A version of this article appears in the third issue of White & Blue Review Magazine (pic here!).
We’ll be giving out free copies all weekend in St. Louis, where the Bluejays will attempt to win a second consecutive Arch Madness tournament championship.
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I’ve been attending Creighton basketball games since 1987, when my father starting taking me to the Civic Auditorium. Over a beer Sunday, we estimated that we’ve seen approximately 450 CU home games since then. So I asked my dad where he’d rank Saturday’s regular season finale against Wichita State, all things considered.
Top five, he said. Probably the best, he added.
Ask him, me, or any of the 18,611 other people in the CenturyLink Center a few years from now, and the legendary status surrounding Saturday’s win is sure to have grown. The second-largest home crowd in Creighton men’s hoops history witnessed something spectacular and unfortunately all too rare in recent seasons: the Bluejays’ first outright regular season Missouri Valley Conference championship since 2001.
This was the role media and experts everywhere cast this Creighton team in before the season started. Picked to win the league by the Valley coaches and beat writers, the Bluejays started the year with the proverbial target on their backs from day one. And the atmosphere surrounding the season finale was the kind people imagined in October and November, when the Bluejays were a media darling in the category of “’mid-major’ most likely to dance deep into March.”
Creighton Head Coach Greg McDermott’s team carried big expecations into 2012-2013 (Streur/WBR)
Coach Greg McDermott’s team didn’t disappoint early in the season. The Jays started 4-0, winning games against North Texas (71-51), Alabama-Birmingham (77-60), Presbyterian (87-58), and Longwood (105-57) by an average of 28.5 points per game. The competition improved substantially when Creighton competed in the Las Vegas Invitational over Thanksgiving weekend. But the Bluejays showed well against traditionally strong programs Wisconsin and Arizona State, beating the Badgers (84-74) and Sun Devils (87-73) both by double figures and leaving Las Vegas with the tournament’s trophy aboard the team plane.
With his team 6-0 and ranked No. 11 and him coming off games of 30 points against Wisconsin and 29 points against Arizona State, Doug McDermott was starting to establish himself as a legitimate candidate for the national player of the year awards. But even the reigning All American wasn’t in mid-season form yet. After a summer spent further developing his perimeter game, McDermott made just 6 of his first 20 attempts from three-point range.
McDermott quickly turned his long-range shooting around. He made 4 of 5 from deep against Boise State in Creighton’s first game following the triumph in Vegas. But despite McDermott’s 21 points, the Bluejays lost at home to the Broncos (83-70), a team that at the start of March is squarely in consideration for an at-large bid to the 2013 NCAA Tournament.
A few days after the loss to Boise State, rumors started to swirl about Creighton’s potential future in a new conference. Seven schools from the current Big East were planning to leave their football-playing brethren behind and start a hoops-centric conference. Many believed that the Bluejays were a no-brainer as an addition to such a league.
As coaches and administrators answered questions about the upset home loss to Boise State and the reports of CU potentially saying see you later to the Valley, the players focused on getting back on track. Unfortunately for Phil Martelli, his Saint Joseph’s Hawks caught a Creighton squad intent on starting a new winning streak. Led by McDermott, who hit 5 of his 7 threes and en route to scoring 23 points, the Bluejays pummeled the preseason favorites in the Atlantic 10 Conference by 29 points (80-51).
The win against St. Joe’s would be the first of 11 in a row for the Jays. But right before the second victory in the streak, a 22-point win over in-state rival Nebraska (64-42), the Bluejays would lose something much more important than a game. Josh Jones, the team’s sixth man and senior leader, blacked out during pregame warm-ups in the Devaney Center, the site where he won three state championships at Omaha Central. As a prep, Jones had heart surgery to cure a bacterial infection. And now, just 8 games into his senior season at CU, an atrial flutter would cost him his basketball career.
Health issues caused Creighton’s sixth man Josh Jones to end his basketball career in December 2012 (Spomer/Streur/WBR)
Jones’ CU teammates kept winning, even as Jones himself spent weeks undergoing tests and holding out hope that he would be able to continue playing the game he loves. CU wrapped up the majority of the non-conference season with wins against Akron (77-61), California (74-64), and Tulsa (71-54). The Bluejays would enter Valley play 11-1, with all of their wins coming by double digits.
Creighton’s conference slate started with four of six games at home, including the league opener against Evansville. The Jays beat the Aces (87-70), hit the road for a win at Illinois State (79-72), and then took care of Indiana State (79-66) and Drake (91-61) handily at home.
