“It was embarrassing,” freshman Jackson McAndrew said on the postgame radio show. “We got out toughed in all assets of the game.”
“I’m very, very disappointed,” Greg McDermott added in his postgame radio interview. “It’s embarrassing the way that we played.”
Embarrassing? You bet.
Those are the kind of adjectives you earn after finding yourself on the wrong end of a 38-13 run spanning both halves. Jays fans probably hurled other adjectives, too. Favored by 3.5 against a Georgetown team that hadn’t won a Big East game against a team other than DePaul in 22 months — and who had won just four total conference games since 2021 — the Jays trailed by double-digits most of the second half and lost by 24 thanks to a demoralizing second half.
The margin of victory isn’t the embarrassing part. Those kind of games can happen even to great teams. The 2019-20 Big East Champion Bluejays lost 91-71 at St. John’s on March 1, six days before beating Seton Hall to win a share of the title. That team lost by 31 (83-52) to San Diego State, too. The 2021-22 Jays lost to Seton Hall 74-55 in a game where they trailed 21-3 and 40-16, and also lost at Villanova 75-41. The 2022-23 team got run out of MSG by Xavier, 82-60, in the semifinal of the Big East Tournament and two weeks later were in the Elite Eight. Last year, they lost 69-48 to Colorado State.
Heck, it’s even happened against Georgetown before. Remember the 67-40 beating the 2014-15 Jays suffered at the hands of the Hoyas? (Probably not. It’s best left forgotten.) The Bluejays missed 23 consecutive shots over a span of 17 minutes in that game, during which Georgetown turned a 15-12 Creighton lead into a 43-18 edge. It was a 31-6 Hoyas run that left the Omaha crowd groaning, and was undoubtedly the lowest point of a bad season.
None of those losses, by similar or in some cases even larger margins, were publicly called embarrassing by players and coaches. But none felt quite this bad, either.
With ten minutes gone in Wednesday’s game, Georgetown led 23-15. Creighton then held them scoreless for almost six minutes, and briefly took a 28-26 lead after five straight points from McAndrew — including this three-pointer.
They were outscored 55-29 the rest of the way.
Georgetown answered with an 8-0 run featuring three-pointers by Curtis Williams Jr. and Jordan Burks and a putback by Caleb Williams to take a 34-28 lead into the break.
Ashworth cut the deficit to 36-33 on this three-pointer two minutes into the second half, but what followed was a nightmare.
The Hoyas’ Micah Peavy had four steals that he turned into fastbreak dunks in less than five minutes. On the first one, he picked off a pass from Jamiya Neal and raced downcourt for a dunk.
Two minutes later, he deflected the ball away from Ashworth and raced downcourt for a dunk.
45 seconds after that, he stepped in front of a pass from Ty Davis, grabbed the ball, and raced downcourt for a dunk.
And roughly 75 seconds later, he took the ball away from Kalkbrenner and…stop me if you’ve heard this before…raced downcourt for a dunk.
“Peavy is very disruptive,” McDermott said. “He guarded Steven all night, and our lack of ball handling and decision-making outside of Steven is really hurting us right now.”
All in all, Georgetown made eight of its first 11 shots after halftime, and by the time the hemorrhaging from the 38-13 run was over, Creighton trailed 64-41. Remember, they’d led 28-26 before that.
“I just thought we were a half a step slow from the jump,” McDermott said. “I didn’t like our energy, I think our guys tried, but for whatever reason we were not near as locked in as we were in Tuscaloosa last week.”
Maybe it’s because he’s a freshman, or maybe it’s because he’s the type of player who calls it like he sees it, but McAndrew was not nearly as diplomatic.
“Every guy on the team did not give the effort needed. I mean obviously at times it was picked up more than others,” he told John Bishop on the postgame radio show, “but even at our highest it was just not even close where we need to be at.”
And so with the loss, Creighton has now dropped their Big East opener three years in a row. And don’t look now, but if they trip up against Villanova on Saturday, things could get bleak in a hurry — the next two games are against KenPom’s #11 and #8 teams, respectively, in St. John’s and Marquette.
Inside the Box:
Georgetown had 6 — count ‘em, six — fastbreak dunks off live-ball turnovers. All totaled, they scored 20 points off 16 Bluejay turnovers. Add in 11 second chance points off of nine offensive rebounds, and that’s 31 extra possession points. 31!
In the Primer, I wrote about Alabama getting 30 such points in Saturday’s win, and how a repeat of that performance was Georgetown’s likeliest avenue to an upset. Unfortunately, the Hoyas did one better.
“Some of the decisions we make are just, you know, they’re incredible to me,” McDermott said. “When you’re giving them those run out baskets like we did at Alabama a couple times in the second half and way too often tonight, it’s deflating to your team. It energizes the home crowd. It’s absolutely the last thing that you should be doing, and we’re searching for someone that can — whether it’s a starter, or somebody on the bench — that can come in and have better ball security and get the basketball where it needs to get.”
If you’re struggling to hit jump shots, and struggling to get post touches for Kalkbrenner, you can’t compound those issues by committing live ball turnovers. You just can’t. And yet, the Jays continue to do it. Every Bluejay who played in the game had at least one turnover with the exception of Fredrick King. And the live ball turnovers were equally distributed — Neal, Ashworth, Kalkbrenner and Thomas had one apiece leading to a Hoya dunk, and Davis had two.
In 31 minutes, Kalkbrenner had 10 points on 4-of-8 shooting, but he had just three shot attempts inside the arc (making two). But while his teammates have shown zero ability to create offense in the halfcourt, get quality touches for him in the paint, or make defenses pay for loading up against him, he’s not exempt from criticism and his coach had some tough love for him in the postgame press conference.
“I didn’t think Ryan was very aggressive to start the game,” McDermott said. “And yes, they sat a guy behind him and made it tough to get the ball into the post, but I wasn’t overly impressed with his activity either.”
Ashworth scored 21 on 7-of-17 shooting (and 5-of-12 from outside), with four assists and a steal. McAndrew had 13 on 5-of-8 shooting with four rebounds and three steals. Everyone else was practically invisible: the rest of the roster combined for 13 points and 15 rebounds, and scored zero points in the first half. It took six minutes of the second half for a fourth Bluejay to score a point.
Meanwhile, Georgetown’s Micah Peavy had 20 points, eight rebounds, eight assists and seven steals, coming extremely close to a quadruple-double. He’s the first player with at least 20 points and seven assists, steals and rebounds against a Division 1 opponent since West Virginia’s Jevon Carter did it versus American in 2017. And he’s the first to do it against a high-major opponent since 2011 when Georgia Tech’s Iman Shumpert did it.
It’s the first time the Hoyas have won their Big East opener since the 2018-19 season, when they defeated Butler 84-76 at Hinkle Fieldhouse. And the 24-point victory is their biggest in a Big East regular season matchup since an 83-55 win over St. John’s on Jan. 9, 2017.
Press Conference:
Highlights: