Alex O’Connell got things going for the Jays in the first half (Juszyk / WBR)
The mandate for Greg McDermott’s team was crystal clear. If they wanted February and March to have purpose, they needed to take care of business at home against a Butler team that had already beaten them, then they needed to win two games in three days against a Georgetown team came in desperate to acquire its first victory since December 15.
Creighton checked the first box last Tuesday and the second on Saturday afternoon in Washington, D.C. On Monday night, in what perhaps was the most difficult of the challenges from the standpoint of motivation and focus, they checked off the third.
88-77 read the tally in favor of the Bluejays, who improved their overall record to 16-8 and their Big East record to 8-5 (good enough for a two-way tie with UConn for third place in the league standings). It was more competitive than the final score, but strangely not as close as that statement would lead one to believe. Creighton built a 23-point advantage early in the second half and led by 15 or more for just over 40% of the game before Georgetown deployed a five-guard lineup and some nothing-to-lose, full-court pressure defense to make the Jays work a little harder over the final five minutes than they likely anticipated.
“We’ll never apologize for winning in this league,” McDermott said. “It’s not easy, and I think it’s a huge credit to Patrick [Ewing] and his staff that they haven’t won in the league, but when you watch them play you would never know it. They compete to the very end, as you saw, and it would have been for a team when they got down 23 to pack it in given the season that they’ve had, and they didn’t do it. That’s really a credit to Coach Ewing and his staff.
“We’re running on fumes. Obviously, we’ve got nine total guys on the bench in uniform. It’s been a rough week for us … we made some mistakes, especially when they went to that small lineup. They have so many big guys — three centers and a couple power forwards, and they played five guards and that was just a difficult thing for us. We didn’t execute very well against it. I thought there for a few minutes instead of playing to win we were playing not to lose, and that’s not something you want to do. But we’ll take the win. We’ll watch it on film and learn from our mistakes, and then we’ll move on to the next.”
Other players stepped up when needed, like Rati Andronikashvili. (Williams / WBR)
The youngsters played well for CU. Freshman point guard Ryan Nembhard shook out of a three-and-a-half game shooting slump to knock down three of his seven attempts from 3-point range. He finished the night with 12 points to go along with six assists and five rebounds. Sophomore center Ryan Kalkbrenner was a perfect 5-for-5 from the field and 3-for-3 from the free throw line, chipping in 13 points and blocking two shots. But this game was won by Creighton’s three seniors.
Two days after fighting through what sounded like a fairly debilitating knee injury to record 30 points, 12 rebounds, and six assists in an 80-66 win over the Hoyas, forward Ryan Hawkins had another double-double for the Bluejays on Monday night, finishing with 14 points, 12 rebounds, three assists, and two steals while playing all but 80 seconds.
Guard Alex O’Connell led the team in scoring with 27 points (one shy of matching his career-high), 25 of which he scored in the span of 14 minutes and 15 seconds between end the of the first half and the start of the second that broke the game open for the Bluejays.
It was kickstarted by one of the stranger sequences of the season when O’Connell tripped over Georgetown head coach Patrick Ewing as he was sliding to the left corner to receive a baseline skip pass. Ewing, who was clearly on the court impeding O’Connell path, had his back turned to the action for a moment as he appeared to be relaying some instructions to the players who were sitting further down the bench. A Class B technical foul was to Georgetown on the play. O’Connell converted the one-shot penalty, then 12 seconds later buried a 3-pointer to ignite a spurt that saw the senior wing outscore the Hoyas by himself 16-12 to help Creighton’s lead grow from 20-19 to 48-31 to end the first half.
O’Connell attributed his sudden offensive outburst to his team’s passing and pace.
“Our ball movement was pretty good,” he said. “We shared the ball, made a lot of ‘one more’ passes, and everybody got to touch the ball on some possessions. Credit to my teammates for finding me. Ryan [Nembhard] had six assists and he was a big key to that. We just shared the ball and trusted the system. We’re getting late in the year here and the more we buy in to that offensive system of sharing the ball and making those extra passes the better we can continue to play I think.”
To round the veteran production and put the game beyond Georgetown’s reach for all intents and purposes, backup big man KeyShawn Feazell shot 5-for-5 from the field and 2-for-3 from the charity stripe to finish with a season-high 12 points in 12 minutes off the bench. His three dunks in the second half helped keep CU’s lead around 20 all the way up until the midway point of the period.
In the two wins over the Hoyas, the transfer from McNeese State combined to score 20 points in 20 minutes and made all eight of his field goal attempts, including his first 3-pointer since January 16, 2021. Prior to this weekend, Feazell had scored 20 points on 8-of-17 shooting in the first 11 conference games.
“He’s been huge for us,” O’Connell said. “Like coach said, we don’t have a lot of guys dressed out in uniform right now. For KeyShawn to come out and give us a lift and give us energy when Ryan Kalkbrenner comes out [of the game] is huge for our team. For him to play the way he did tonight is big time, and we’re hoping he can keep that momentum rolling.”
Three of Creighton’s last four games to close out the month of February will come away from the friendly confines of CHI Health Center Omaha. A rematch at DePaul awaits on Thursday to kick off a stretch that will see the Bluejays square up against six top 100 NET teams to close out the regular season.
“We’ve got six important games left,” McDermott said. “We’ve put ourselves in a position — I always talk about wanting to play meaningful games in February, and our games are meaningful. We’ll see what happens, but at least we’re in a spot where it matters.”
The Jays and Blue Demons are set for a 9:00 p.m. central time tip-off at Wintrust Arena. Fans can catch that broadcast on CBS Sports Network.