JaMychal Green entered the room. The television lights coming from above him reflected specifically well from underneath his eyes, as if tears had been shed. Andrew Steele’s eyes were getting increasingly watery as reporters continued asking questions that did nothing be recounted the pain he experienced less than 15 minutes ago.
Alabama was the victim of March Madness emotion, after a buzzer-beating shot by Trevor Releford fell short in a 58-57 loss to Creighton in the Round of 64 in the NCAA tournament.
Alabama called a timeout with 2.4 seconds left after Creighton forward Josh Jones missed two free throws to keep the Crimson Tide just one point behind.
“We were looking to go inside with the play,” head coach Anthony Grant said. “They went zone and we figured they were going to go zone, so we tried to overload a corner and pop Releford to the top, hoping that maybe we could be able to throw it inside as they got extended. But they did a good job, they closed out on the ball and affected the shot.”
Green added, “It was drew up to look at me on the inside and for [Releford] at the top. But, they clogged it up on the inside so I wasn’t able to get it, so we tried to get it to [Releford] so he could make a play.”
Creighton packing the lane with defenders was expected after the Bluejays had done it all game long. Creighton played zone defense, seeing that Alabama had struggled against it all season long.
“Our goal in the zone againstAlabamais to try to keep the ball out of the paint,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said. “For the most part, we did a good job of that.”
The zone limited Green to 12 points and six rebounds and freshman forward Nick Jacobs to four points and three rebounds. Both of them were bested by All-American oug McDermott, son of the head coach. Doug scored 16 points and grabbed 10 rebounds against Alabama.
“I think we did a great job of guarding him,” Green said. “They just ran some good plays to get him open and got it up quick.”
The sting of the loss was worsened since Alabama got the game it wanted. Alabama, coming into the game scoring 64.9 points per game, knew it had to keep the game low scoring if it was going to beat a Bluejay team that averaged 80 points per game.
The final score of 58-57 was nearly a season low for the Bluejays. Being able to beatAlabamain a low-scoring game came as a shock to the Creighton coaching staff.
“Here we beat Alabama at their own game.,” Coach Greg McDermott said. “I would not have guessed that we could win a game 58-57. I thought we were going to need to be in the 70s and get the tempo in our favor the entire game.”