McDermott and the Bluejays took their 4-0 MVC record to Missouri State for a rare Friday night conference game in mid-January. And Creighton’s junior All American made a statement, scoring 39 points on 15-19 from the field and grabbing 10 rebounds for his third double-double of the season. It was McDermott’s third 30-plus point effort of the season, and he would follow that performance by scoring 31 points in a home win against Northern Iowa (79-68).
With a 17-1 record and a top ten national ranking in their grasp, No. 12 Creighton traveled to Wichita State for a pivotal game against a bitter rival. Despite losing many of the players who led the Shockers to a league title in 2011-2012, Gregg Marshall’s team was alongside Greg McDermott’s atop the MVC standings. The Bluejays and Shockers battled all afternoon, but Creighton couldn’t tie the game late with a few good looks from long range and WSU won (67-64).
The season’s first losing streak would come a few nights later, thanks to an inspired effort from Drake in Des Moines. The Bluejays fought back from a double-digit deficit in the first half, but the Bulldogs handed CU its second straight loss (74-69).
The Jays would end their three-game road swing on a positive note, destroying Southern Illinois (81-51) in Carbondale. The win against the Salukis was the first of three straight for the Jays, who won home games against Missouri State (91-77) and Bradley (75-58).
The Bluejays began the next week ranked No. 16; it would be the last week of their regular season with a national ranking. CU dropped three straight games for the first time since the middle of last season. A boisterous blackout crowd helped Indiana State to a win against CU (76-57). The Jays couldn’t rally for a home win later that week, instead dropping a one-possession game to Illinois State (75-72). And their vaunted offense bottomed out in Cedar Falls a few nights later, as the Jays scored just 54 points in a loss to Northern Iowa (61-54).
Once seemingly a lock for a solid seed in the NCAA Tournament, Creighton instead traveled to Evansville for its most important game to that point of the season. Squarely on the bubble for an at-large bid and with Wichita State continuing its winning ways atop the league standings, Creighton stormed back from a 16-point first-half deficit to beat the Aces (71-68).
CU looked less than stellar against SIU three days later, but a 14-point win (59-45) would assure the Jays would remain in a hunt for a championship with two league games left.
Before they could close the regular season MVC slate, Creighton traveled to Saint Mary’s (California) for the final BracketBusters game. The Jays left the west coast looking for answers after suffering a wire-to-wire road loss against the Gaels (74-66).
Creighton fans probably couldn’t have scripted the next seven days any better. The Bluejays bounced back in resounding fashion, beating Bradley after breaking a 35-35 tie with a 26-7 run en route to an 18-point win (80-62).
Meanwhile, in Wichita, the Shockers couldn’t clinch at least a share of the regular season title. Evansville came into Koch Arena and dealt WSU a 59-56 loss, setting the stage for the most important CU game in decades: Creighton-Wichita State. Senior Day in Omaha. Outright league title on the line. Winner takes all.
Then along came another wrinkle. Multiple media outlets reported that Creighton was close to joining Xavier, Butler, and the aforementioned seven other schools in a reconfigured version of the Big East Conference. In July 2013.
What was one of the most hyped home games in school history suddenly became possibly Creighton’s final home game as a member of the Missouri Valley Conference. The atmosphere inside the CenturyLink Center as Creighton and Wichita State tipped off was electric. And with every outstanding move that McDermott made against the Shocker defense, the intensity inside the building grew.
Doug McDermott scored 41 points to lead Creighton to a title-clinching win against Wichita State in the season finale (WBR/Spomer)
In what will surely go down as one of the greatest single-game performances in Creighton history, McDermott scored a season-high 41 points and grabbed 6 rebounds to lead the Bluejays to a 91-79 win and the program’s first outright regular season championship in more than a decade. McDermott dazzled fans, coaches, teammates, and his opponents with an array of pivot moves, face-up jumpers, and deft three-point shooting. He went a perfect 10-10 from inside the arc, 5-8 behind it, and 6-6 from the free throw line en route to one of CU’s most spectacular offensive performances ever.
Late in the game, the Birdcage student section showered McDermott with chants of “One more year! One more year!” A potential NBA draft pick, McDermott will have a decision to make about his basketball future once this season is done. But the Bluejays hope that isn’t for awhile. Thanks to his hoops heroics against the Shockers, McDermott and the Bluejays are the top seed in this year’s edition of Arch Madness.
Creighton has been the No. 1 seed in the MVC Tournament four times (1978, 1989, 1991, 2001). The Bluejays won three of those tournaments. Here’s hoping CU adds a fourth trophy as the tournament’s top seed this weekend in St. Louis.