Three weeks ago, Creighton obliterated Georgetown 90-66 in Washington, D.C. by making 16 three-pointers against the Hoya defense. They had watched film of Marquette’s stretch bigs torching Georgetown, and exploited what they believed to be a weakness by having Toby Hegner repeatedly set ball screens on the Hoyas’ 6’10” big man Jessie Govan. That allowed a guard to penetrate the lane — which forced Govan to stop the dribble penetration, and leave Hegner either open behind the perimeter or guarded by a smaller player.
There’s reason to believe a similar strategy could be effective in the rematch, but their counter-attack — lobbing the ball over the top to Martin Krampelj — isn’t at their disposal anymore, so it will be interesting to see how Greg McDermott and Patrick Ewing scheme early on in this one. The Hoyas have allowed Big East teams to make nine or more threes in five of their nine games, including 13 to Marquette, 16 to the Jays and 17 to Villanova, so while their overall defensive numbers from the perimeter are OK, they’re susceptible to surrendering big games.
Georgetown’s a good rebounding team, grabbing an offensive board on 33.1% of their misses (62nd best in the country). 15% of their made baskets at the rim come on putbacks off of an offensive board — essentially the same percentage as Seton Hall, widely recognized as a rebounding juggernaut, to put that number in perspective. And they do a good job at getting to the line; 25% of their total points come from the line, the most in the Big East.
Everything else offensively is a challenge.
They rank dead last in the Big East in almost every category. Their adjusted offensive efficiency of 95.9 is last. So is their effective field goal percentage of 46.2%, and their 42.9% shooting percentage on two-point shots. They turn it over on 23.6% of their possessions, which also ranks dead last. Their three-point shooting is *slightly* better, ranking 7th in the league at 34.9%. But overall, almost everything offensively is difficult for the Hoyas.
Jessie Govan, their 6’10” center, leads them in both scoring and rebounding (16.7 ppg., 10.6 rpg.). He also leads them in blocks with 26. In the first meeting, Govan was abused defensively as we talked about above, and was held in check by the Jays’ defense — he was 3-7 from the floor en route to seven points, and had just five rebounds. Without Krampelj to box him out, it will be difficult to keep him off the glass to the extent the Jays’ did in DC, but Hegner should be up to the challenge defensively.
For what it’s worth, Govan is coming off a bad performance in their loss to DePaul on Wednesday, with a season-low five points and five rebounds. He’s been in a bit of a slump; over the last four games Govan has averaged 11.0 points and 6.0 rebounds, well below his season totals.
6’7″ Marcus Derrickson is close behind Govan at 15.6 points and 7.5 rebounds per contest. He was a non-factor in the first game, scoring four points with five boards in 15 minutes. Derrickson is coming off the opposite type of game from Govan — he had a big night against DePaul with 23 points (5-9 from the floor, 4-6 on threes, and 9-10 from the line) with four assists, three rebounds and a block in 38 minutes. In their previous game, he scored a career-high 27 points against St. John’s.
Kaleb Johnson averages 9.4 points and 4.9 rebounds a game, and had a career-high 10 rebounds three weeks ago against Creighton. Johnson was the primary beneficiary of all the attention CU’s defense paid to Govan and Derrickson on the glass.
Their two starting guards are Jamorko Pickett (a massive guard at 6’8″, 190) and Jonathan Mulmore (also lengthy at 6’4″). Pickett averages 8.5 points and 3.4 rebounds a game. Mulmore leads the team with 72 assists (3.6 per game) and scores 5.9 points a night.
If the Jays can limit Georgetown’s second-chance opportunities — and in turn, create transition opportunities for themselves — they’ll be able to ratchet up the tempo closer to where they’d like it. And if they can take advantage of Georgetown’s general sloppiness with the basketball, they can likewise create chances to run. Those are both important keys, because getting to the rim against the outsized Hoyas will be difficult with the Bluejays current personnel, and counting on making 16 threes again isn’t a smart strategy (however likely it might be against the Hoya defense).
For Georgetown, their opportunity lies in attacking the Bluejays inside; they’ve done a solid job all year of scoring inside, and at drawing fouls. If Govan and Derrickson get rolling, the Jays do not have much to combat them with — and if they’re able to get Hegner and Manny Suarez in foul trouble, things could get mighty interesting.
- Tip: 7:05pm
- Venue: CenturyLink Center Omaha
- TV: CBSSN
- Announcers: Carter Blackburn and Pete Gillen
- In Omaha: Cox channel 234 (SD), 1234 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 643 (SD), 1643 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: CBSSN Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 221; Dish Network channel 158
- Streaming info
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Josh Dotzler
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- For Cord Cutters
- Georgetown will lend support to the Creighton Versus Cancer effort by wearing their pink Jordan XXXII sneakers.
- Marcus Derrickson is averaging a team-high 18.2 ppg in nine Big East games, scoring 20 or more points in five games. He is ranked ninth in scoring, fourth in rebounding (7.9 rpg), fourth in 3-point field goal percentage (.485) and eighth in free throw percentage (.842).
