Through their first 12 Big East games a year ago, Creighton was 8-4. This year, they’re one better at 9-3. And as they enter the final month of the regular season, they’re hoping to replicate their finish from a year ago when they lost just once more to capture the Big East Regular Season title. If they do, two road comebacks last week may well be the propellent.
Looking too far ahead in this COVID world is fools gold, but assuming the immediate schedule goes off as planned, CU should be favored in each of their next three games — Georgetown twice, and at a fading Marquette team who has lost four of their last six games this Saturday. In other words, it’s a golden opportunity to get a head of steam rolling before the first of two showdowns with Villanova in the season’s final three weeks.
They’ll play Georgetown twice in six days, beginning with Wednesday’s Pink Out game. The Hoyas have only played seven league games and 12 overall, enduring a three-week pause encompassing most of January. They had six Big East games postponed, which leaves them with a lot to make up and not much time to do it. And with the original December 30 date for this game moved to Wednesday night when both programs opted to give their players a Christmas break, Georgetown will now play Creighton two straight games — Wednesday, and next Tuesday in D.C.
(Edit: After we published, it was announced Georgetown will now play Villanova on Super Bowl Sunday. The Wildcats were supposed to play Xavier, but the Musketeers are on pause. So the Hoyas step in, and now Georgetown can make up one of the six other games they postponed on or around February 17, the original date of the ‘Nova game that will now be played this weekend.)
The Hoyas returned to the court on Saturday and picked up a 73-72 over Providence when David Duke missed a potential game-tying free throw. It was their first win since December 13 — a 97-94 overtime thriller over St. John’s. But despite their struggles to win games, the Hoyas have reasons for optimism. There’s been a lot of moments where Georgetown looked really, really good. They’ve built leads in four of their eight losses that they couldn’t hold. In three of them, they led by double digits (Villanova, Butler, Marquette). On the other end of the spectrum, they fell behind by double-digits at Syracuse and came back to nearly pull the upset. And they beat a good Providence squad.
“We’ve showed that we can compete with anybody in the country that we’ve played so far,” Head Coach Patrick Ewing told the media last month. “But our problem is we don’t do it for the whole 40 minutes. We do it for 37 minutes or 30 minutes and then we self-destruct. It has to stop.”
Diagnosing the problem is complicated, because there’s multiple reasons. Turnovers are the biggest problem, or at least the most glaring. They’ve turned it over on 20.9% of their possessions this year, totaling 181 times in 12 games. Compounding things, they’re one of the worst teams in America at turning opponents over — the Hoyas’ opponents have turned it over on just 13.4% of possessions, ranking 345th out of 357 teams in D1. That works out to nearly seven fewer possessions than their opponent every game, on average.
Not that it’d help to shoot more. The Hoyas offense is really bad.
Their effective field goal percentage ranks 10th out of 11 teams in the Big East (47.2%). They take fewer free throws than anyone in the league, which is especially galling because they make 73.2% from the line as a team (1st in the Big East). Their shooting percentage on two-point shots is last in the league (44.2%). Their ratio of assists to made baskets ranks 10th in the league (49.7%).
Bright spots? They’re a good offensive rebounding team, securing 31.4% of their missed shots (76th in D1, 2nd in the Big East). They’re a slightly-above-average three-point shooting team (34.7%, 119th in D1 and 6th in the Big East). And they’re the best free-throw shooting team in the league.
Mostly, they’re inconsistent from game to game, and often from one stretch to another within games.
That’s not just a team-wide thing. Senior forward Jamorko Pickett averaged 14.6 points in the first five games, then scored fewer than eight in four straight games, and has averaged 15.0 over the last three. Grad transfers Donald Carey (9.8 points per game) and Chudier Bile (7.8) have shown flashes, but have also disappeared at times.
Senior Jahvon Blair leads the team in scoring at 17.3 points per game, but isn’t a terribly efficient scorer. He takes nearly 15 shots a game, and shoots sub-40% overall (68-of-174, 39%), and from three-point range (32.7%). He’s barely above on two-pointers (40.7%). CU saw all of those things first-hand a year ago; Blair took (gasp) 23 shots in Omaha to score 22 points. He was 5-of-15 on two-pointers and 3-of-8 on threes.
Speaking of Hoyas that Creighton remembers from a year ago, 6’11”, 240-pound sophomore center Qudas Wahab was just about unstoppable. He had 12 rebounds in Omaha, six of them offensive; he made 7-of-9 from the floor, all at close range. He’s simply a “big dude” as Greg McDermott called him on the postgame radio show following the Jays’ win over Georgetown last March, and CU doesn’t have anybody his size. Time after time they had good position on him and he simply went over the top of them. Creighton might have to double him in the post as they did a year ago. He’s averaging 11.8 points, 7.8 rebounds and 3.0 blocks a game, is shooting 56% from the floor, 74% from the line, and has defended well without fouling. He might be the most promising player on their roster.
