Friday, I crawled out of a post-New Years Eve slumber just in time to open up the laptop to watch the webcast of the game. After spending untold fortunes on cold ones the previous evening, I was in no mood to pay for a crappy internet feed of the game. You can imagine my excitement, then, when I was able to get a crappy internet feed of the game for free. It dropped out twice causing me to lose a four minute chunk of the second half, but hey, you get what you pay for.
In the 36-minutes I did see, it was clear the Jays were the same consistent team they’ve been for a while now. Consistent in their ability to fall behind early, their ability to put things together just long enough to get back in the game…and their knack for wilting late to lose.
After more of the same mistakes that have plagued this team all season long, namely failing to make free throws and key defensive breakdowns, the Jays limp into Evansville tomorrow a wounded bird. They’re not dead yet, but they’re short a few feathers, and the rest of the MVC is sensing a chance to get some shots in on a former bully who is now weakened.
As I noted yesterday in the Primer, this weekend is a season crossroads. Either they figure this thing out NOW, or the season will spiral out of control. Coming home 0-3 would be disastrous. Coming home 1-2 wouldn’t be much better, but at least getting their first road win would give us glimmers of hope to cling to. A home win against Drake gets them to .500 in that scenario, before the meat of the conference schedule hits.
I know, I know, its tough to look forward to glimmers of hope. That’s part of what makes the Dana Altman postgame interviews one of the most depressing things in my world right now. His demeanor makes me feel bad for the guy.
He sounds dejected, depressed, like a coach without the answers to a team in search of them. And it makes sense: if he had the answers, the problems would probably have been corrected by now…or there would at least be improvement. We’re almost halfway done with the season, and this team is making the same mistakes it made two months ago — it could be argued they’re actually worse than they were in November.
He’s a phenomenal coach: you don’t win 400 games by getting lucky, by accident or because of anything other than being very, very good at your job. But this particular group has him flummoxed. It happens. The Jays are having a down year.
We all see different things we think are causing the team to struggle. They don’t make free throws at an acceptable rate. They have defensive lapses that last over multiple possessions. No one player is consistently THE guy from game to game. On and on.
But to treat it as the Creighton Basketball Apocalypse would be premature. Every program that enjoys success at any level eventually has a year — or years — where things go downhill. Most of us didn’t see it coming, but this season, Creighton is not a very good team. They’re struggling with teams like Savannah State and losing to teams like Iona because, hey, they’re just not very good. We looked at those games at the time as frustrating because we were holding this team to the standard of previous squads. Seen through the prism of an average team, they’re predictable results that shouldn’t be upsetting.
This team is going to struggle all season long, they’re going to be frustrating, and sometimes, they’re going to put up embarrassing performances. We’ve seen all three characteristics so far, and we’ll continue to see them. But Altman, and the program, have earned a mulligan, at least in my book. I’m confident that he and his staff will circle the wagons. Until then…ho boy.
Get ready to see more games like Friday, with a slow start, a furious comeback, then a bad finish leading to a loss. Lets hope for everyone’s sanity they get a win in Evansville.