The College World Series has called Omaha home for decades, but baseball is not the only sport with a postseason that has found solid footing here in Nebraska.
Omaha and Creighton welcomed the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament to the CenturyLink Center last weekend for the third time in the past seven years, and as the city has with so many prior big events, it knocked it out of the park.
Omaha played host to the first and second rounds (no, the First Four does not count as the first round) of the Big Dance with games on Friday and Sunday. The weekend consisted of three sessions of two games apiece and total attendance was 52,654, good for third among all sites. Per Creighton associate athletic director Kevin Sarver, the arena’s sellable capacity for the tournament was 17,600 per session, and 17,551 was the average per-session tickets sold.
The field included Kansas, New Mexico State, Wichita State, Indiana, Oregon, Oklahoma State, Wisconsin and Coastal Carolina, providing sports writers with more story lines than they could write about.
The first story line that jumped off the bracket to local media and fans was the return of Dana Altman, the former Creighton coach who is now running the show at Oregon. Altman last coached in Omaha in 2008, his first season with Oregon, when he faced his former team in the CBI finals.
The theme of Altman’s pre-game press conference on Thursday was “It’s good to be back” (he said some variation of this phrase seven times), and the Ducks made it feel like home for their coach. As a Creighton fan of 10 years, I couldn’t help but feel a touch of nostalgia watching the Ducks run Altman’s trademark fullcourt press.
Another major story line from the weekend was the Sunday matchup between Kansas and Wichita State, the first meeting between the two teams in 23 years. Kansas and coach Bill Self have avoided scheduling the in-state foe Shockers, citing nothing to gain as the reason, and Wichita State only reinforced that by upsetting the No. 2 seed Jayhawks as a No. 7 seed. Wichita-native junior forward Evan Wessel came up big for the Shockers, knocking down 4 of his 6 3-point attempts and grabbing a team-high nine rebounds.
Wessel’s performance was just one of the many impressive games. As is popular with things like this, I’m going to name an All-Omaha regional tournament team.
Captain on my team is Pac-12 player of the year and Oregon senior guard Joseph Young. Young was the can’t-miss player of the weekend, scoring more than anybody else by putting up 27 and 30 in his two games. Young got his shot any time he wanted, whether it was pulling up from deep, spinning to the basket for a layup or even elevating for a dunk. Young had Oregon on the brink of upsetting top-seeded Wisconsin before the Ducks ultimately fell short.
The other two guards on my team were a pair of floor generals who faced off on Thursday. Wichita State junior Fred VanVleet went off for a season-high 27 points against Indiana, taking over for long stretches and leading the Shockers to a victory, and hit double figures again in a win on Sunday. He made more free throws than any other player in Omaha, shooting 16 of 19 at the line.
Indiana junior Yogi Ferrell went head-to-head with VanVleet and finished with 24 points on 15 shots in Indiana’s five-point loss. There were a couple players who played well and picked up at least one win, but Ferrell’s individual performance was impressive enough to land him on my team.
Rounding out the All-Omaha team is a pair of Wisconsin big men. National player of the year favorite Frank Kaminsky put his whole arsenal on display in Wisconsin’s win over Coastal Carolina, finishing with 27 points, 12 rebounds and four assists. Dekker was a lethal scoring weapon both inside and out, knocking down seven 3-pointers in the two games and finishing strong at the basket as well.
Interesting match-ups, plenty of highlight reel plays and near-capacity attendance combined to make the weekend a complete success for the city of Omaha. The facilities and overall handling of the event drew rave reviews from fans and visiting media alike, so it should be no surprise that the NCAA has awarded Omaha Sweet 16 games in 2018.