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Missouri State Bears vs Creighton Bluejays Basketball RecapMissouri State 67, Creighton 66
It’s happened before this season, and it will assuredly happen again. Yet, the reality of a major comeback doesn’t cease to be remarkable whenever it occurs. On an electric afternoon in the heartland, a scrappy conference-leading team reminded its foes just how tough an out it will continue to be. The Missouri State Bears struggled mightily on Saturday afternoon against the Creighton Blue Jays, but when crunch time came calling, MSU found Big Mo and rode it to the finish line. After trailing for the first 38 minutes of action, including a six-point deficit at the half and being down by 15 points with 17 minutes left in the game, the Bears finally took the lead with 1:14 left in regulation time on a Jermaine Mallett jumper. After a Creighton jump shot gave the Bluejays the lead back, MSU’s Kyle Weems got a lay-up to fall with 13.3 seconds left. On Creighton’s final and fateful possession, Mallett responded with a defensive play that was even more significant than his go-ahead shot at the 1:14 mark. The scrappy defender dove out of bounds with the pell-mell fury that characterized the floor-burn-rich career of his coach, former Purdue star Cuonzo Martin. The play lit up Martin’s face; more importantly, it produced a steal to seal the win at a jubilant JQH Arena. The Good News Bears, who are winning games this season that they regularly lost in 2010 and prior years, remained at the top of the heap in their backyard.
With the win, the Bears – now at 8-1 in the league – retained first place in the Missouri Valley Conference. The Bluejays, meanwhile, fell even further behind in the race with their third loss in four games. Adding to the Jays’ pain is the fact that all three of those losses came against teams that find themselves in the top tier of the MVC. The Bears won for the tenth time in eleven games, bouncing back from a heartbreaking loss at Indiana State earlier in the week.
Coach Cuonzo Martin's Missouri State men managed to pull off the win despite only having two players scoring in double digits (Weems with 23 and Mallett with 14). For coach Greg McDermott's Bluejays, there were three double-digit scorers who stepped up to the plate (led by Antoine Young's 18 and Doug McDermott's 15), but the second-half collapse that squandered a 46-31 lead at the 17-minute mark of regulation made those numbers ring hollow. Creighton didn’t score when it needed to; a drought of eight minutes and 21 seconds – from the 9:10 mark of regulation to the 49-second mark – produced a grand total of just four points for the visitors from Omaha. The complete cessation of any offensive rhythm and momentum doomed Creighton precisely when it seemly had full control of the proceedings. Sure, the Jays technically outshot the Bears (50 percent to 42 percent) and were better from downtown (40 percent to 17 percent), but since the team faltered late and walked away with a disappointing loss, the numbers once again fail to depict an accurate version of what transpired in this crazy comeback for Missouri State… a comeback that might very well decide the Valley’s regular-season crown when all is said and done.
By: Matt Zemek |