Bluejays Finish Hard Road to Victory
ST. LOUIS – It’s only fitting that Creighton would take home the 2007 Missouri Valley Conference Tournament title. This is arguably the best season the Valley has had, and the Bluejays have led the way in the conference’s surge since the mid-1990s.
But this one sure didn’t look like it would happen at times during the season.
The Bluejays are the only school in the Valley to post nine straight 20-win campaigns, with this being number nine, and they have won at least 10 conference games 11 straight years, another record. This season also ties the record for the longest postseason streak in history, as it will be their 10th straight. And for good measure, this title is their sixth in nine years, with no losses in the title game under Dana Altman.
It sounds like this season was just business as usual, but it certainly wasn’t. The Bluejays were picked to win the conference in the preseason by many, but had plenty of adversity in the first two months. There was the finger injury to starting point guard Josh Dotzler, who had a season-ending knee injury last year that hadn’t come along as they had hoped and caused him to miss the season opener. Tournament Most Outstanding Player Nate Funk, who had to redshirt last season, got sick early on. Ty Morrison got Graves Disease and quit the team in late December. Freshman guard D’Angalo Jackson, who was expected to redshirt due to an ankle injury that required surgery, transferred to Wisconsin-Green Bay after the first semester.
“We’ve had crazy things happen this year, illnesses, and poor Josh with his knee and then his finger,” said Altman, who said this wasn’t his most challenging season but was right up there. “It’s a good group, and they’ve been a lot of fun to work with.”
Funk gets the most noticed from this group because of his play. He was a first-team All-Missouri Valley selection two years ago and figured to do the same last year before a shoulder injury sustained while diving for a loose ball led to surgery and a redshirt year. Instead, he did it this year, earning the honor and then leading the team to the title with a terrific weekend that was highlighted in the stat sheet by his 33 points in Saturday’s semifinal win over Missouri State.
“Our goal was to get back to the NCAA Tournament,” said Funk, who did his best to stay positive last year even while he could only watch his team lose right away in the conference tournament last year. “I didn’t want to go out a loser, that’s for certain.”
But he’s not alone, and Altman is quick to cite Anthony Tolliver as a key to this team overcoming all it has faced. The senior big man came to Omaha planning to be a doctor, but then he decided finance was better for him. A solid contributor on the court who had 15 points and 13 rebounds in the title game, Tolliver has racked up the academic honors in his career with his 3.53 GPA. This year, they include being a CoSIDA academic All-American, CoSIDA academic all-district and MVC First Team Scholar Athlete. He’s also heavily involved in the community and a charismatic young man that seems to naturally bond with everyone he comes across.
The third senior who carried this team was Nick Porter, last season’s conference newcomer of the year and at times a real barometer of this team. Funk said at the beginning of the year that Porter is their X-factor, and he was a real key this weekend. He had 19 points and 13 rebounds in Saturday’s win, then had 15 points and six assists on Sunday. Porter went to two junior colleges before arriving at Creighton, with the Community College of Southern Nevada shutting down after his freshman year due to a lack of funds. That necessitated a transfer close to his hometown at Compton Community College in California.
Those three, along with classmate Manny Gakou, have scored at least half of the team’s points in 23 straight games. That’s just one more indicator of how important they are to this team, even though it’s clear that their importance goes well beyond statistics.
The Bluejays didn’t exactly roll through non-conference play, putting up a 6-4 record through late December and then losing at home to Drexel a couple of weeks ago. Along the way, their 12-game winning streak against Big 12 schools came to an end when they lost at Nebraska. Three days after the loss to Drexel, they lost at Illinois State, and Altman admitted he didn’t do a good job in those two games. At that point, he said it was time to change how they played. That late in the season, it would seem to be a risky move, but mitigating the risk somewhat is the fact that they had already made adjustments throughout the season. It clearly worked, as they haven’t lost since then.
“Fortunately, we have young men who were coachable,” said Altman.
The winning and the character of the players is nothing new at the Omaha school, and it’s part of why Altman has the best job in Nebraska and is certainly in no hurry to leave for other jobs. His name often surfaces anytime a job in the Big Ten or Big 12 opens up, but he’s stayed put and likely isn’t going anywhere. He makes very good money, is a native of the state, and coaches where basketball is the only game in town. Altman and athletic director Bruce Rasmussen have developed a close bond over the years, as Rasmussen hired him and is still there. His father lives about two hours away and still goes to many of their games at the Qwest Center in downtown Omaha.
The Qwest Center, where the Bluejays now routinely draw crowds of 16,000 and up, along with Altman’s presence are prime reasons the school has had the run it has. It has all the marks of a big-time program, save for the undergraduate enrollment being just over 4,000 students.
And indeed, it doesn’t get much better than that. You can see why Altman is in no hurry to leave for the Big Ten or Big 12, the latter of which he experienced before coming to Omaha when he was the head coach at Kansas State and had four athletic directors in four years.
The stability at the program makes the bottom line look like business as usual. But as is often the case, the journey to get there was the most interesting part, even if there were times where things didn’t look so good. So goes the 2006-07 season for the Creighton Bluejays as they head off to another NCAA Tournament.
