Georgetown got bullied down low all afternoon as the Creighton Bluejays coasted to an easy 80-66 win over a Hoyas team that has become the doormat of the Big East after twelve consecutive losses in conference play. The defeat came despite a strong shooting display from Kaiden Rice (16 points), as Creighton senior Ryan Hawkins took over the game and exploded for 30 points.
Creighton coach Greg McDermott got his revenge for last year’s rout in the Big East Championship Game on Saturday with a dominant performance at Capital One Arena. The Jays slowly built their lead over the course of the game, led by a bundle of boards on both ends of the floor and plenty of wide open opportunities from deep. Creighton connected on almost 40% of their threes, while Georgetown could only manage to convert on a quarter of their three-point looks.
Kaiden Rice and Don Carey (13 points) were the main catalysts for Georgetown’s offensive attack, but they didn’t receive much help as Aminu Mohammed and Dante Harris struggled from the field all game. Creighton’s Ryan Kalkbrenner and Ryan Hawkins dominated their matchups in the paint, each grabbing 10+ rebounds and plenty of second chance opportunities for their shooters.
Both squads couldn’t connect on much to begin the first half, but some adjustments helped the Hoyas stay in lockstep with the Jays for much of the opening period. Creighton did a great job of taking away the Hoyas’ three-point threats but Georgetown responded by running some action inside the perimeter for Rice and Carey that worked well.
I asked Patrick Ewing about this maneuver following the game, and he had this to say: “I think [Rice] did a great job in making the adjustment. They took away the three; he was able to curl in and still get his shot—both he and Don [Carey]
The Jays responded with some quick buckets of their own, as Ryan Hawkins began to take over the game with a flurry of threes as the first half wound down. The bigs for Georgetown had no answer to Hawkins and Kalkbrenner on either side of the floor, and Ryan Mutombo couldn’t take advantage of his new starting role. Malcolm Wilson also seemed bamboozled by just about everything Creighton was throwing at him to close the half.
Even after trailing 22-11 in the rebounding department in the first half, Georgetown entered the locker room only trailing by just five points.
Creighton was firing out of the gate in the second half. Carey did his best to close the increasingly wide margin with a smooth three followed by this tough layup off a backdoor cut.
Ryan Hawkins kept having answers to every sign of life from Georgetown, however, and Creighton senior Keyshawn Feazell had a really productive stretch off the bench to widen the Jays’ lead to 16.
The Hoyas fought in the middle of the second half to bring the lead back to 7 points, and Jalin Billingsley showed signs of progress down low:
Again, Ryan Hawkins ensured that the run wouldn’t threaten his team’s chance of winning the game by hitting a pair of open threes. From there, the two teams lazily traded baskets as the clock wound down, and Creighton emerged with a 14-point victory.
The good news is that Georgetown gets another crack at this Creighton team on Monday in Omaha, for what could very well be Patrick Ewing’s last shot to take down McDermott and the Jays. I asked the Hall of Farmer what he and his team could do differently on Monday night:
“We have to do a better job of getting to them at the three-point line. This is my fifth year here, and they’ve always been a very good three-point shooting team, and that’s one of the things we’ve always stressed to our guys. We just didn’t do a good job today of getting to them.”
In the end, Georgetown continues to be a team unwilling to make many adjustments, and the losses just keep piling up. Here’s hoping for a better outcome in Omaha, but don’t count on the Hoyas to finally stop the bleeding.
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