JT at MSG for 2K: HoopsHD takes a road trip to the 2K Classic

The 2K Classic is a 4-team college basketball tournament held every November at Madison Square Garden that benefits the Wounded Warrior Project. This year’s quartet of Marquette/Michigan/Pitt/SMU included an NCAA title game coach (John Beilein), a coach in a new city (Kevin Stallings), a coach who played/worked for the winningest coach ever (Steve Wojciechowski), and a coach who has not lost a game since 2012 (Tim Jankovich). HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel celebrated his birthday in belated fashion by heading to the Garden to watch 4 games in 26 hours.

I showed up on Thursday evening for tip-off and headed to the press seating on the 200 level…which happened to be the only people who were sitting in the 200 level, as attendance for a weeknight doubleheader of 4 teams not based in New York was sparse. I sat down, turned to my right, and was thrilled to see 2 of my colleagues from the previous website I wrote articles for sitting next to me: I guess great minds think alike!

Game #1: SMU-Pitt
Basketball is often described as a game of runs but this was ridiculous. Pitt was up 20-15 midway through the 1st half, but then SMU went on a 16-0 run in a 4-minute span to open up a 31-20 lead, followed immediately by the Panthers going on a 13-0 run of their own to close the half and take a 33-31 lead. Pitt’s 2-man show of Michael Young/Jamel Artis combined for 42 PTS/12 REB, but they were no match for Semi Ojeleye. The Duke transfer had sat out for almost 2 full years while joining the Mustangs but he showed that he was worth the wait thanks to a 20-PT 2nd half that included a pair of nice alley-oops from Shake Milton, a pair of 3-PT shots, and a game-clinching sequence in the final minutes by blocking a shot/running the floor/getting the ball back from Milton for an easy layup. Coach Jankovich previously worked as an assistant to Coach Stallings at Vandy and apparently he learned a couple of new tricks while beating his old boss 76-67. He only has 9 scholarship players on the roster after taking over the reins from Larry Brown, but as long as 1 of those 9 is “Sem-Wow” then he has a good chance of winning the AAC.

Game #2: Marquette-Michigan
The nightcap got pretty ugly pretty quickly. Marquette made it a game for the 1st 7 minutes as it was tied at 15 apiece…and then Michigan proceeded to go on a 35-11 run to end the half with a 50-26 lead. The Wolverines are not a run-and-gun team as evident by their zero fast-break points all night long, but when you have 5 different guys who can make a shot from behind the arc and your defense holds the other team to 26.7 3P% then you are going to win a lot of games. The play of the day was a huge drive down the lane/1-hand dunk from Moritz “Mo” Wagner that brought the crowd to its feet en route to a 79-61 Michigan victory. DJ Wilson had 1 of the quietest double-doubles you will ever see with 10 PTS (3-7 FG)/12 REB, and Mark Donnal’s 15 PTS in 21 minutes off the bench was 1 short of the Golden Eagles’ subs’ entire production.

Game #3: Marquette-Pitt
As light a crowd as there was the previous night, it appeared that there were only about 500 people for this Friday 4:30PM EDT tip-off. It was eerily quiet and a prime opportunity for hecklers to ensure that the objects of their wrath were well within shouting distance. Coach Wojciechowski showed exactly how to make an in-game adjustment: he angrily called a timeout after an Artis jumper cut Marquette’s lead to 39-33 with 50 seconds left in the 1st half, then his team responded with a Sam Hauser 3, strong defense that forced a poor shot by Young, and a driving layup high off the glass by Andrew Rowsey with 3 seconds left for a 44-33 halftime lead that could have easily been a 3-PT lead had he been unable to get his team in gear. Rowsey had only made 1 shot through the 1st 3 games of his Marquette career but this was his coming-out party that featured a little of everything: making a 3 that bounced on the rim twice before going in, saving a loose ball from going out of bounds, driving the lane before making a beautiful behind-the-back bounce pass for a 3-PT play, drilling a deep 3 with a hand in face, baiting Chris Jones into fouling him on a 3 at the shot-clock buzzer with under 3 minutes left and then converting all 3 FTs to tie it at 75, etc. However, after all the great things Rowsey did while scoring 20 PTS in 28 minutes off the bench, he was unable to finish strong by dribbling the ball off his foot with 48 seconds left and then missing a 30-footer at the buzzer in a 78-75 loss. Artis had 21 PTS/7 REB in a winning effort but the story of the game was Young: he had a personal 10-0 run to turn a 59-49 deficit into a tie game, finished with a career-high 30 PTS, and had a huge BLK on a Rowsey drive to the hoop with 18 seconds left. I do not know if Young is going to play in the NBA but I would not bet against him leading the ACC in scoring this season. When I asked Wojo in the postgame press conference about trying to stop a guy who scores 10 straight points, he spent 30 seconds raving about all of the Pitt seniors.

Game #4: SMU-Michigan
We saved the worst for last: no, not the least-competitive game of the 4, a 76-54 Wolverines win that was painful to watch. The saddest sight of the weekend was every Michigan fan under age 10 who would get on the Jumbotron…and then proceed to dab. Go Blue, stop dabbing. The most surprising sight was the gentleman sitting 5 rows behind the SMU bench: Larry Brown! The ESPN telecast kept him up on the screen for about 60 seconds while the announcers talked about him and the whole thing just felt really awkward. Derrick Walton Jr. had a 24-hour rollercoaster: zero points on 0-4 FG on Thursday, followed by 23 PTS on a career-high 7 threes on Friday (1 short of the school record for most 3PM in a regular season game held by Garde Thompson/Aubrey Dawkins). His teammate Zak Irvin was named MVP with 16 PTS in each of his 2 games.

Conclusions
Marquette: I thought that this was going to be their year with a lot of seniors and if Rowsey keeps scoring 20 PPG then they can finish in the top half of the Big East, but my prediction is that they end up off the bubble.
Michigan: 4 games, 4 double-digit wins, if they are making their 3s they are unbeatable, I cannot WAIT for their road trip to UCLA on 12/10!
Pitt: they are 3-0 in games decided by 5 PTS or less due to their abundance of juniors/seniors, and if they can win at Maryland next Tuesday then they could easily be 12-1 entering ACC action, but is there another team in the nation with a more difficult 10-game stretch to open conference play (Notre Dame/Virginia/Syracuse/Louisville twice/Miami/NC State/Clemson/North Carolina/Duke)?
SMU: 1 of the only teams I can think of whose 2 best players (Ojeleye/Milton) are neither freshmen nor seniors, if these 2 stick around for 1 more year then I think they might win an NCAA tourney game in 2018.

[acx_slideshow name=”2K Classic 2016″]