Terrific question.

My brain was not working correctly - for some reason I decided that since DDL triggers (unlike DML triggers, which have an "instead" option) always execute after the DDL statement that fires them has completed, in autocommit mode they would execute after the DDL statement had committed - a crazy aberration! I knew it was wrong as I clicked the submit button, because I suddenly remembered that the DDL trigger example everyone uses is the one that displays an error message and rolls back a DROP, and this only works because the trigger and the DROP are parts of the same autocommit unit (transaction). Oh well, I won't forget that as easily again so the question has done me some good (and was fun to think through).