- Georgetown is outrebounding its opponents 39.9 rpg to 33.7 rpg. In conference play, they average a +2.4 margin; DePaul, Villanova and Syracuse are the only teams to outrebound the Hoyas this year.
- Toby Hegner scored 16 points in Creighton’s 68-63 win at St. John’s on Tuesday, the fifth time in the last six games that the fifth-year senior has scored in double-figures. Hegner is now averaging 13.0 points and 4.0 rebounds per game in the three games that Martin Krampelj has missed (including the Seton Hall game, when Krampelj was hurt in the first half), compared to 9.1 points and 2.6 rebounds before Krampelj was sidelined. And Hegner’s best game of the season came on January 6 at Georgetown, when he poured in a season-best 19 points, including five three-pointers in the first half as Creighton raced to a 45-21 lead.
- Saturday will be Creighton’s 10th Big East game of the season, but those 10 games will have come against just six different opponents. When play concludes on Saturday, the Bluejays will be finished with the regular-season series against Seton Hall (1-1), Providence (1-1), St. John’s (2-0) and Georgetown (1-0 so far). Next week Creighton will meet Villanova and DePaul for the first time each.
- Marcus Foster had 25 points (vs. Seton Hall) and 22 points (at Providence) last week before pumping in 24 more at St. John’s on Tuesday. He owns 72 points in four career games against Georgetown, good for 18.0 ppg. Foster scored a career-high 35 points in last year’s victory over Georgetown in Omaha.
Creighton is 5-6 all-time against Georgetown, but is 3-1 in Omaha against the Hoyas. The home team has won four of the last five meetings.
CU is 5-2 all-time in the “Pink-Out” event, and beat Georgetown 76-63 in the 2014 version.
They defeated the Hoyas 90-66 earlier this month in Washington, D.C., making 16 three-pointers in the process. Here’s the highlights:
As part of the eighth annual “Creighton vs. Cancer Pink Out” game Saturday night, Bluejay players will wear pink shooting shirts and pink jerseys for the game and the first 16,000 fans entering the venue will receive a complimentary pink t-shirt.
This year’s Creighton vs. Cancer jersey auction raised $28,796, pushing the seven-year total of amount raised to over $186,300. All funds raised in the auction go to benefit Hope Lodge Nebraska. Here’s a preview of the t-shirt design, as well as this year’s pink shoes from Nike that the Jays will wear.
Changing topics, in another great piece from The Athletic, CJ Moore writes about how Greg McDermott has built one of the most exciting brands in college basketball — his words, not mine — with a deep-dive into the “Let It Fly” culture McDermott has built.
On January 27, 2013 Creighton made their final trip to Carbondale, Illinois as members of the Missouri Valley Conference (and in all likelihood, for the final time ever). The 81-51 blowout win bared little resemblance to the grind-it-out games with the Salukis that littered schedules in the late 1990s and 2000s. More on that storyline from Ott’s Thoughts:
“I wonder what Brody Deren was thinking as he sat courtside next to T. Scott Marr Sunday night.
Deren, a former Creighton star, accompanied the Jays for the game in Carbondale, sharing his expertise while doing color analysis next to Marr on the radio broadcast of Creighton’s 81-51 win over Southern Illinois.
The 30-point thrashing of the Salukis gave the Bluejays a 10th straight win against SIU, with the average margin of victory during that stretch a whopping 14 points per game.
Sunday’s victory was Creighton’s fifth straight win in Carbondale. Deren saw a much different SIU Arena during his three seasons at CU. His Creighton teams beat SIU three times, but two of those victories came in St. Louis (2002, 2003) and the other happened at the Civic Auditorium (2002). Deren’s Jays went 0-3 in Carbondale, running into a Salukis team that went to NCAA Tournaments every season Deren was at Creighton.
I can’t speak for the big man, but I’m not sure Deren nor I would have believed you 10 years ago if you said Creighton would post 10 straight wins over SIU, 5 of which coming in Carbondale, in the coming seasons.”
Neither would have believed you if you’d told them this one would be the last, either. As for the game, the Morning After’s recap sums it up. Perusing the “You Said It” section at the bottom brought back to life some great tweets from the past, including this one from the late Steve Pivovar:
https://twitter.com/CMWhitneyNCN/status/295713061195632641
Two things here. One, dammit I miss Piv’s dry wit, and tweets like this only make it moreso. Two, ironically enough Red Panda is the halftime show for Saturday’s game against Georgetown!
Before last year’s pink-out, I intro’d the video with the cheesiest pun in the decade-plus history of the Primer, and because I’m nothing if not superstitious, I’m just going to go ahead and copy it verbatim.
“Creighton was born to run, so here’s hoping they defend — and rebound — well enough to get out and do it. And yes, that’s probably the cheesiest pun I’ve ever used in a Primer. I don’t care.”
The Bottom Line:
Creighton runs early and often thanks to Hoya turnovers, and wins — though not by as many points as they did in D.C. KenPom says 13, and I’ll go with that.
Creighton 86, Georgetown 73