Before last week’s meeting with Georgetown, we wrote in the Primer that the Hoyas offense was, quote, “really bad.” That was true before taking most of January off for a COVID pause. Since returning, they’ve averaged 1.14 points per possession in three games after averaging 0.98 in their first 11 games. They beat Providence and Creighton, and took Villanova to the wire. Maybe it’s a small sample size. Maybe they figured some things out during their break. Either way, they’ve been a different, better team since returning. And the Jays saw it first hand.
After last week’s loss to the Hoyas, Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show that he felt the game was “lost on the first 17 or 18 possessions … We made a couple of mistakes that led to easy baskets, and that got them started. And then it was hard to get them stopped.” The Hoyas made 11 of their first 14 shots and CU was chasing them the rest of the way.
That’s a recurring theme with this Creighton team, unfortunately. Their last four opponents have made 49.6% of their shots in the first half but just 41.0% after halftime. Even though they ultimately won Saturday in Milwaukee, they were plagued by another slow start defensively.
But against Georgetown, they compounded a slow start with a ton of turnovers (20% of their possessions ended in a turnover) and giving up offensive rebounds (25% of Georgetown’s missed shots became second chances). The rebounds you can kind of understand; Georgetown has a plethora of talented bigs who take up space. They’re one of the Big East’s best rebounding teams. The turnovers are another story. Georgetown ranks 340th in D1 in opponent turnover rate, and yet the Jays turned it over 15 times. Just six of those were credited as steals. That leaves nine turnovers that were the result of silly mistakes and unforced errors. And it was their primary ball handlers who were the biggest offenders — Mitch Ballock and Marcus Zegarowski had three apiece.
The Jays can probably survive and win on a night where excessive turnovers and offensive rebounds are an either/or proposition. When they both happen it’s almost certainly going to end in a loss.
Senior Jahvon Blair leads the Hoyas in scoring at 17.6 points per game, but isn’t a terribly efficient scorer. Sunday against Villanova he scored 18 points but took 20 shots to get there. He takes nearly 15 shots a game, and shoots sub-40% overall (81-of-207, 39.1%), and from three-point range (34.4%). But last week he had a monster game in Omaha. Blair scored 22 points, hit five 3-pointers, and had seven assists. He combined with Jamorko Pickett to make a combined 7-of-9 from three point range in the first half, and the resulting adjustments left the smaller Jays susceptible to being torched in the paint by the Hoyas’ litany of big men.
Pickett is a streaky scorer. If you let him find a rhythm early, like the Jays did a week ago, he can torch you. Creighton’s done a reasonably good job on him the last three seasons; before last week he’d only scored in double figures once in six tries, and needed 16 shots to score 17 points in that game. But he scored 16 in last week’s win, with seven rebounds and three assists.
While Blair and Pickett torched the Jays in the first half, 6’7″ grad transfer Chudier Bile beat them up in the paint in the second half. Bile had 17 points, six rebounds, and four steals. Defensively, he disrupted the Jays’ ball movement with his long arms and instincts. And based on the number of Bile-based memes WBR received on Twitter from Hoya fans after the game, he’s a pretty popular player.
How Creighton schemes defensively against Georgetown will be fascinating. They certainly have to keep the Hoya guards from getting hot early again and hitting a ton of threes. But what about the inside game? Will they double-team Qudas Wahab, Timothy Ighoefe and Bile and take their chances straight-up on the perimeter? Whatever they do, they have to be more aggressive, more organized, and communicate better. The breakdowns that led to easy baskets, especially early, cannot happen again.
- Tip: 8:00pm Central
- Venue: McDonough Arena, Washington, D.C.
- TV: CBSSN
- Announcers: Andrew Catalon, Steve Lappas
- 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 Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Satellite Radio:
- Creighton broadcast: Sirius channel 134 or XM 201
- Georgetown broadcast: XM channel 386
- Since Georgetown returned from its pause due to Covid considerations, the Hoyas have improved in nearly every statistical category, seeing increases in points per game (+6.7), field goal % (+5.0%), rebound margin (+2.4), and assists/game (+2.2). They’ve also dropped their turnovers/game (-4.5) and opponent steals/game (-3.5).
- Georgetown is hitting 8.6 3-pointers per game (3rd in the Big East). GU has made 10+ treys in seven games this season, more than doubling last season’s effort (3). Jahvon Blair has made a team-high 42 3-pointers on the season and leads the Big East with 3.0 3-Pointers/game.
- Since returning from its pause, Georgetown has held the edge in the paint against each opponent, including a commanding 36-20 advantage over #3 Villanova. GU’s inside out play has been aided by the efficient shooting of Wahab, Bile and Timothy Ighoefe (54.2%, 38-of-70).
- Creighton is 6-1 in Big East road games so far this year. They’ve never started 7-1 in either the MVC or the Big East, and they’ve never won eight conference road games in one season.
- Since a 94-76 win at St. John’s on Dec. 17th, five of Creighton’s last six league road tilts have been tied at some point in the last 3:02 of regulation. In the game that wasn’t, Creighton won by three after Marquette missed a tying three-pointer in the final seconds.
- Creighton owns a 34-36 record in Big East road games since the league’s 2013-14 realignment. Those 34 victories trail only Villanova’s 50. Since the start of the 2018-19 campaign, Creighton’s 15 Big East road wins lead the league.
Creighton is 9-8 all-time against Georgetown and has won six of the last eight meetings in the series. Creighton has won two of the past three meetings in Washington, D.C., but has never played inside the on-campus McDonough Arena.
On February 9, 2005, Nate Funk, Johnny Mathies and Tyler McKinney scored 29 of the Bluejays final 33 points in a 83-82 win over Northern Iowa that was nationally-televised by ESPN2. The Jays scored on 12 of their final 14 possessions to overcome a then-arena-record 31-point performance by Panther guard Ben Jacobson, and it still almost wasn’t enough.
Creighton held a 10-point lead with 54.3 seconds remaining, and then Jacobson did his best Reggie Miller at MSG impression by scoring 10 points in the final 41 seconds, including two 3-point baskets in the final seven seconds.
“That was the longest minute I’ve ever played,” Funk told the media afterward. “They just kept hitting shot after shot. Thank God there was only point-seven seconds left when Ben hit that last one.”
CU ran out the clock after that second three, and took a deep breath as they’d pulled into a third-place tie in the league.
The Bottom Line:
The only two teams who have shot better than 50% agains the Jays this season are Marquette and Georgetown. On Saturday, the Jays avenged their loss to the Golden Eagles by ratcheting up their toughness and taking the fight to them. To sweep Revenge Week, they’ll need to duplicate that effort. I think they do.
Creighton 76, Georgetown 70