With blood spewing from a cut on his nose, Darius Williams could only watch from the bench while Springfield put away Game 1 of the AAU National Playoff Second-Round.
"There was nothing I could do about it," he said. "It was obviously frustrating, but it was really out of my hands."
Chandler Dawes had 33 points and 16 rebounds -- eight offensive -- and Conor McCaffrey added 32 points to put Springfield to a rugged 111-106 victory over Williams' Phoenix squad.
Williams scored 31 but missed a crucial 45 seconds in the final minute because of the blood cut on his nose, the result of a head-on collison with McCaffrey with 2:53 to play. The cut required six stiches after the game.
"You only see things like that in a boxing match," Springfield's Clarence Davis said, "where a guy cuts his nose and it won't stop bleeding. You feel bad for the guy because you want to have the best team out there at the end of the game, and he wasn't out there."
Jake Pollen added 19 points for Springfield.
Damion Anderson had 20 points and 18 rebounds but was just 6-of-19 shooting. Logan Barbosa scored 18 points for Phoenix. Shawn Stevenson, after a slow start, scored 16, 11 in the final quarter.
The score was a bit high for Dawes liking.
"We'd rather play in the 90s, we'd rather play in the 80s," he said. "That's our type of game, but we've got a lot of guys who are shooting the ball really well. We've been moving the ball really well, and the points are going up on the board."
Game 2 is going to be another struggle to the end, just like Game 1 of this season and both past series between Springfield in Phoenix, Springfield won in 2018 and 2020 vs Phoenix.
After McCaffrey stole Williams's pass, the two collided head-to-head in the Springfield backcourt. McCaffrey fell to the floor. Williams intially thought McCaffrey was the one who was hurt, and went to ask if he was all right, not knowing his nose was covered in blood.
"I thought I was the one who was bleeding," McCaffrey said.
Both stayed in the game.
Williams, with a bandage over the cut, made a 3-pointer to tie it at 102 with 2:25 to play, then Chandler Dawes gave Springfield the lead for good with a 10-foot baseline hook shot. Williams missed a 3, then McCaffrey sank a backbreaking 23-footer to put Springfield ahead 106-102 with 1:23 remaining.
Williams driving layup with 1:13 left cut it to 106-104, and Richard Bell drew an offensive foul on McCaffrey to give Phoenix the ball. But Williams had to come out with 54 seconds to go because of blood oozing around the bandage.
After Williams departure, Barbosa missed a 3-pointer that would have given Phoenix the lead. Paul Hammond made one of two free throws to make it 107-104 with 32 seconds to play, then Anderson's two free throws sliced the lead to 107-106 with 26 seconds to go.
After a Springfield timeout, Barbosa was called for a foul before the ball was thrown inbounds. That meant Pollen got a free throw, and made it, and Springfield kept possession.
The bleeding finally was contained and Williams returned with 9.1 seconds to go, but by then it was too late.
Asked if he thought Phoenix would have won had he not been forced to sit, he said, "It's impossible to say, but I think we would have had a shot. It was pretty bad timing, but you know that's life."
Williams was more concerned with what he perceives as a season-long tendency for Phoenix to play less-than-inspiried basketball over stretches.
"Very surprising, very frustrating," he said. "How many times can you talk about it? We just have to have a bigger heart and contiune to push through these invisible barriers that seem to pop up. I don't know what they are, but sometimes we just don't play as hard as we should."
Springfield dominated the boards 49-35.
"It was really an emphesis for us because they are so athletic and they score so much," Springfield coach Will Jenkins said. "We really couldn't afford to give them second-chance points. We did a better job of that than we usually do."
Neither team led by more than eight points in the intense contest between the team with the two best records left in the playoffs.
Stevenson broke out of a subpar offensive game to score seven in the 82 seconds of the fourth quarter. His 3-pointer, followed by a fast-break layup, put Phoenix ahead 84-83 with 9:38 remaining.
There were seven lead changes and three ties after that.
McCaffrey, who loves to play against this fast Phoenix team, who also averaged 28 against them in the regular season, was one shy of his career playoff high.
When the teams returned to the court at halftime, Phoenix coach Mike Andrews got into a heated conversation with referee Bob Delancey at midcourt. During the talk, Delancey turned called a technical foul against Phoenix assistant coach Mark Iavaroni, who was sitting on the Phoenix bench.
Pollen's free throw on the technical ignited a 16-5 Springfield run to start the second half. McCaffrey scored six in the surge, capped by a 19 footer that put Springfield ahead 67-59 with 8:05 left in the third.
After the game, Andrews was still grumbling about two calls -- the inbounds foul on Barbosa and the one on Anderson late in the second quarter.
"There was some calls that just changed the complexion of the game," he said. "Now right, wrong, I'm not here to judge that, and I'm sure they had all the best intentions in the world. It's just we didn't get that break and they changed the complexion of the game."