Recap:
Ryan Hawkins has been Creighton’s most important, and often best, player during his one season as a Bluejay. And when fans look back at his time in Omaha, Saturday’s game will be one of the first memories that come to mind.
With starter Arthur Kaluma out for a couple of weeks with a knee injury, Shereef Mitchell and John Christofolis officially done for the year and Mason Miller redshirting, the Jays were down to nine scholarship players active for the game. Walk-on Devin Davis, a key member of the scout team, is out with an injury as well. They barely had enough players to scrimmage at practice, much less play a Big East road game.
“It’s been a difficult week for us,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show.
Hawkins could very well have joined them on the bench after suffering a bone bruise to his knee in practice described as “fairly significant” by McDermott. As late as Thursday, Hawkins wasn’t sure he’d be able to play. In fact, he assumed he’d be unable to. They altered practice plans and put contingency plans in place, with players trying out new roles just in case.
Those plans weren’t necessary, as it turned out. With his collegiate days numbered, Hawkins decided he simply wasn’t going to miss any of the handful of games remaining, injury be damned.
“We put a nice big pad on the knee and we went with it,” Hawkins said on the post-game radio show.
It’s one thing to tough it out through an injury described as “pretty significant.” It’s another to do it and turn in your best game (so far) in a Creighton uniform: 30 points, eight made 3-pointers, 12 rebounds, and six assists.
Then again, can you blame him for not wanting to miss a chance to shoot against Georgetown’s mess of a defense?
Bluejay shooters, Hawkins included, had open looks all game long. It took them a bit to catch fire, as they made just 3-of-9 from three-point range to start the game. They probably couldn’t believe the shots they were getting — opponents all season long, especially in Big East play, have pressed up on ball handlers, used hand-checks and physicality to disrupt movement, and found success in dragging games into the mud because CU has not been able to shoot well enough to force those opponents to change tactics. Georgetown isn’t terribly physical to begin with, but they’ve also shown a tendancy to blow defensive assignments with poor fundamentals and worse communication all season — that combo meant they couldn’t replicate the game plan most Bluejay opponents have used some version of.
Hawkins missed his first two attempts from long range. Once he settled in, he was just about unstoppable, making five 3’s in the first half alone.
Meanwhile, Ryan Kalkbrenner was dominating the paint on both ends, changing plans, altering and blocking shots, and throwing down vicious dunks like this one:
The pick-and-roll with Kalkbrenner was particularly effective, and the Jays got him three dunks in the final two minutes of the half. By that point, the Hoya defense, predisposed for confusion anyway, didn’t know where to be. Hawkins was killing them from the perimeter, Kalkbrenner was killing them in the paint, and slowly the Jays began to pull away.
“Kalk and Hawk were awesome, obviously,” McDermott said. “But you can’t lose sight of the job that our guards did of getting them the ball. Today we really recognized what was working, and recognized who had the hot hand…and the ball moved until it found those guys.”
Nowhere was that better illustrated than this play early in the second half. With all five players in motion, three different Bluejays touched the ball to get Georgetown’s defense scrambling — and to get Kalkbrenner wide open at the rim.
They took their biggest lead of the game at 16 points after a three-pointer and back-to-back alley oops from KeyShawn Feazell, who twice in a row slipped behind the Hoya defense.
Georgetown did string together a rally of sorts, because as Bluejay fans are painfully aware no Creighton/Georgetown game in D.C. is ever really over, cutting the lead to 64-57. But — who else — Hawkins wasn’t having it. He buried a pair of three-pointers in the span of 45 seconds to stretch the lead back to 70-57, the second of which was his eighth made three of the game.
And with an 80-66 win in the first of two games against Georgetown in three days, Creighton’s task now is to plan for that rematch — while also resting an increasingly thin roster.
“When you play a team back-to-back, you’re trying to figure out what you did well in the first game, but you’re also trying to anticipate what the other team is going to do differently,” McDermott noted. “And some of that will have to happen in the first timeout of the game, once you’ve seen their defensive strategy and how they’ve decided to change it.”
Inside the Box Score:
According to College Basketball Reference (and researched by WBR’s Matt DeMarinis), there have been just two 30-point, 10-rebound, 5-assist games by Creighton players under Greg McDermott:
- Doug McDermott, Jan. 4, 2014 at Seton Hall: 30 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists
- And Ryan Hawkins, Saturday at Georgetown: 30 points, 12 rebounds, 6 assists
To get there, Hawkins set a Creighton record with 18 attempted three-pointers, which is a pretty remarkable fact when you consider the great shooters Creighton has had over the years. The record was previously held by three of the best shooters in CU’s history — Kyle Korver, Terrell Taylor, and Ty-Shon Alexander. It now belongs to Hawkins.
And consider this: Hawkins had 18 attempts on Saturday, and 17 COMBINED three-point attempts in the five previous games. The scary part is it could have been bigger; Hawkins said afterward that with the way the ball was coming out of his hands, he felt like just about every one was going in. 8-of-18 isn’t too shabby, though.
“Hawk had quite a night,” McDermott said, succinctly summing up a casual 30/12/6 line for a player on a bad knee.
Ryan Kalkbrenner had an enormous game, with 22 points and 15 rebounds, both career-highs. Seven of those rebounds were offensive boards leading to second-chance opportunities. He made 10-of-16 shots, blocked two shots defensively and altered a half-dozen others. Enormous game might be underselling it. Monster game is more like it.
The Bluejays had a season-best 26 assists on 30 made field goals, led by seven from Ryan Nembhard and six each by Hawkins and Alexander.
“R2 had seven assists and two turnovers, and that’s exactly the kind of play we need out of our point guard. Alex, on a night where he didn’t shoot it great, still got five assists and that’s what we need out of a senior,” McDermott said. “We made the extra pass in transition on several occasions, and were able to knock down some shots because of that.”
With Kaluma out, Trey Alexander got his first-career start and made his mark on the game in two areas freshmen rarely do — assists and defense. In 37 minutes, he had six assists and just two turnovers, setting up both Hawkins and Kalkbrenner for shots. It was the other end of the floor where his coach was most impressed, though.
“Trey was also given the assignment of guarding (Kaiden) Rice or (Donald) Carey, one of the two on every possession, and at times he even picked up (Amino) Mohammed. I hope it isn’t lost in our fans’ eyes the job that Trey is doing defensively as a freshman,” McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “I’m sure I’ve never coached a freshman who has picked things up defensively as quick as Trey has. The potential he has is so exciting to me. As he gets stronger, it’s scary what he’s going to be able to do on that end of the floor.”
While Georgetown’s defense was a mess, Creighton had a plan and executed it pretty well. Alexander was a big part of that. Knowing the Hoyas are a good three-point shooting team, especially Kaiden Rice and Donald Carey, but a poor two-point shooting team, they forced the Hoyas off the line consistently.
“What we tried to do, as best we could, is make those guys two-point shooters off ball screens,” McDermott said. “They made some. But we didn’t want Carey stepping into threes, we didn’t want Rice stepping into threes, and (Dante) Harris is so shifty but we were able to go under a few screens with him and get back in front.”
It worked. Georgetown hasn’t been able to score all year at the rim, and they were just 10-of-27 on shots at the rim on Saturday. They were 10-of-20 on all other two-pointers. And by preventing them from taking in-rhythm three-pointers or threes they could step into, they made those shots tougher, too — and the result was a good three-point shooting team going just 6-of-24 from deep. That’s a recipe for a double-digit win, and that’s exactly what they got.
And then there’s this: Creighton started the day in 5th place in the Big East. With their win and other results around the league, they ended it in a tie for 3rd with UConn.