The aforementioned Chudier Bile is coming off a 19-point game against Providence over the weekend, where he went 10-of-12 from the line. That represents more than half of his made free throws for the entire year (19-of-30); it’s an impressive showing but not indicative of a player who routinely draws a ton of fouls and attempts a ton of free throws. He’s a versatile 6’7″ and might see some time in the middle against Creighton’s small lineup, especially if Wahab needs a breather after running through ball screens on the perimeter.
Pickett is the third Hoya averaging double figures (11.6 points per game) and as we mentioned, is a streaky scorer. If you let him find a rhythm early he can torch you. Creighton’s done a reasonably good job on him the last three seasons; he’s only scored in double figures once in six tries, and needed 16 shots to score 17 points in that game.
It’s a difficult matchup to get a read on because Georgetown wants to run, which plays into Creighton’s hands especially at home. 36.6% of the Hoyas’ shot attempts have come in transition, eighth-most in D1 and even more than Creighton’s 34.3%. And their adjusted tempo is ever so slightly slower than CU at 69.2 possessions per game to 69.4 for the Jays.
But the Hoyas are also a really, really good offensive rebounding team, which is an area Creighton can be beaten on. Georgetown had 17 in Omaha last March; they had 17 on Saturday against Providence, including three on their final four possessions. Creighton’s goal here has to be to worry more about what happens after the rebound, because offensive rebounds are going to happen — the Jays must reset their defense quickly and limit Georgetown’s second chance points. They did that in the last meeting. If they do it again, they’ll be on their way to victory.
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This is the annual Pink Out game, and we know how much it means to so many people, especially in the Omaha community. We are extending an invitation for you to share what it means to you and your loved ones even if you won’t be in the arena to show it.
We’ve created an email specifically for this, so you can send your responses to pinkout@whiteandbluereview.com.
The stories shared already have been inspiring. Please keep them coming.
- Tip: 8:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Kevin Fitzgerald, Bill Raftery
- In Omaha: Cox channel 78 (SD), 1078 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 620 (SD), 1620 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: FS1 Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 219, Dish Network channel 150
- Streaming on FoxSportsGO
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Brody Deren
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Satellite Radio:
- Creighton broadcast on SiriusXM channel 84
- Georgetown broadcast on SiriusXM channel 384
- Qudus Wahab just missed out on a triple-double against St. John’s on December 13, finishing with a line of 17 points, 10 rebounds and nine blocks. The nine rejections were the most by a Hoya since Alonzo Mourning’s nine blocks against Delaware State on December 9, 1991.
- As a team, GU has made 10 or more treys in six games this season, which is already twice as many as all of last season (3). Senior Jahvon Blair has made a team-high 33 3-pointers on the season and is currently sixth on GU’s career list with 177. Classmate Jamorko Pickett has drained 18 treys this season and is 11th all-time at Georgetown with 151.
- Making his first-career start in Saturday’s come-from-behind win against Providence, Timothy Ighoefe tied a career high with seven rebounds to go along with two blocks and six points.
- Creighton raised $40,381 for this year’s “Creighton vs. Cancer Pink Out” Pink Out game, the second-highest total in the 11 year history of the event in spite of COVID. Only the $48,247.11 raised in 2013-14 was higher.
- In 12 league games, Creighton has outscored the opposition 109-94 in the final three minutes of regulation (plus overtime), limiting foes to 34.5 percent shooting from the field and 28.2 percent marksmanship from beyond the arc. Creighton has also upped its accuracy at the charity stripe to 66.7 percent in crunch time.
- Creighton has scored 80 points or more in each of its last seven games against Georgetown, with six of those games ending in a Bluejay victory. In 16 all-time meetings against the Hoyas, Creighton is 9-1 when scoring 74 points or more against Georgetown, but 0-6 when scoring 73 points or less.
Creighton is 9-7 all-time against Georgetown and has won six of the last seven meetings in the series. Creighton is 6-1 at home against the Hoyas, including five straight victories.
Last March, the Jays defeated Georgetown 91-76. Or as you might remember it, the Kelvin Jones Game. Seven points, six rebounds, two blocks and two steals in 15 minutes and one stretch where he scored in the post, dove to the floor to secure a steal on the next defensive trip, sealed off a help-side defender to open the way for a layup by Marcus Zegarowski seconds later, and then scored on a tip-dunk the next offensive possession.
On February 3, 2010 the Jays picked up a 84-71 win over Evansville. A lot of good stuff happened in that game, but I remember it more because — in WBR’s first year — that was a banner game for WBR. Patrick Marshall competed (but not very well) in the putting contest. And a video debuted on the jumbotron featuring our own “Dance Cam Guy”, aka Paul Liberty, dancing under a spotlight in the Old Gym.
Oh boy.
The Bottom Line:
KenPom favors the Jays by 14, and ESPN’s BPI gives Creighton a 92.7% chance of victory. 14 is a lot given how close most of Creighton’s league games have been this year, but let’s go with it.
#15 Creighton 82, Georgetown 69
