Extra! Extra! Read all about it! The furious demise of the Creighton-Southern Illinois rivalry has been greatly overstated!
One or two down years for one (or, heavens forbid, both) team in an established rivalry shouldn’t subtract from the intensity the teams and their fans feel when schools square off. But with the Bluejays and Salukis squarely in the middle of the pack in Missouri Valley Conference play and coming off losses that exposed more innate problems with their rosters, Wednesday’s meeting wrote a new chapter — a unique chapter — in a drama dating back for the better part of a decade.
Dana Altman’s team could ill afford to drop a home game, already surrendering a close contest to Northern Iowa to open MVC play. Altman’s CU teams have never been below .500 after 6 games of the conference season, and a loss against SIU would have left the Jays 2-4 and seemingly out of answers. Chris Lowery’s Salukis lost back-to-back home games at SIU Arena against UNI and Drake, the later of the two coming in painful fashion late in the game. Hitting the skids at 2-4 6 games into Valley play (for the second consecutive season) would be borderline disaster as far as the Saluki faithful are concerned.
Stakes were high on Wednesday, then, albeit not in the traditional sense compared to where the Salukis and Bluejays usually find themselves in the MVC standings. And high stakes are just one of the true recipes for a rivalry. Some schools’ fan bases might think they’re your team’s rival simply out of jealousy or recent events that haven’t gone their way (AAHHHEM … Shockers! … AHHHEM). And your team might get every opponent’s best shot because your team’s been at the top of your league for the past 10 years. But outside of geographically charged rivalries, there are certain criteria I contend create a true rivalry.
Recipe for a Rivalry
Ten (10) years of high stakes: As I alluded to previously, the stakes for both teams heading into the first of two (or maybe three) CU-SIU games this season were great for less than traditional reasons. Those traditional reasons? Either the Jays or the Dawgs have been MVC regular-season champs in 7 of the past 9 years and MVC Tournament champions 7 of the last 11 seasons; the teams have featured 6 of the last 9 MVC Coaches of the Year and 6 of the last 8 MVC Players of the Year; and either or both of the teams have made the postseason in 19 of the past 21 years.
Sure, this game meant more for each team’s momentum than for their grasp on first or second place in the conference through 6 games. But that doesn’t mean the stakes weren’t important yet again.
Five (5) point games, on average: It isn’t the number 5 that makes this a rivalry; rather, the number of close contests the Bluejays and Salukis have engaged in during the past 10 years. Take out, for a moment, two of the last three games (21- and 19-point Creighton wins) and four other double-digits games during the last 23 played between the two schools before Wednesday night’s 2-point CU win: 17 of the last 23 CU-SIU games ended with the winner averaging a 5-point victory. There have been three 1-point games, a 2-point win, a 3-point game, and three 4-point games.
Wednesday’s game didn’t disappoint in this area. While I’m sure CU fans would have liked the Bluejays to extend their 10-point lead with 18:43 to play in the second half, it truly wouldn’t have been a CU-SIU game without the result coming down to the last few seconds of the game. Altman’s teams have been on the wrong end of a lot of those close games against the Salukis, and it was great to see two wins at home the past two seasons by razor-thin margins against the rival Dawgs.
As many memorable performances as you can get: I’ll just go ahead and list them. Many need no further explanation.
- Ryan Sears’ 25 points, 8 rebounds, 8 assists, 3 steals in a 72-66 win at SIU.
- Freshmen Kyle Korver (19 points, 6 rebounds) and Kent Williams (16 points) making names for themselves in a CU home loss.
- Terrell Taylor’s 23 points (5-7 from 3) in a 14-point CU road win.
- Mike Grimes making 2 free throws to force a tie with 1 second left in Omaha on Super Bowl Sunday, only to see Mike Sanzere (see: Villains section below) call DeAnthony Bowden for a foul on a Kent Williams 3-pointer as time expired. Williams hits his 10th and 11th points for the road win, despite Korver’s 27-point, 6-rebound effort.
- Creighton outscoring SIU 51-40 after trailing by 3 at halftime of the 2002 MVC Arch Madness Tournament championship game, led by Korver (18 points, 9 rebounds, 5 assists) and Taylor (20 points).
- Korver breaking the MVC record for career 3-pointers in a nationally televised home win in front of the fifth-largest crowd in Civic Auditorium history, including 24 points and 11 rebounds.
- Williams helping SIU clinch a share of the MVC regular season title with 24 points at home a week before the 2003 Arch Madness Tournament.
- The Bluejays utterly destroying the Salukis in every phase of the game en route to an 80-56 win in the MVC Tournament title game.
- Darren Brooks bringing the Salukis a 1-point road win in Omaha behind 16 points, 8 rebounds, and 6 assists.
