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Morning After: Swartz Scores 33 as Creighton Rallies Late, Puts Georgetown Away in Overtime

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[Box Score]

For the third time in four games, Creighton suffered through a prolonged scoring drought and had no answer for stopping it. Against Seton Hall, they missed ten shots in a row and turned it over four times during a 16-2 Pirate run. On Saturday against St. John’s, they missed seven of eight shots and turned it over four times during a 25-4 Red Storm run. And on Tuesday night, they actually did it twice — yet somehow survived to tell the tale. In the first half, they went five minutes without a point, turning a 22-22 game into a 32-22 Georgetown lead. In the second, they had a three-and-a-half minute scoreless drought starting with 5:44 to play, allowing the Hoyas to break a 67-67 tie and take a seven point lead.

The answer both times? Austin Swartz, who in the span of just nine games has gone from a role player buried at the bottom of the rotation to their best, most indispensable offensive weapon. Swartz buried a three to give them the lead at halftime, 38-36, capping a 16-4 run to end the half. He had a hand in 11 of those 16 points, as he also made a second 3, got a steal and assist when he fed Kerem Konan in transition for a bucket, and assisted on a three from Josh Dix. He hit the game-tying three with 18 seconds left in regulation. And he scored seven of their 10 points in overtime, including stealing the tip and converting it into a three-point play. He scored 33 points, the fourth time in nine games he’s had 20 or more in a game.

Whew. Indispensable? You bet.

“It’s hard to put into words. It was an awesome moment, it was awesome for our team,” Swartz said on the postgame radio show. “There’s just no better feeling when you shoot and all you see is the rim. You don’t see the defender, you don’t see the help side, you don’t see nothing else, all you see is the rim. That’s one of the best zones you can be in, and that’s the zone I was in tonight. Especially concerning the level of competition, this is arguably my best game that I’ve ever played, concerning the stakes and everything that went into this game. We needed this win.”

But before all of that, the teams both came out on fire, trading baskets for the first ten minutes and change. When Nik Graves hit a floater with 10:32 to go in the half, it was the fifth tie of a game that had already seen three lead changes. A 10-0 Georgetown run gave them the lead, and the manner in which it happened — two straight line drives to the rim, second chance opportunities, a wide open three pointer — was deflating because of the similarities to how St. John’s dismantled Creighton’s defense.

The Jays’ comeback began with an old-fashioned hustle play. Swartz deflected a pass, and dove to the floor to try and secure possession. In the battle that ensued, no one could get ahold of it, and the ball rolled away. Isaac Traudt dove to the floor, too, and was able to throw the ball ahead to Nik Graves, who passed to Kerem Konan at the rim for an easy layup.

Then over the final three minutes, Creighton forced three turnovers and two contested shots, which both missed. Swartz started the 12-0 run with a three, and then some elite ball movement — Blake Harper stole the ball, started a fast break, and then three passes in three seconds created a wide-open look for Josh Dix in the corner.

Graves followed with a drive to the bucket, and converted a three-point play.

Then another three from Swartz gave them an improbable 38-36 lead at the half.

“It was huge, just being able to come into halftime with the lead,” Swartz said. “It was arguable that we didn’t play well enough to deserve that lead, but we were playing a really good team. There’s nothing more important than late-game execution and two-minute execution at the end of the half. I think that gave us a little bit of confidence, just going in the half knowing we didn’t play our best ball, but still being up two, and then I thought we started off the second half pretty well, at least on offense.”

Swartz scored Creighton’s first 11 points of the second half, too, including three 3-pointers in the first three minutes and a driving layup. Going back to the three he hit to end the first half, that gave him 14 straight points.

The lead was just 49-44, though, because they still had no answers defensively for the Hoyas. Jasen Green played just five minutes in the first half after picking up two fouls; two minutes into the second half he picked up his third.

“Coach Cooley saw blood in the water with Jasen Green’s injury,” McDermott said. “He had his guys go right at us inside. And you know, Jasen wasn’t able to fend it off with one arm.”

The Hoyas scored on 16 straight possessions, going almost 13 minutes without an empty possession. They were 11-of-16 from the floor (and 2-of-4 on threes), plus 7-of-10 from the line. Throw in five offensive rebounds leading to nine second-chance points, and it was a complete domination of Creighton’s defense.

“We talk about next play all the time, and we preach it, preach it, preach it,” McDermott said. “But they scored 16 possessions in a row in the second half, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been part of a game where that’s happened and we won. Fortunately, we were matching them. They didn’t create much separation during that stretch. But they had some guys play really well tonight. They had some guys shoot at a level they haven’t shot the ball.”

