Jays proves team is more than solo act
ST. LOUIS -- The left wrist was pale, swollen and
puffy, although "puffy" might be selling it a bit short. It looked like
somebody had tried to jam one of those little chocolate doughnuts down
Ethan Wragge's forearm.
"I couldn't move
it six inches (Saturday)," Wragge, Creighton's 6-foot-7 sixth man and
3-point specialist, explained after helping his Bluejays outlast Wichita
State, 68-65, to cinch a second straight Missouri Valley Conference
Tournament Championship. "So the Indiana State game was kind of just
'survive and (advance).' (In the finals), it felt a lot better. I was
able to get my hand up there on my shot."
Even with a wounded wing, Wragge netted 15
points on five treys, four in the first half, almost every one a
back-breaker to the Shockers.
Although the
release on each of those bad boys also stung the Jays forward like the
Dickens. It's like your mom used to say: This is going to hurt
me a lot more than it hurts you,
kiddo.
"But it's Sunday. It's
Arch Madness," offered Wragge, who was 5-for-9 from beyond the arc
Sunday and 6-for-12 for the tourney. "And you've got to find a way to
kind of get through that."
The Eden
Prairie, Minn., native had landed wrong during a fall in Friday's
quarterfinal win over Drake. He'd been using a combination of blue
athletic tape and creams to soldier through the rest of the weekend.
Good thing, too: When Wragge hits at least three treys in a game this
season, the Jays are 13-0. When he's right, the kid puts the "stretch"
in what coaches like to call a "stretch four" -- a big man with a little
man's range.
"Ethan Wragge is kind of like
your pressure-relief button," teammate Josh Jones said. "When all else
fails, you can look for Ethan to hit a
three."
Creighton coach Greg McDermott had
said last week that it would take a star turn from someone other than
preseason All-American Doug McDermott for the Jays to bring the nets
back to Omaha for the eighth time since 1999. It was a prescient
comment, too: With the younger McDermott (5-of-13 shooting, 14 points)
being harassed or denied by the Wichita defense, the load was carried by
Wragge, Grant Gibbs (11 points, seven assists, six rebounds) and
Jahenns Manigat (16 points), whose driving layup with 12 seconds left
pushed the Creighton lead to three while snapping a 10-0 Wichita scoring
run.
"A lot of us get caught watching Doug
so much, the way he makes it look so effortless to go out there and
score," Wragge said. "But whenever we're able to give him some help,
then our team just starts clicking on all
cylinders."
To drive home that point, the
elder McDermott showed his guys a bracelet he was wearing in honor of
Conrad Adam, a teenager in Pierre, S.D., who's a prep teammate of Jays
commitment Zach Hanson. Hanson is battling cancer, and recently lost a
leg in the fight. On the bracelet, it read: "No one fights
alone."
"At times, I think people thought
we were a one-man team," the Jays coach continued. "And I think that
idea has been put to rest (Sunday)."
What
didn't go to rest were the questions, the wondering, the uncertainty of
Creighton's future in a conference they've dominated on the men's
basketball side of the equation.
The Jays
brought a healthy crowd, even by Jays standards — they’re routinely the
top fan draw at Scottrade Center, despite a seven-hour drive from campus
— because, in part, of the smoke signals that this could be the
program’s Arch Madness farewell. Rather than dissipate, the whispers
that Creighton will be invited to join the new basketball-first Big
East, that it’s a “when” and not an “if,” get louder by the
day.
Which made for a few awkward moments,
on several fronts. The elder McDermott, a Valley man who played his
college ball at Northern Iowa and won MVC titles with the Panthers and
Jays as a coach, has been reluctant to weigh in throughout the weekend.
But he did offer this on Sunday:
"If it
happens, it will be very bittersweet for me because I love this league, I
love the people that run this league, but I also understand the
dynamics of college athletics today. And whether that decision's been
made or there's an invitation even forthcoming, I don't
know."
