HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel will spend the upcoming months covering several Georgetown basketball home games, with (hopefully) a very special reward coming in March. He was in attendance Tuesday night and prepared this photo essay about the Hoyas’ matchup against Creighton.
I was running late and felt worried that the pregame meal would be cold by the time I arrived but no problem: Potbelly’s sandwich/chips/cookie. Let’s tip it off in the conference home opener (even though most of the student body is still out of town due to winter break):
Another person who was not on the court was Georgetown’s leading scorer Jayden Epps, who was out with a right ankle injury and his foot in a boot, but fortunately he is just “day-to-day”:
His teammate Jay Heath picked up the scoring slack in the 1st half with a 3 from the top of the key, a tip-in that went high off the glass, and a runner in the lane:
Creighton G Trey Alexander is the hardest-working man in college basketball. He has averaged MORE than 40 MPG in his past 4 games (thanks to an OT loss to Villanova) but was still fresh enough to make a couple of layups and a shot from behind the arc in the 1st 20 minutes:
His teammate Baylor Scheierman also made a variety of short/long range shots to finish with 10 PTS before halftime and help give his team a 28-24 lead despite the Bluejays committing 11 turnovers:
Creighton coach Greg McDermott must have delivered 1 heck of a halftime speech because his team came out of the locker room on a tear and did not let up, outscoring the Hoyas 30-11 during the 1st 10 minutes thanks to 13-17 FG shooting and an 11-2 REB advantage. Scheierman made both and old-fashioned and a regular 3-PT play, while Alexander made almost everything (11-17 FG) en route to a season-high 25 PTS. Their 3rd Musketeer (SR C Ryan Kalkbrenner) had a quiet 1st half but converted a couple of alley-oops in the 2nd stanza to finish with 12 PTS/9 REB/4 BLK as he attempts to win his 3rd straight Big East DPOY award:
The lone bright spot for the Hoyas was FR G Rowan Brumbaugh. I was worried that he had hit the “freshman wall” after going scoreless on 0-5 FG during his last game vs. Marquette, but he bounced back in a big way with a trio of trifectas, a scoop shot off the glass, and a pullup jumper en route to a career-high 19 PTS:
Alas, it was not enough as Creighton cruised to a 77-60 win that was not as close as the score indicated. In the postgame press conference I asked Coach McDermott whether Alexander is 1 of those players who never gets tired or is just such a great athlete that he is capable of playing well even when he is tired. He said that if his players need a break then they will tell him, and if not then not, but he trusts them because “you only have so many miles you can put on your body in a week”:
Rather than focus on the negatives, I wondered whether Georgetown coach Ed Cooley had done any extra coaching to help Brumbaugh break out of his mini-slump. He gave the credit to his assistant coaches for breathing life and confidence into their young men, but while he believes that Rowan is a really good player he emphasized that the whole team needs to play better defense:
That is a wrap, I simply do not have the desire to watch DePaul-Georgetown on Saturday so check back next week when Seton Hall comes calling.