Why Gregg Doyel kept a box score from a game involving Doug McDermott

Gregg Doyel | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption What they're saying about Pacers' 2018 offseason Kevin Pritchard's hot streak continues.

INDIANAPOLIS – His coach was trying not to cry. I remember that. The band was playing “Sweet Caroline” and the crowd was singing along and Doug McDermott was stepping to the free-throw line. I remember that.

The referee hands the ball to McDermott. The band stops playing. But the crowd, well, the crowd doesn’t stop singing. I remember that.

Reaching out …

Picture what I’m picturing, almost 4½ years later. Today Doug McDermott is one of the newest members of the Indiana Pacers, but in March 2014 he was playing his final home game at Creighton. It’s senior night. He came into the game needing 34 points to become the eighth man in major college basketball history to reach 3,000. Does he get there? Well, hang on. We’ll get there.

But right now McDermott is standing at the line of his final home game at Creighton, bouncing the ball, picking it up and bending his knees, and something is happening that I’ve never seen in 25 years as a sports writer: The crowd won’t stop singing. McDermott raises the ball to his head. They’re still singing.

Touching me …

For two hours, McDermott has given the crowd the show of a lifetime. He has been making magic, right before our eyes, and the show is almost over and now the crowd is thanking him, with song.

Touching you …

Four years later, the hair is standing up on Doug McDermott’s arms. He’s telling me it’s happening. I’m watching it happen. We’re sitting in two chairs at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, where the Indiana Pacers have just introduced their newest free-agent acquisitions — McDermott and Tyreke Evans — to the media. This is the first time I’ve been in the same room with McDermott since March 8, 2014, and I’ve brought a leather folder to our meeting, waving it haphazardly as we talk. Doug’s looking at the folder, but I’m not ready for that just yet. I bring up senior night from 2014. I’m here to ask questions, but now he’s asking me one.

“You were there?”

I’m nodding. My turn to ask: Do you remember the song?

McDermott’s turn to nod.

“Just thinking about it,” he says, “gives me the chills.”

* * *

Pacers make it offical, sign Evans and McDermott The Indiana Pacers officially sign guards Tyreke Evans and Doug McDermott

What happened that night in Omaha was completely out of character for Doug McDermott. I remember that. The son of a coach, he was going to play the game the right way or he wasn’t going to play. So even with his gift for shooting the ball, a gift that borders on the supernatural, he grew up a rebounder and a screen-setter and a passer. And a scorer, of course, because he shot the ball so well. But scoring was never his sole focus.

On the night of March 8, 2014, scoring was his sole focus. I remember that, but maybe I’m remembering wrong, so I’m asking McDermott if he played that game — how to put this delicately … — “determined to get yours?”

“Absolutely,” he says, and he’s happy to be honest. This is a magical night we’re remembering — “maybe the most special game of my career,” he says — and to maximize the magic he needed to score 34 points.

“I wanted to get 3,000 at home,” he says.

This was his final chance, so plays like this were happening: Late first half, McDermott has the ball on the wing. He dribbles to the corner. A teammate, a 6-11 center named Will Artino, cuts to the rim. Artino is alone for a layup. McDermott sees him. Doesn’t pass it.

McDermott shoots a 3-pointer. Makes it.

He makes six shots in a row, and by halftime he has 22 points. With 11½ minutes left he has 32 points for the game, 2,998 for his career. He catches a pass on the wing, well behind the 3-point arc, maybe 25 feet from the basket. He’s defended, so he dribbles twice — backward — and lets it fly. Thirty feet later the ball is in the net and McDermott has 3,001 points and ...

And maybe now is the time to tell you what had happened one year earlier, Creighton’s 2013 senior night. McDermott was a junior that season, but he already had more than 2,000 career points and a likely place in the 2013 NBA draft lottery, and it was assumed he would turn pro. That night Creighton beat Wichita State to win the Missouri Valley Conference title, and McDermott scored 41 points on just 18 shots. He was 15-for-18 from the floor. A few weeks later he was looking into the cameras and saying the unthinkable: “I’ve decided it’s best for me to come back my senior year.”

