DeAngelo Jones and Julian Olubuyi had just misfired on a routine inbound pass that could've cost the NAU men's basketball team its season. But with his team trailing by two and five seconds left on the clock, Mike Adras realized it wasn't time for fingerpointing.
"What I was mostly worried about was DeAngelo had this look on his face that he was blaming Julian, Julian's looking at DeAngelo, and the last thing I wanted was for those guys to argue with each other," Adras said.
"It's really hard not to dwell on the last play, but good players don't dwell on the last play, they get ready for the next play. And that's all that I was trying to ensure those guys at that point."
Moments after their colossal gaffe gave Portland State a 74-72 lead with five ticks left in the first overtime, Jones set a screen that allowed Olubuyi to go coast-to-coast for the game-tying layup with four-tenths of a second left to force a second overtime.
Then, roughly five minutes of scoreboard time later, Olubuyi found Jones under the basket on an inbound pass for the winning layup with 11.3 seconds remaining in overtime No. 2. The redemption resulted in a wild 86-85 victory for the Lumberjacks, and nobody was happier afterward than Jones, who went from goat to hero in the span of several minutes.
"I felt bad because I threw the ball in. I thought Julian was going to stand right there, but obviously he didn't and we ended up getting down," said Jones, who finished with 10 points.
Jones said Adras asked him during the ensuing time out if he was "too mad to play."
"He just wanted to know if I was all right to play, because mentally after you make a play like that at the end of the game ... it's like, man, you kind of get down on yourself," Jones said.
"I was like, 'No, I'm good,' and he just told me to make another play."
Jones did, springing Olubuyi for the tying last-second dash to the hoop to force a second overtime. Then Jones made an even bigger play, converting a contested layup for the winning points.
Ironically, Olubuyi and Jones hooked up on a similar inbound play to force overtime in NAU's last game against Idaho State. Jones wasn't designed to get the ball in either situation, but Adras is glad he did.
"Sometimes you draw it up well, sometimes you just got to let guys make plays, and that happened in this one," Adras said. "He made a great basketball play, and that's DeAngelo Jones."
CHANGING OF THE GUARD
Freshman point guard Stallon Saldivar was forced to play all but one minute of the first half after Olubuyi picked up two fouls 56 seconds into the game.
The result was a career high 25 minutes for Saldivar, who finished with two points and two assists. More importantly, the true freshman only committed one turnover and helped NAU take a 32-26 lead into halftime.
"For a freshman, in a big game, has not been playing really well as of late, to go in there and do that? Wow," Adras said. "I was really happy for him and for us that he played so well in that first half. It was a must. We had to have him."
FOOTBALL FRENZY
Members of the NAU football team packed the student section on the south side of the court at the Walkup Skydome.
Their ringleader was none other than record-setting quarterback Michael Herrick, who stood for most of the first half exchanging pleasantries with the Portland State Vikings.
Herrick, the highest finishing junior in the year's Walter Payton Award voting, consulted a roster and tried his best to get in the Vikings' heads -- something he's usually on the receiving end of as a quarterback.
Rory Faust can be reached at rfaust@azdailysun.com or 556-2257.