MVC commissioner Doug Elgin says
that he doesn't know either, but admits the speculation has put him in a
rather uncomfortable position, at times. McDermott is an old friend; so
is the coach's boss, Creighton athletic director Bruce Rasmussen. Elgin
and Rasmussen shared a makeshift stage Sunday at center-court during
the postgame awards presentation, just as they did a year ago, trading
grins even as Rome threatens to burn all around them.
"I love Bruce,” chuckled Elgin, whose
league has had the same contiguous, 10-team membership since 1995, a
remarkable feat given today’s collegiate climate. “I have no more
respect for any person than I do (with) Bruce. He’s a great
administrator. He’s raised the bar (at Creighton) perceptibly in the
times that he’s been the athletic director, and before (that). And he’s
just a good man and he’s got their program going in the right
direction.
"You know, I think the issue at
hand is whether they're going to go or stay, and that's way out of our
control, and I respect any decision any institution makes with regard to
where they belong. And if, in fact, we lose members -- I hope we don't
lose any of our members -- but if we do lose a member, we're going to be
fine. We're certainly not defined by one school and one institution.
We're going to go on and be a basketball-centric, relevant, top-8 (RPI)
league."
To wit: Sunday's crowd of 16,659
was the second-best ever for an MVC title game, trailing only the 22,
612 drawn in 2007. The four-day cumulative attendance -- 71,029 -- was
also the second-best on record. Arch Madness has drawn 50,000 fans for
11 straight seasons.
If the Jays don't want
a piece of this kind of action, there are plenty of private schools
that will.
"I mean, I think it was a hugely
successful tournament," Elgin continued. "(The staff) worked so hard on
this, to run a perfect, NCAA-parallel tournament, and it was a
grand-slam home run."
At the worst, it was a
triple with eyes. There were a few eyebrow-raising snapshots along the
way, too, from a Creighton fan hitting a half-court shot during a
$50,000 pregame contest but failing to win the cash prize to the
constant condensation on the floor (“It slows you down and kind of slows
the game down a lot,” the Shockers’ Malcom Armstead said of the
frequent stoppages).
There was Austin
Chatman's second-half free throw getting stuck between the rim and the
backboard with 3:32 left in the game; Wichita's furious 15-3 rally that
trimmed the Jays' lead to 66-65; and CBS affiliates cutting away early
from the last few minutes of a close contest (to show Indiana vs.
Michigan) in several major MVC markets, prompting Elgin to release a
statement in which he termed the network's decision "disrespectful to
our two teams and to every institution in our conference. This was our
championship game, for goodness sake. CBS needs to
apologize."
So, hey, even if wasn't a grand
slam, it sure as heck wasn't boring. The final
stanza gave us a strange, unexpected Sunday with strange,
unexpected heroes dancing at center
stage.
"It think our team, once they see me
hit some (treys), they kind of get excited, get rolling," Wragge
allowed. "If I get two in a row, we get that little extra pep in our
step, maybe we're a little faster on defense. And I'm a guy, once I get
good to go, I'm kind of searching for that next one right
away."
Short memory. Killer instinct.
Serious backbone, too. You might remember Wragge from a year ago, when
he became the subject of death threats after a hard foul on then-North
Carolina point guard Kendall Marshall in the third round of the 2012
NCAA tourney. That collision knocked the Tar Heels star out of the rest
of the dance, a blow from which Carolina never
recovered.
But did you know that Ethan's
not even the best basketball player in his family? That honor goes to
his mother, Kari Kramme Wragge, an Iowa native who hooped at Midland
University in Nebraska. Mamma Wragge once blocked 12 shots in a single
game; A redshirt junior, Ethan's racked up 18 blocks over his entire
Creighton career.
"Ethan
knows his role," Kari Wragge said of her son, "and he knows what he's
supposed to do."
Ease the tension.
Start the
flow.
Let fly,
baby.
"If I get a feeling after my first
one, if that one comes off smooth and good," Wragge
said, smiling, "the next one comes off just the
same."
It's Sunday. It's Arch Madness. You
find a way.
You can follow Sean
Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler
or email him at
seanmkeeler@gmail.com