There's no time like overtime for Creighton

Bluejays outlast Oregon in their quest to correct last year's results.

April is the cruelest month, or so T.S. Eliot wrote, but the game that leads to April is college basketball’s cruelest moment.

Ask the Kentuckians who still haven’t healed from Christian Laettner’s buzzer shot in 1992, which sent Duke to the Final 4 and kept the Wildcats home. Ask Kentuckians again about Luke Maye’s buzzer shot in 2017, which sent North Carolina forward and, again, idled the Big Blue.

Nobody hangs banners to commemorate the Final Eight. The Final Four is what you wear the rest of your life. Ryan Kalbrenner, Baylor Scheierman and Trey Alexander stood on that doorstep last year, when Creighton played San Diego State. They thought their season would either end with a bang or a whimper, either by their own hands or those of the opponent.

Instead it ended with a whistle, as Ryan Nembhard was judged to have fouled Darrion Trammell, who hit one of two free throws at the end. Nembhard, who has since transferred to Gonzaga, had his left hand on Trammell’s hip as the Aztec guard missed the shot. No advantage was gained, especially within the slambang context of today’s college game, but it happened, to the tune of 67-66. It was more of a rejection letter than a loss.

Over the summer, the three Bluejays decided they were coming back for another year. The fact there was lukewarm interest from the NBA had much to do with that, but Kalkbrenner, Scheierman and Alexander were determined to decide their own fate this time, good or ill.

Creighton got to the NCAA tournament as a No. 3 seed. It pulled away from Akron in the first game. On Saturday it played Oregon, which had to win the Pac-12 tournament last week to even get in, but also had formidable weapons, especially Jermaine Cousinard and center N’Faly Dante. Kalkbrenner, at 7-foot-1 the three-time Defensive Player of the Year in the Big East, had an uncomfortably good seat for Dante’s 28-point, 20-rebound performance.

But Schiereman hit a shot to get the game into overtime, and then Alexander had a shot to end it there. He couldn’t. They played on.

Finally Creighton got an edge when Steven Ashworth, a Utah State transfer, drilled a 3-pointer in the second OT. The Bluejays look at the 3-point area as their favorite patio, or party deck. They take 29 long shots per game, ninth most in Division I. When they got a stop and came downcourt again, Kalkbrenner found a spot on the right wing and let go. That 3-pointer created a 6-point lead, safe from any mischievous whistles or judicial decisions. Creighton won, 86-73, and plays Tennessee in the Final 16 game next. It still hasn’t returned to the verge, but it did manufacture a new memory, the better to muffle the previous one.

“That,” Kalkbrenner said, “was a freakin’ crazy game.”

Scheierman and Alexander played all 50 minutes. Kalkbrenner played 49. They, and Ashworth, scored 78 of Creighton’s 86 points. Kalkbrenner had 19 with 14 rebounds and five blocks. He made 7 of his 10 shots, but the big overtime shot was his only 3-point attempt. His coach, Greg McDermott, had asked him to try 100 of them before and then after his practices this week. 

“I had space,” Kalkbrenner said. “I said, this one is going up, for sure.”

Creighton hit 15 threes, eight more than Oregon, which was even more unbalanced. Dante and Cousinard had 60 points between them and took 53 of Oregon’s 77 shots. The “others” were 6-for-24.

You can amass big minutes in the NCAA tournament because the referees are less likely to foul you out, and the time-outs are as long as “Stairway To Heaven.” North Carolina State, with four starters working on their fifth year of play, had to win five games in five days at the ACC tournament, and everyone worried that the Wolfpack would surrender to oxygen debt in the NCAAs. It hasn’t happened yet. N.C. State is still alive, getting past Oakland in overtime. Those who remember 1983, and Lorenzo Charles, are feeling some of those vibes.

Redemption is an early theme. North Carolina missed last year’s tournament altogether. Armando Bacot and R.J. Davis returned to campus (again, with plentiful NIL money and without much argument from NBA executives) and the Tar Heels ran Michigan State out of the tournament Saturday.

Gonzaga nailed down its ninth consecutive Final 16 with a win over Kansas. A long line of WCC regular-season champs hasn’t managed to win the NCAA title, although the Zags got to the finals in 2017 and 2021. Maybe this team, which gave up conference supremacy to St. Mary’s this season, will be loose enough to fix that.

Arizona endured a year’s worth of raised eyebrows after its inglorious first-round loss to Princeton last year. Now the Wildcats are in the Final 16 after they beat Dayton and showed the defense and passion that their advocates would like to see more often.

Creighton? This is its ninth NCAA appearance in McDermott’s 14 years. The school that gave us Paul Silas — and Bob Gibson, for that matter — never has reached a Final Four.

“We’re glad we have another chance to kick down that door, like we weren’t able to do last year,” Alexander said.

They would try the doorbell, if it didn’t sound so much like a whistle.