Indeed, at the end of that 16 possession stretch, Georgetown had turned a six point deficit into a three point lead, but the fact that it wasn’t more was a credit to CU’s offense keeping pace. They tied it at 67 on a three by Swartz, his seventh of the game, with 5:44 to go.

Maddeningly, Georgetown responded with a 7-0 run to go right back on top 74-67. Dix, Swartz and Graves committed turnovers. Green picked up his fourth foul. And with 1:47 to go, fans started streaming for the exits, assuming a Bluejay loss was all but guaranteed.

Instead, the loss was theirs. Some of the most exciting moments of the season (so far) were still to come.

Creighton finally strung together enough stops to give themselves a chance, and their shot makers did the rest. Graves started the game-ending 7-0 run by driving into the paint and passing it to Green for a layup. Then Dix and Green trapped Georgetown’s Malik Mack near the center line, Dix deflected the pass, and Green threw the ball ahead to him for a dunk. At 76-73 with 1:05 to go, Creighton had life — and Georgetown called timeout to regroup.

And when the Hoyas failed to score out of that timeout, Creighton had the ball with a chance to tie. They drew up a play to get Swartz the ball, and he did not disappoint, burying the game-tying three. Of course he did.

“Coach Mac drew up a great play. We went to the first initial action, and it wasn’t there, so Jasen set me a ball screen,” Swartz said in describing the final shot of regulation. “They kind of messed up the switch a little bit. I’m not sure what they were doing right there. And I just kind of did a little little step back to make sure I got my toes behind the line, and let it go. Great recognition by Jasen to free me up right there and let me rise up and shoot.”

Without a timeout left, Georgetown inbounded the ball to Mack and he tried to make a play to win the game. Drawing a double-team as he approached the middle of the paint, he had no room to get off a shot. But he recognized where the double had come from, and zipped a pass to Langston Love wide open under the basket with two seconds left. Love redirected it in mid-air toward the hoop, and it dropped through the net. Georgetown celebrated what they thought was a win as the officials initially signaled the shot was off in time, but replays showed the ball still touching Love’s fingers as time expired. After a lengthy review, the call was overturned.

As you’d expect, opinions of that call varied depending on who you ask. Cooley was upset and felt the replays were not conclusive enough to overturn the call. “If it’s good on the floor and (the review is) inconclusive, what does that mean? I’m not saying that’s why we lost the game, but I do need an explanation from my league office. It didn’t go our way this time, so we’ll have to suck it up, move on and prepare for UConn. Shit happens.”

“It’s a game of inches sometimes, and we won by a tenth of a second,” McDermott said. “They wave off a basket that was on his fingertip one frame, and the next frame it was off; it was that close. So sometimes you’ve got to be a little fortunate as well, and we were.”

In overtime, Swartz picked up where he left off. He stole the jump ball, raced down the court and scored a layup, drawing a foul in the process. Seconds into the extra period, it was 79-76 Bluejays.

“Jasen hasn’t won too many jump balls this year with his shoulder injury. Plus he was giving up like four inches to that seven-foot monster they have; I mean he’s jumping to the top of the backboard, so no shame, but you know, you kind of got to prepare for that,” Swartz said. “I knew Jasen was gonna tip it back there, I just had a feeling. Kind of read the play, saw a smaller guard in front of me, and kind of put my chin to the rim as our coaches say.”

Georgetown scored on two straight trips to briefly take an 81-79 lead, and then Swartz hit a jumper to tie it. A minute later, Green drove to the rim and threw in an underhand, one-arm layup for the lead.

The Hoyas’ KJ Lewis tied it at 83 on the next possession, and then it was time for Swartz to win it. After his initial move was sniffed out, he pump-faked, shifted to the right, and made a floater while he drifted away from the defender. The level of difficulty on that shot? Off the charts. And in that situation? Unbelievable.

“I was just trying to make a play,” Swartz said humbly. “Someone set the ball screen, I pump faked, saw him jump, so just a little runner, floater, kind of pull-up. I’m not going to say I work on that specifically, but I do work on my touch in the mid-range a lot. So just being confident, and like I said, all I saw was the rim.”

Subbing in Fedor Zugic for Swartz on defense, the Jays immediately reaped the benefits when Zugic forced a missed shot. Lewis, who’d scored two baskets on Swartz earlier in OT, isolated himself on Zugic but couldn’t find any separation. He ultimately lost the ball out of bounds without getting off a shot.

After Dix split a pair of free throws, Lewis again tried to tie it, but this time the Jays switched on a ball screen and Blake Harper ended up on him. Harper kept his feet planted and his arms straight up, and the only shot Lewis could get off sailed wide of the hoop. Game over.

