the task Sunday. Fay, one of the top scorers in the league, had only 4 points in the first half and 12 for the game. And Drinkard seemed to pick up two quick fouls the moment he entered the game, rendering him rather useless.
Meanwhile, Echenique grabbed 10 rebounds in the first half while Doug McDermott posted 9 points and 5 boards in the first 20 minutes. Lawson came off the bench for a bit of instant offense, scoring 5 points in 6 minutes of play. He, too, got into some foul trouble, but for once in what seemed like an eternity Echenique did not.
Gregory made the most of his time on the court, scoring 12 points and snatching 14 rebounds on the evening. It was his first double-double of his Creighton career, and the effort seemed head and shoulders above what he had displayed at times during his transition from sitting in street clothes for the better part of a year to being asked to jump almost immediately into the starting lineup for a team trying to find an identity. He picked up only one personal foul — a dubious, seemingly ridiculous elbow-contact intentional foul — the whole game, while playing 25 productive minutes.
Excelling, too, were fellow newcomers McDermott (15 points, 7 rebounds) and Jahenns Manigat. A freshman from Canada, Manigat brings a spark and energy to the team whenever he’s on the court. It only helps, then, when he goes 3 of 4 from the field and 2 of 3 from 3-point range, to go along with 6 of 8 from the free throw line, for a career-high 14 points. Throw in a couple of rebounds and assists, a steal, and just one turnover, and it was easily Manigat’s best all-around game of his first season at CU.
It was arguably Creighton’s best game this season, too. And the effort could not have come at a better time. Fresh off a disappointing loss in Des Moines at Drake last week, the Bluejays needed to do what would have been blasphemous to suggest a few years ago: easily beat a Southern Illinois team that is almost assured of playing Thursday night in Saint Louis in a few weeks.
It is too soon to say whether this kind of a win could be a springboard to a run at Arch Madness; heck, I’m sure CU fans are leery of having Illinois State come to Omaha this week, whether Osiris Eldridge is with Tim Jankovich this year or not. But it isn’t a stretch to think this team may be settling into the roles that have changed since Echenique became eligible, and since Manigat and Josh Jones have taken some of Darryl Ashford’s time on the wing. Whether that settling into the situation translates into improvement during the last few weeks of the season is anyone’s guess. But it beats what’s happening in Little Egypt, as far as I’m concerned.