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Mac and the Miracles? Doesn't have a ring to it.

Doug and the Carry Ons? Doesn't really work.

Maybe I'm reading too much into what Bradley hoops coach Geno Ford said last week. After watching Doug McDermott drop 44 points on his Braves, Ford gushed about the Creighton sophomore forward.

He said (jokingly, I think) that he could suit up for Creighton and the Jays would win. While saying that CU's players were good, Ford said that you could put other players with Dougie and Creighton would still be good.

I'd like to call an unintentional foul on Coach Ford.

Creighton is 15-2 and 5-1 going into Sunday night's game with Southern Illinois. And some in media ga-ga land would say it's more like Doug vs. SIU.

Wrong team, wrong year. This isn't Danny Manning and the Miracles, the fabled Kansas team that won it all in 1988.

I covered that team. This Creighton team isn't that team.

Those Jayhawks had some nice players, to be sure. But Scooter Barry isn't on this Creighton team. Neither is Jeff Gueldner, who was shocked to go to KU because his only other visit was Eastern Illinois.

Neither is Clint Normore, the starting safety on the KU football team who walked on that year because Kansas needed a body.

Creighton has a junior center who played in the Big East (Rutgers) before transferring to CU.

McDermott may also be playing next to two of the better players in Creighton history, when history is done with this team.

Antoine Young is already one of only four point guards in school history with more than 1,000 points and 400 assists in his career. If Young can add a second Valley title (he was a reserve on the 2008-09 co-Valley champions) and an NCAA tourney win — or two — to his résumé, he'll have an argument for best-ever point guard at CU.

Then there's Grant Gibbs. He'll be here only two years, and his numbers won't amass to chart-breakers, but his impact is obvious enough that if the Jays win big while he's here, Gibbs will leave an important legacy.

The point is, it's not Doug and the Slugs.

But that's how it might be portrayed by the national media types who are flocking to "discover" McDermott and compare him to Jimmer Fredette, the mid-major rock star from BYU a year ago.

Dougie Mania has just begun. The more national attention he gets, the more the player will be sold as larger than the team.

It's the kind of thing that can give a head coach the shakes. Team chemistry, especially first-place team chemistry in January, can be a fragile thing. Could Dougie Mania cause tension in the locker room? Shift the balance of perfect chemistry?

Not a chance.

Coach Greg McDermott hasn't talked to his lads about it and won't.

"This is a pretty close-knit team," McDermott said. "They were close before Doug was getting all this attention. Doug is pretty humble in his approach and I see no reason why that won't continue."

Not with these guys around.

"We crack jokes about him all the time," Young said. "When we see him, we'll say, 'Hey, there's Doug McDermott!

"We're happy for his success. We're a big family. We have all one common goal: to win."

Gibbs said McDermott "doesn't really want that recognition anyway. When you have a star who is like that, quiet and unassuming, it makes all that attention no big deal. I think he's blown away by it all. And, we tend to poke fun at him."

This type of thing is unusual at the mid-major level, but the mid-major dynamic makes it work. There are no big egos in that locker room. These are players who never had a spotlight.

But, as Young said, this wouldn't have worked a few years ago. No need to mention names.

"In years past we had guys with egos," Young said. "We weren't as close as we are now. Now, we hang out together off the floor. This is the most fun I've had in college basketball."

It shows. The lack of ego and pretense shows on the court. When Doug is off, or in foul trouble, Young, Gibbs and Co. pick up the slack. It's a pretty good ham-and-egg team. Like the Jays know when to let Doug do his thing and when it's their turn.

They certainly put it in the face of doubting Thomases who wrote that the Jays should beware of relying too much on Doug. There's more to this bunch than Doug McDermott.

But if it takes Dougie heroics to point that out to the nation, it's all good.

"I'm sure (Geno Ford) didn't mean it that way," said Gibbs when told what the Bradley coach said. "It's like when Coach (McDermott) says, 'Doug ought to take me to dinner.' It's not really like that.

"It's not like I'm creating unbelievable opportunities. He (Doug) just has such a natural knack for where to go. If I throw it to the right hand, he's going to know what to do with it. All you have to do is get him the ball."

Don't say that, Grant. Any coach will think they can do it.

Contact the writer:

402-444-1025, tom.shatel@owh.com

twitter.com/tomshatelOWH

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