I wasn’t ready for the crying. Not by me. The tears of my not-quite-three-year-old son. His mom and I watched hoops all weekend. We saw the CBS/TNT/TBS/TruTv cameras fixate on young kids in the stands in the eight arenas around the country hosting NCAA Tournament games. We looked at tortured young faces, turned from smile to frown thanks to watching their favorite teams lose, seasons ending.
Little did we know that come bedtime Sunday evening, we’d face our own emotional child, overwrought by feelings he doesn’t understand. Sure, he’s way too young to be attached to anything more than his family, his friends, and a few books and cartoons. At least I thought so. But when we got ready to put him to bed at halftime of the most disappointing loss I’ve experienced as a Creighton fan, I had the conversation I wasn’t prepared to have.
Me: Hey, it’s time to go to bed.
Him: I want to watch more Bluejays game.
Me (not giving up, mind you, but using halftime as the best parenting advantage possible for putting a kid into the sack): We can’t. The game’s over. They lost. Creighton’s lost.
Him (sobbing; no joke): I DON’T WANT CREIGHTON TO LOSE. I WANT TO KEEP WATCHING THE BLUEJAYS. I WANT TO KEEP WATCHING DOUG MCDERMOTT AND JAHNES MANIAGO.
Me (flummoxed): Me too, buddy. Me too.
This loss, everything about it, hit like a ton of bricks. I tucked my son into bed, and retreated to the living room hoping I’d be able to recount for him years later a story of epic proportions:
“I put you to sleep, with the Jays down 20. Then I watched and held back my shouts and screams as Doug McDermott willed Creighton back into the game and ultimately into a Sweet 16.”
But an hour later I sat dejected on the couch, preparing for the close of a basketball season I didn’t imagine in my wildest nightmares. I kept the TV on a 40-minute train wreck I knew I had to witness to believe. I stood up only to salute, in the comfort of my own home, the seniors and Austin Chatman as Greg McDermott pulled each aside during substitutions to whisper God-knows-what into their ears and allow for the blue-clad folks in San Antonio to serenade them with applause earned during years of toil, turmoil, effort, and achievement.
And then I went to bed. Or, at least I tried.
I couldn’t figure out how to react to the Bluejays falling short of its very openly stated goal. It was clear when the Jays got Doug McDermott and Grant Gibbs back before the season started: Sweet 16 or bust. Four seniors. A proven point guard. Role players who knew their parts. A coaching staff with plenty of experience with the personnel. A new league, with new opponents, to refocus both players and fans on another step of growing the program. A challenging but navigable non-conference schedule. A home court advantage most programs would kill for.
Like you, I watched as the Jays turned that home court advantage into a raucous run to an undefeated home slate this season at CenturyLink Center Omaha — the first time a CU team hasn’t lost at home since 2002-2003.
I saw McDermott lead the Jays into a new league and surpass the expectations of all but the most fanatical Bluejays followers. I witnessed history time and again as the FIFTH LEADING SCORER IN DIVISION ONE HOOPS HISTORY turned in inexplicable performance after inexplicable performance.
And I made the trip to New York City, confident knowing that a runner-up finish in the Big East regular season and conference tournament wouldn’t be the end of a Creighton team destined for a signature moment under the glaring lights of the Big Dance.
I didn’t get what I wanted. What I felt like I needed. I was selfish. I saw this year’s Bluejays basketball season as the season — the one I dreamt of after watching Bob Harstad fall short in 1991. After seeing my friends walk off the Salt Lake City court in 2003 in shock and awe. After going up against basketball bluebloods North Carolina and Duke and coming up short.
I can’t help feeling like I’ve been here before. When Bob and Chad Gallagher and Tony Barone left the Hilltop. When I graduated from Creighton, along with a fellow Journalism and Mass Communication grad named Kyle Korver. When Dana Altman left for (neon) greener pastures at Oregon.
Each time, the 10-year-old / 22-year-old / 29-year-old version of me thought I had missed The Chance. The opportunity for a shock-the-word run in the NCAA Tournament, the ultimate gauge of a team’s performance, regular season record and computer rankings be damned.
I was my son, in 1991. A bit older, sure. But a disciple of the Dynamic Duo, someone who thought Bob and Chad and Latrell and Duan and the cast of others would beat Seton Hall.
I was intense, in 2003. A focused undergraduate displaying (for right or wrong) unbridled emotion usually reserved for an entire student section, wrapped up in what seemed to be a dream season — 29 wins, home jerseys in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. I watched the waning minutes of that team’s game versus Central Michigan in my room, alone, unable to decipher what I had foolishly chalked up to a gimmie, a mere appetizer before J.J. Redick and Duke and then who knows what.
I was jaded, a bit, in 2010. Altman’s exit, a mere few seasons after saying he wanted to end his career at Creighton, took me by surprise. I was less than positive about the future of CU hoops when Dana left. A historic stretch seemed to be winding down, what with the Jays moving from frequent trips to the NCAA Tournament to the NIT and then … gulp … the CIT, whatever the hell that was.
