A VISION, 24 YEARS OF WORK AND BELIEF
Trammell’s drive, free throw help SDSU avoid another painful loss to Creighton in the Big Dance
The program that 25 years ago was among the worst in college basketball, that had one winning record in 15 seasons (and that was 15-14), that once lost 17 straight conference games, that had never been ranked in the Associated Press poll until 2010, that hadn’t won an NCAA Tournament game until 2011, that hadn’t been past the Sweet 16 until Friday, that doesn’t play in a power conference, that crams into middle seats on Southwest Airlines for road trips, that has two players in its rotation who had no Division I scholarship offers out of high school … is going to the Final Four.
Take a breath and think about it.
There are 363 men’s college basketball teams in Division I. Four will go to Houston to play for the national championship. And San Diego State is one of them after beating Creighton 57-56 in the South Region final on Sunday at Louisville’s KFC Yum! Center and, in the process, exorcising ghosts of last year’s agonizing loss to the Bluejays.
The San Diego State Aztecs. The school that has one Division I national title, in men’s volleyball in 1973 … and dropped the sport.
But it will play for another, starting Saturday at 3:09 p.m. PDT in the semifinals against Cinderella Florida Atlantic. The winner gets Connecticut or Miami in the final Monday night.
According to the NCAA’s March Madness Twitter account, 1.18 percent out of millions upon millions of tournament brackets picked the Aztecs to reach the Final Four.
To which you’d think: That many?
“It’s a vision Coach (Steve) Fisher had all those years ago when he came to the Mesa,” coach Brian Dutcher said of his predecessor, who took over
a team that was 4-22 and then went 5-23 in his first season in 1999-00. “We recruited and told people this is what we were going to do. They all thought it was just recruiting talk.
“But here we sit.” They do because Darrion Trammell, the 5-foot-10 guard maligned by fans for a lack of expected production, made a free throw with 1.2 seconds left after Ryan Nembhard was whistled for a foul that Creighton faithful will dispute for years, maybe decades.
The Aztecs had the ball and a 56-54 lead with 33.7 seconds left and a sideline inbounds. Adam Seiko already had called a timeout because he couldn’t find someone open. The next time, he threw a lob to Micah Parrish that Creighton’s Baylor Scheierman intercepted under the Bluejays basket and laid in for the tie.
The Aztecs ran down the clock and had a midcourt inbounds with 6.7 seconds left. Dutcher drew up a play … that didn’t work. Lamont Butler instead inbounded to Aguek Arop, who handed off to Trammell, who dribbled left into the lane and lofted a floater from just inside the free-throw line that was short.
Whistle.
Foul. Trammell: “I think I got fouled, but it was up to the refs to decide.”
Nembhard: “He got downhill and tried to make a floater. I tried to make a rearview contest. Called a foul, so yeah … It’s a tough feeling. You work so hard all year, and it comes down to a play like that. … It’s a tough way to lose.”
Dutcher: “Sometimes fouls occur late in games, we all know that. It’s whether they’re going to be called or not.”
The issue was less whether there was contact — Nembhard’s left hand clearly was on Trammell’s right hip as he shot — than whether it should have been called in a game where relatively few fouls were (22 total over 40 minutes) and officials generally were letting ’em play. And anecdotally this season, officials across the country appeared to be swallowing their whistles in the final seconds of games.
Lee Cassell didn’t, and soon Trammell was at the line for two shots.
He missed the first. He lined up the second, took a deep breath and let it go. What was going through his mind?
“That the moment wasn’t too big for me,” said Trammell, who wasn’t recruited out of high school, then spent a year at junior college and two at Seattle University before transferring to SDSU. “Through everything I’ve been through, I feel like the opportunity was just set there for me. … Just having the confidence that, yeah, I missed the first one, but I definitely wasn’t going to miss the second one.” Swish.
Buzzer.
History. Creighton coach Greg McDermott was asked several times about the call. He wasn’t biting.
“With all due respect,” he said, “two teams played their tails off. Officiating is part of the game. We’re not going to go there. We lost a game because we didn’t do enough, and San Diego State did.”
Which is another way of saying the Aztecs used the same, tattered script they have all season and they did again Friday in upsetting No. 1 overall seed Alabama in the Sweet 16: struggle to make shots for long stretches, stay in their game with their smothering, suffocating, stifling defense, then somehow figure out a way to win down the stretch.
Butler led them with 18 points on 8-of-11 shooting, but the rest of the team shot 29.7 percent. Trammell had 12 points.
Nathan Mensah had eight, including a clutch jumper with 1:35 that put them up 56-54 after Creighton had drawn even on a pair of baskets by 7-foot-1 Ryan Kalkbrenner (17 points).
The Aztecs shot just 37.7 percent, below Creighton’s 40 percent, but they compensated by holding the Bluejays to 2 of 17 behind the 3point arc and a season-low 23 points in the second half (after averaging 81 per game).
“There was nothing for free tonight,” Dutcher said. “Everything was hard to get for both teams. It was hard for us to score. It was just a war of attrition, and we came out on top.”
The Aztecs led for just seven minutes. Creighton led by eight points in the first half, five at halftime and four with seven minutes to go — and SDSU had missed 19 of its first 24 shots in the second half.
But then Keshad Johnson banked a tough, contested hook shot in the lane, was fouled and made the free throw. Then Trammell scored on the break. Then an offensive rebound and putback by Johnson. Then a pull-up by Butler. Then two hoops inside from Arop.
Back and forth it went, the game tied six times over the final seven minutes, until Mensah put the Aztecs ahead 56-54 and grabbed the rebound after a Creighton miss with 33 seconds left.
That set up the final, dramatic moments that brought back painful memories of a year ago, when these same teams met in this same tournament. The Aztecs led by nine with 2½ minutes left and choked it away. One of their four turnovers came on a similar backcourt inbounds play, which the Bluejays intercepted and converted into a layup.
Last year, it was Seiko inbounding to Matt Bradley. This year, Seiko to Parrish.
“It was a miscommunication,” Parrish said. “I was yelling, ‘Don’t throw it.’ He thought I said, ‘Throw it.’ It was loud in there.”
Last year, the Aztecs had a free throw with 7 seconds left in a tie game. And missed.
But there would be no late collapse this time, no overtime, no tears in the locker room, no summer of discontent.
Instead, Trammell sat on the bench and cried as his teammates sprinted onto the f loor to celebrate, and red and black confetti trickled down from the arena’s ceiling. Mensah climbed on the scorer’s table and extended his endless arms over his head. Johnson cut down a strand of net, put it between his teeth and posed for photos from the top of the ladder (and the world). Dutcher snipped the final strand, grabbed the net and did his blind trust fall backward into his players.
Behind him, the SDSU fans, many with tears running down their cheeks, rendered a new version of SDSU’s traditional “I believe that we will win” chant:
“I believe that we just won.”