- Jamaal Tatum torching the Jays for 18-, 19-, and 15-point games in three straight SIU wins.
- Bryan Mullins hitting a floating jump shot with 5 seconds left to give SIU a 1-point road win.
- Matt Shaw demonizing the Bluejays with 25 points on national television as the Salukis protected the home court and swept the regular season series in 2006-2007…
- … and then Nate Funk (19 points), Anthony Tolliver (15 points, 13 rebounds), Nick Porter (15 points), and Dane Watts (12 points) pulling out the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament with a 67-61 championship game win in St. Louis that same season.
- ESPN’s Gameday coming to Carbondale, where SIU pulled out a 4-point win in the last 3 minutes of the nationally televised game.
- Booker Woodfox scoring 20 points during a 19-point win in Omaha, breaking a home-court losing streak against SIU dating back to the 2003-2004 season.
- Cavel Witter hitting 3 free throws to send the game to overtime, where Woodfox hits a 3-pointer with 27 seconds left to give the Bluejays a 2-point lead and the win.
- Five Bluejays score in double figures in the modern day Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, an 82-60 CU win snapping Creighton’s losing streak in Carbondale.
They bring back some memories, don’t they? And no doubt some shudders. You can add to the list Justin Carter’s 19-point, 7-rebound effort Wednesday night and Antoine Young’s last-second right-handed drive to the lane for the go-ahead layup with 1 second left. Great efforts during rivalry games always resonate longer than good scoring games against Houston Baptist, and rightfully so.
Various villains: This ingredient is vitally important. Utter the names Jermaine Dearman, Roland Roberts, and Josh Warren, and you’ll get looks from Jays fans reminiscent of them swallowing a bad piece of fruit or a Keystone Light. Recall defensive tactics that bordered on third degree assault, and you’re no doubt thinking about Tony Young, Stetson Hairston, Marcus Belcher, and LaMar Owen. Flashback to clutch role-players and solid starters that killed the Jays, and you’ll come across the names Randall Falker, Sylvester Willis, Brad Korn, and Matt Shaw. And consider the stars Ryan Sears, Ben Walker, Kyle Korver, and Nate Funk had to battle against, and you’ll see the equally impressive names Kent Williams, Darren Brooks, Jamaal Tatum, and Bryan Mullins. And don’t even start with the officials, Sanzere chief amongst them.
For whatever reason, be it sheer jealousy of their talents or sheer irritation with the way they played, Bluejays fans love to hate these players. And now Bluejays backers have another name to add to the list, albeit for a much different reason: Nick Evans.
Evans, a Carbondale native (interesting, no?), is a relatively unimportant player in the big scheme of things. The 6-11 center averaged 2.6 points and 2.1 rebounds a game as a frosh, and improved those numbers to 7.2 ppg and 4 rpg this season as a sophomore. In MVC action, Evans ranks 6th in blocks per game (1.2) and 1st in total sucker slaps (1; at Creighton).
That’s right. He slapped Chad Millard when the two were working their way up the court late in the first half of Wednesday’s win. Millard seemed to be getting Evans’ goat, having come in the game and lit a proverbial fire beneath his Bluejays teammates. And Evans couldn’t let that happen, right? So, what does he do? Take the team on his back and go right at the undersized backup center? Nope. He bails on Lowery and the team, getting thrown out of the game for landing a backslap to the side of Millard’s dome. Not. Cool. I repeat. Not cool.
Millard was the fire-starter the Jays needed. Evans spent the rest of the game taking his ENORMOUS shoes off in the locker room (seriously; we’re talking clown-size shoes). And another memorable chapter in the CU-SIU rivalry was written.
A heaping helpful of the “special sauce”: Then there is the immeasurable ingredients that make a rivalry truly a clash between two teams and fan bases that seem to palpably dislike each other. For the longest time, SIU owned the Jays during the regular season (even in Omaha), while CU couldn’t lose to the Salukis in St. Louis if you tied one hand behind their collective backs. The Salukis student section spit at the Rev. Kevin Korver and hoisted so many tasteless signs you’d feel like Pig Pen lest you venture into the SIU section of the Savvis/Scottrade Center. The Salukis play in a barn; the Bluejays play in a fancy new building that took the place of the Old Barn. Coaches Bruce Weber and Matt Painter used SIU as stepping stones to Big 10 jobs; Altman stepped up to and then down from an SEC post to remain the Dean of the Valley. SIU plays criminal defense, while the Bluejays’ motion offense takes time and finesse to be effective.
After reading these ingredients and watching Wednesday’s 2-point win over again, I’m hungry for another CU-SIU tilt. Whatever the outcome, you know they’ll be entertaining, for good and bad reasons both.