“Just one other thing I want to say is I want to shout out Fedor,” Swartz volunteered at the end of his postgame radio interview. “I don’t know if he gets a lot of credit for his defense or how the media perceives it, but he deserves a lot of credit for this one. Even though he didn’t make a single basket and only played 14 minutes, that play at the end — we wouldn’t be talking about my shots if Fedor doesn’t make that play down there, if Blake doesn’t box out and all the stuff going his way. So I just want to shout out Fedor for just doing an incredible job in a high, high intense moment and just being ready for that. So he deserves credit for that.”

Sometimes when you’re a bubble team, you just have to win games any way you can and worry about metrics another night. This was one of those nights. Their NET dropped a few spots, but they avoided a deadly home Q3 loss and live to fight another day.

“Wow. It’s a crazy, crazy game,” McDermott said. “Over the course of the season, you have games where you don’t understand how you lost. Then you have ones like tonight, where you can’t figure out how the heck you won.”

Inside the Box:

The Jays ended the 1st half on a 12-0 run in the last 3 minutes to take a 2 point lead into half. They ended the 2nd half on a 7-0 in the last 2 minutes to force overtime. They were outscored 76-57 in the other 35 minutes of the game prior to overtime.

Creighton also trailed by 10 last year at home versus Georgetown, rallying to win 80-69. In that game Creighton also trailed 36-26, surging down the stretch of the first half to lead 44-42 at the break.

Austin Swartz has played in 17 games and started nine. He’s already become the seventh Bluejay to make eight or more 3-pointers in a game since 1996-97. It’s a heckuva list:

  • Mitch Ballock (twice)
  • Ethan Wragge
  • Kyle Korver (twice)
  • Terrell Taylor
  • Ryan Hawkins
  • Isaiah Zierden

They’ve had a player make seven or more 3-pointers 26 times over that span. Swartz has two of those 26, and again, he’s only played in 17 games.

As pointed out on X by Jays Classic, before moving into the starting lineup (8 games) Swartz averaged 4.4 PPG (35% FG, 25% 3FG – 3.5 threes attempted per game).

After moving into the starting five (9 games): 18.1 points per game (52.5% FG, 48.1% 3FG – 8.6 threes attempted per game). For some context to those numbers, Kyle Korver shot 48.0% on 7.9 threes attempted per game as a senior; Ethan Wragge shot 47.0% on 6.6 threes attempted per game as a senior. Now, granted Korver and Wragge’s sample size was three times as much, but that’s the level of shot-making we’re talking about here.

As great as his shooting has been, Swartz continues to struggle defensively, especially in key moments. Some on social media wondered why he was on the bench late in the game before subbing back in ahead of the final push in regulation. The answer is he’d blown a defensive assignment before checking out, and McDermott was frustrated with it. And on the almost-buzzer beater that was released a split-second too late, it was Swartz who left his man — Langston Love — wide open under the basket to double Mack. If Love’s shot were released a split second sooner, or if the officials had a different opinion of the replay, Swartz’ gamble would have been largely to blame.

Jasen Green’s foul trouble limited him to just 20 minutes, though the Jays do not win the game without his leadership and playmaking in crunch time. His layup with 1:34 cut the deficit to five; seconds later he teamed with Josh Dix to trap Malik Mack and force a turnover, then threw a long pass to Dix for a dunk to cut the lead to three; on the next possession he grabbed the defensive rebound that gave Swartz the opportunity to tie it.

But earlier in the game, when they needed a sub while he sat with foul trouble, the Jays went in a somewhat surprising direction initially: freshman Kerem Konan, not Owen Freeman. And he more than held his own against a Georgetown frontline that had flummoxed Green.

“I just thought the six or seven minutes he played against St. John’s at the end, I saw some confidence,” McDermott said. “I saw maybe a better understanding of what we’re trying to do, and his ability to execute it. As you can see, his English is a lot better than our Turkish, but the language is still a problem. When you’re communicating on the fly, or you’re trying to yell something from the bench to the court, he may or may not understand it, and so it’s on us to do a better job to make sure he understands. But sometimes those things on the fly, they’re hard to stop and explain, so his teammates have to do a good job of making sure he understands what’s coming next.”

Konan played over five minutes straight in that first stretch, winning his minutes 10-9, and returned for the final six minutes of the half when the Jays made their first big run. He scored six points, made all three of his shots, drew two fouls and grabbed one rebound in 18 minutes.

Extra possession points were relatively close, as Creighton outscored Georgetown 14-11 on points off turnovers while the Hoyas had a 17-8 advantage on second chance points. And because the Jays had just six turnovers, they wound up taking three more shot attempts than the Hoyas and made nearly twice as many threes (13-7).

Highlights:

Press Conference:

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