Wednesday night, Georgetown led by one at halftime against DePaul. They had a 10-0 run to go ahead 45-39…and then they were on the business end of a 28-2 run (featuring 26 unanswered points! TWENTY SIX!) and wound up losing 82-74. From roughly the 14:00 mark of that second half until about five minutes remained, they were outscored 36-4. Outscored by a DePaul team that dressed just seven scholarship players, and was without leading scorer and rebounder Javon Freeman-Liberty and senior wing Javon Johnson. As if to rub salt in the wound, DePaul’s David Jones had the first triple-double in the history of DePaul Basketball (22 points, 14 rebounds, 10 assists).
The loss dropped them to 0-11 in Big East play and a NET ranking of 213. Here’s how bad that is: Kennesaw State, a team expected to be one of the dead-weight anchors on Creighton’s schedule, currently has a NET of 217. Georgetown is the Big East team no one wants to play at this point of the season for all the worst reasons.
They’re the worst defensive team in the Big East by a sizable margin, allowing a staggering 1.14 points per possession. Next worst is DePaul at 1.06.
They’re the third-worst offensive team in the league, with the worst effective field goal percentage. They’ve made only 39.8% of their two-point shots in Big East play. Here’s how bad that is — the worst team in all of Division 1 is shooting 41.3%. So if Georgetown’s Big East shooting percentage had been that poor all year, they’d be the worst shooting team in America inside the arc — and by nearly two full percentage points.
Throw in a roster that is constantly in flux, and Patrick Ewing is on the hot seat less than a year removed from winning four games in four days at the Big East Conference Tournament to earn a surprise NCAA Tournament bid.
And now, in the midst of all this chaos, because of a scheduling quirk created by the Hoyas’ COVID pause in December Creighton will play them twice in three days. Saturday’s game in Washington, DC is a Quad 3 game; Monday’s rematch in Omaha is a Quad 4. Both of them aren’t really “must-win” games, but they sure as heck are “can’t-lose” games — a Q3 or Q4 loss this late in the season is the sort of thing that can torpedo a bubble team’s resume. It’s a different type of pressure for a bubble team, as WBR’s Matt DeMarinis wrote on Twitter this week.
With that said, the Hoyas have talent. It’s part of why the Georgetown faithful are so frustrated. Freshman guard Aminu Mohammed, the preseason Big East Freshman of the Year, won’t win the postseason award because his team is so bad but don’t blame him. He leads the Hoyas in scoring (13.7 ppg.), rebounding (7.8 rpg.) and steals (35) and owns a Big East best seven double-doubles. Donald Carey has scored in double-figures in every Big East game he’s played in this year and made 42.7% from three, while averaging 13.5 points per game. Kaiden Rice averages 13.0 points per game and leads the league with 80 three-pointers made, including eight threes in Wednesday’s game at DePaul. And guard Dante Harris has done a decent job running the offense. Imagining what this team might look like with star center Qudas Wahab — who transferred to Maryland after last season — has to sting.
For Creighton, the biggest question is the health of two key players. Ryan Kalkbrenner has gutted it out the last two games on an ankle he rolled against UConn, looking like he was operating at about 75%. Arthur Kaluma left Tuesday’s game with a knee injury, and while he briefly returned, his status for Saturday is unknown. Reserve guard John Christofolis suffered a broken foot in practice last Sunday, and is out for the season. And while it’s long been assumed, Greg McDermott made it official in an interview with Westwood One on Thursday that Shereef Mitchell’s season is also done.
- Tip: 11:00am
- Venue: Capital One Arena, Washington, D.C.
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Tom Werme, Dickey Simpkins
- In Omaha: Cox channel 78 (SD), 1078 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 620 (SD), 1620 (HD)
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 219, Dish Network channel 150
- Cable Cutters: Available on all major streaming platforms
- Streaming on the Fox Sports app and website
- Radio: 1620AM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Satellite radio: XM 383; SiriusXM app 973
As Jon Nyatawa of the Omaha-World Herald pointed out in his preview, Georgetown’s effective field goal percentage in transition (55.8%) is significantly better than its eFG% in the halfcourt (45.0%). They’re going to try to run, unlike recent Bluejay opponents. Limiting live ball turnovers will be important.
Kaiden Rice scored his 1,500th career point at DePaul while recording his ninth game with at least five triples (8-13) and fifth contest with at least 20 points (24). Aminu Mohammed added 16 points and 10 rebounds for his seventh double-double of the season.
As a team, Georgetown leads the BE shooting 36.6% from distance while its 8.1 triples/game rank third.
In 19 all-time meetings against the Hoyas, Creighton is 9-2 when scoring 74 points or more against Georgetown, but 1-7 when scoring 73 points or less. The Bluejays average 82.40 points in the 10 triumphs, but 61.11 points per game in the nine setbacks.
If all league games are played as intended this weekend, by the end of Sunday Creighton will have played the fewest Big East home games (5) and tied for the most Big East road games (7) so far this season.
Creighton has not played the same team in back-to-back regular-season games since Feb. 17 and Feb. 21 of 1996, when they squared off with Northern Iowa twice in four days. The Bluejays lost in Omaha 58-57, then also lost the rematch 87-73 in Cedar Falls. Since that 1996 sequence there have been seven other sequences where Creighton played the same opponent in consecutive games. Six of those situations came when CU closed the regular-season against the same team it opened with at the conference tournament. The other occasion came in 2011 when Creighton and Oregon played a Best-of-3 series in the College Basketball Invitational finals.
Creighton is 10-9 all-time against Georgetown and has won seven of the last 10 meetings in the series. Creighton is 6-2 at home against the Hoyas.
The less said about their last meeting, the better.
On this date in 2003, the Bluejays moved their record to 22-2 (and 12-1 in the Valley) by virtue of a 70-67 overtime win against SMS. It was such a wild game that beat writer Steve Pivovar led off his recap in the OWH by suggesting Bluejay fans “buy stock in Rolaids.”
Ranked 12th in the nation and playing in front of a sold-out Civic, the Jays fell behind by 17 in the first half as Kyle Korver missed seven of his first eight shots. Then he made three big ones in the final 10 minutes of the game, including a dramatic three from 30 feet out as the shot clock expired to tie the game at 51. The Jays then went ahead 56-51, but had several empty possessions where they failed to extend that lead. And then they turned it over twice, missed two free throws, Korver fouled out, and SMS’ Tamarr Maclin (remember that guy?) forced overtime on a layup with 3.8 seconds to go.
Playing OT without Korver, the game’s biggest shot came from freshman Nate Funk. He buried a three-pointer to give CU a 66-65 lead; though SMS briefly re-took the lead, momentum was with the Jays after Funk’s huge shot and Brody Deren put them ahead for good on a short jumper moments later.
Afterward, Korver told the media, “We have this feeling that we can turn it on and off. Hopefully we learned our lesson tonight, and it won’t happen again. But we’ve already said that a few times this year.”
In literary terminology, that’s called foreshadowing, given how the season ended.
The Bottom Line:
KenPom favors the Jays by 6, and Vegas by 5.5. It’d be nice to think they’d win by more than that, but nothing has been easy for this group. Jays will win, I think, but not cover.
Creighton 64, Georgetown 60