Insider - Pacers fill a need with McDermott Insider J. Michael reviews the Pacers' free agent pick up.

One year later. Another senior night. McDermott passes the 3,000-point mark, and with 11½ minutes left he has 35 on the game. How high is he going to go? Creighton has been playing in the CenturyLink Center Omaha since 2003, and the school record for points in the building is 42 set in 2008 by Cavel Witter. Entering this night, McDermott’s career-high is 44. He breaks both marks, finishing with 45.

There’s so much going on here. It’s Creighton’s first season in the Big East. It’s McDermott’s last season in Omaha. And on the sideline, on the Creighton bench, is the Bluejays’ head coach, the man trying not to cry as the crowd is singing “Sweet Caroline” — no music from the band, just 18,000 voices — as his son goes to the foul line one last time.

Oh, right. Probably you know, but maybe you forgot: Creighton’s coach then, and now, is Greg McDermott. Doug’s father.

“So much going on,” Doug is telling me all these years later, and I figure it’s a good time to open that leather folder.

* * *

What they're saying about Pacers signing Doug McDermott Indiana Pacers opened free agency by signing Doug McDermott. The Pacers needed to add shooting, which McDermott provides, but the reaction has been mixed.

For the Pacers, Doug McDermott is going to generate a lot of points — for Victor Oladipo. And for Myles Turner. And Domantas Sabonis. McDermott will do that by being a shooter opposing teams must defend 25 feet from the rim. You’ve heard the term “stretching the floor,” I suppose. McDermott is going to elasticize that thing for the Pacers after making 49.4 percent of his 3-pointers last season in Dallas.

And he’ll score some, too. McDermott is a career 7.9-ppg scorer in four NBA seasons, though the Pacers could get more than that. Unlike any of his previous four pro stops, McDermott will be surrounded by offensive talent that will make him his team’s No. 4 or even No. 5 scoring option on the floor. That doesn’t make him disregarded. It makes him dangerous.

“He’s obviously an elite shooter, and a great cutter,” Pacers president Kevin Pritchard was telling me last week after the news conference that introduced McDermott. “You’ll see him make great cuts and get layups. We see him as an underutilized talent. I don’t think he’s ever been with a team where a team says, ‘You’re our guy, you’re not going anywhere, we love you, just focus on being the best player you can be. You’re going to have three or four tough games, and we don’t care. You’re our guy.’ For us, that’s the big thing.”

For me, McDermott is a memory from 4½ years ago. He’s a piece of paper in my leather folder, though not the only piece. In 25 years as a sports writer — has to be a thousand or more games — I’ve saved exactly two box scores. One was from May 31, 2007. LeBron James scored 48 that night. It was the Eastern Conference finals, Cleveland at Detroit. Game 5. The Cavaliers won 109-107 in double overtime. LeBron scored the Cavs’ last 25 points, including every point in both overtimes. Yes, I saved that box score. Wrote about it last year, in fact.

The other box score? The only other box score I’ve ever taken home and just sort of … kept? The one from March 8, 2014. The night Doug McDermott scored 45 points on senior night to reach 3,000 points, passing two of the 10 top scorers in college basketball history — Indianapolis' Oscar Robertson (2,973) and Hersey Hawkins (3,008) — in one night. The night a crowd of 18,868 serenaded him a cappella with “Sweet Caroline” as he shot free throws at the CenturyLink Center Omaha. The night his coach, his father, took out his son for the final time in Omaha, hugging him and rubbing his head as he walked away. When Greg McDermott turned back to the court, he was biting his lip.

So I’m pulling the box score out of the leather folder, just to show him, and Doug McDermott sees it and grabs it and studies it. I’m not sure he understands what it meant to me — as a basketball fan, a father, a son — to have been there that night, but maybe he does. Because now he’s asking me something I hadn’t expected, and it’s only fair: After years of putting athletes on the spot with questions, it’s my turn to squirm.

“You want me to sign it?” he asks.

We don’t collect autographs in my business, and other people in the media are watching, and I say the only thing I can say:

Yes, please.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.