Ah, yes. When Dana left. This website was wrapping up its first year when Altman abruptly left. Consider it the start of A.D. time — After Dana. And think about just how different things are on the Hilltop since then, since the man who resurrected a program left to elevate another one.
We at WBR have watched closely as Altman’s successor, Coach Mac, has won more NCAA Tournament games (3) in four seasons at CU than Altman did (2) in sixteen seasons. We were there when Greg McDermott was introduced — incorrectly, as Doug, by CU AD Bruce Rasmussen — as Creighton’s head coach. And we’ve watched, engrossed, as Doug and Greg led another resurgence of Creighton hoops, taking the Bluejays to new heights and raised expectations.
Which brings me back to Sunday night. Creighton Sports Information Director Extraordinaire Rob Anderson posted the following video in the days following CU’s exit from the 2014 NCAA Tournament.
Like a coach’s instructional video that other teachers of the game can learn from, Mac’s post-game comments should be studied and — hopefully — replicated in earnest whenever a team of college kids and a community of dedicated coaches and support staff truly care about each other and their singular focus on a common goal.
It is both excruciating and exhilarating at once, a master motivator meeting sunken emotions with an ultimately uplifting message of positivity, hope, and an ever-present focus on the future.
“You guys have raised the bar.” My colleague Polyfro wrote about it earlier, but it rings true in Coach Mac’s words. Kyle Korver may have eased the transition between the Civic Auditorium and the cavernous Qwest Center. But Dougie McBuckets and seniors Gibbs, Manigat, and Wragge filled the building and brought Bluejays basketball to a whole new level. For better or worse, whether they can live up or not, all Creighton teams under Mac will be compared to the character-rich squads of the past few seasons. He knows that.
“Think about what an unbelievable journey this has been.” Sports writers and fans tend to overstate, overreact. Hyperbole is a weapon of choice. But it isn’t exaggerating to call what McDermott, Gibbs, Manigat, and Wragge have helped accomplish anything short of unbelievable.
From the unlikely landing of McDermott to his development into one of the greatest scorers in the history of the sport, nothing about Doug’s four years at Creighton have been normal. But Wragge and Manigat were technically in play even before McDermott came to campus — Wragge one of the leftovers from the coaching change, and Manigat a lame duck recruit when Altman up and left for Eugene. Add transfer Gibbs into the mix, a guy whose final year at CU seemed to be a gift from the NCAA to both him and the game of college hoops, and it seemed that plenty of extraordinary circumstances had aligned to give Creighton the team it had this season.
“I don’t think any of us understand the magnitude of what you’ve done.” Mac said that about his son and star player in the post-game comments, but the statement’s applicable to the group of seniors as a whole. From the school-record three consecutive NCAA Tournaments with a victory to the individual accolades, this group rewrote record books all while doing nothing but being positive stewards for the school and college hoops in general. From Anderson’s game notes before the loss to Baylor:
Creighton’s senior class of Grant Gibbs, Ethan Wragge, Doug McDermott and Jahenns Manigat are 107-37 in the past four years, including MVC Tournament titles in 2012 and 2013. The class owns or share Creighton records for most wins in a one-year (29), two-year (57), three-year
(84) and four-year (107) span. As a group, they’ve combined for 5,931 points, 2,241 rebounds and 1,056 assists while shooting a combined 869-for-1,996 (43.5 percent) from downtown.
As a fanbase, we watched all of it with pride. At times — when Jahenns slapped the floor, when a #Wraggebomb hit, when Gibbs threw the ball off an opponent’s back for an inbounds bucket, or when McDermott did almost anything — we pinched ourselves or yelled with a timbre in our voice reserved for small children.
“Family on three: 1, 2, 3 FAMILY.” That’s why a lot of us were sad, or disappointed, or visibly upset, or whatever after what we’ll all refer to later as “The Baylor Game.” That’s not why my son cried, but why his dad shed a tear. Because the past four years introduced allowed us to connect with beloved members of the Bluejays basketball family. That’s why it was so hard to hear the sniffles in that video, the sound of college kids who care so much. In a way, it validates so much of the emotion pent up inside the CLink on a game night, or in bars in St. Louis and then New York City before a conference tournament game, or as fans fume during mid-March losses.
College athletes, college coaches … they invest a lot to do what they do. In turn, we as fans invest a lot in supporting them. Sure, we all do it for different reasons, but a part of me hopes that at least one similar thread exists among all fans of this team: that we watched this group grow up, like a family, and that we felt a connection to them that transcends just 40 minutes of basketball on any given night.
As a lifelong fan and unabashed admirer, it means the world to me that it meant so much to them. No single game, good or bad, could define this season of CU hoops, or this group of seniors. What they’ve accomplished has left the program in an unprecedented place, with an opportunity to capitalize and grow. For that, and for everything else this team and these seniors gave to Creighton basketball and the university, here’s to Doug McDermott, Grant Gibbs, Jahenns Manigat, and Ethan Wragge and the rest of the 2013-14 Creighton Bluejays.