Georgetown Game Thread

[HandDownManDown]

The second half felt pretty good … and then we give up a 13-2 run.

88%.

Baylor’s FT% and percentage of your posts that are negative about Creighton. I track it on a spreadsheet.

This got a chuckle out of me.

[cujaysfan]

For whatever reason we always get a reluctant whistle at GTown.

And you can tell we are always trying to get out of there fast. Usually only one player interview after game and Mac is out of locker room quick and ready to roll.

[skinzfan23]

Didn’t realize that Ashworth had a season-high 7 assts tonight.

[go_jays]

Is there any legitimate reason to not give Dotzler and Green some run at this point? Do we need to be up 40?

Trust?

I assume he is waiting until the under 4 TO.

Probably, but I think Mac's probably thinking he's started to get some flow on offense with the passing and ball movement and he wants to get the starters/rotation guys some reps with it

Green and Dotzler will get time toward the end

Exactly. Once your team finds itself and it's rhythm, you want them to get a decent amount of reps in it. Get a good sense of what it "feels" like to be playing that way. It's the same reason you always want to try and end your practices on a good play or series of good plays.

[go_jays]

Didn’t realize that Ashworth had a season-high 7 assts tonight.

I think guys are being a little too harsh on Ashworth at this point. I wasn't particularly fond of his shot selection tonight. But you don't know what Mac is telling him what he wants to see from him. Last year's team had 2 years to get their shit together. Some of these guys are experiencing the kitchen heat for only half a season. And the "experiment" with Trey and Ashworth is still in an evolutionary stage... although, Ashworth's shot selection aside, they looked like maybe they've gotten some things figured out.

[chairclanger]

What they figured out is that it's easy to look good against a team that lets you drive right by them for uncontested layups. Even senile Steve Lappas was calling out Georgetown for not playing defense in the second half. I think that part of our turnover problem is Kalk's inability to seal his man and snatch the post entry pass out of the air with some authority. If the pass isn't perfect, all the defender has to do is get his pinky fingernail on it and Kalk loses it. Kalk is great on anything thrown above the rim, but really struggles with contested balls.

[SonofFrankTomera]

Didn’t realize that Ashworth had a season-high 7 assts tonight.

I think guys are being a little too harsh on Ashworth at this point. I wasn't particularly fond of his shot selection tonight. But you don't know what Mac is telling him what he wants to see from him. Last year's team had 2 years to get their shit together. Some of these guys are experiencing the kitchen heat for only half a season. And the "experiment" with Trey and Ashworth is still in an evolutionary stage... although, Ashworth's shot selection aside, they looked like maybe they've gotten some things figured out.

Since the guys are getting paid now, I would like to propose a trade: Steven Ashworth + 25K in NIL for Shereef Mitchell. I’m only including the NIL money since Ashworth will most certainly play another college season next year and Mitchell will be out of eligibility next year.

And yes I know there are no trades allowed, just including this for conversation purposes only.

[wildjays]

Creighton hoops bounced back on Tuesday night with the road win against Georgetown. Are the Jays on the right track now?

Matt DeMarinis and Jacob Padilla break it all down in the Bluejay Beat Podcast, live for our Patreon subscribers

https://www.patreon.com/posts/bluejay-b ... =join_link

[Chicagojayfan]

Good start for bouncing back. Figured we would win, but GT has always been a tough team for us to play on the road and they've played a bit better at home even coming close to beating TCU

Cooley got the pace he wanted about 60 possessions, got a poor 3PT shooting night from us (32%) and got the kind of officiating he wanted but it still wasn't enough for them to have a real shot in this game. Typically any one of these 3 things going this way against us could put us in a losing game, but not last night.

The big questions coming in were rebounding and turnovers:

- Rebounding - we had our worst rebounding game of the season vs. Marquette (43.7% TRB's) to our 2nd best (71.8%). It was also Georgetown's worst rebounding night of their season on a percentage basis (35%) and in raw numbers we outrebounded them 42-21. Pretty clear check box on doing the job there

- Turnovers - Ugly, and then better for this game, although we dropped from 20.6% to 18.8% (remember this game had 8-10 fewer possessions than Marquette had). But the team responded after the half, going from 11 turnovers in the first half to only 3 in the second half, and that really showed up in the way the offense moved the ball. I half joked during the game that they needed to hear Altman's old message "Simple Plays Fellas" and maybe Mac said the same thing at half. Team stopped forcing things as much and moved the ball much more effectively by not trying to make things harder than they are already

Big 3 all had their moments and we got nice contributions from the rest as well;

- Baylor was great again. He's been the best player on the team so far, IMO, and his first half bailed us out of what could have been a worse first half performance

- Alexander - the 5 first half turnovers were ugly and he was he was just trying too hard to make things happen, but outside of the turnovers he hit a 3 PT shot (something that hasn't been going down for him) and scored a bit. Then he exploded in the second half

- Kalk - we weren't good at getting him the ball in the first half, but in the second half we showed more patience and we got 4/4 from him in the paint. GT was also 7/13 at the rim vs us being 18/20 at the rim

- Ashworth - I saw signs of us working out the difficulties we've been having with the lack of flow between him and Trey last night. He ended up with 7 assists/2 turnovers and took a lead guard mentality more often than I've seen from him lately and he made some outstanding passes. That helped free up Trey for more shots and got the flow of the offence moving better, IMO. The shots will fall for him, but if he can keep passing like he did last night we'll be on the right route. I also thought the balance of minutes for him and Bello was better for the team and the offense

Some general thoughts on the Defense/Offense:

- 3rd worst offensive night of the year for GT for offensive rating (and the worst on their home court)/2nd worst in terms of TS% (47%). We held them to about 1 PPP, but part of that was us taking our foot off the gas at the end of the second half

- Worst defensive performance of year for them by offensive rating (122.2) and by TS% (62.7%) - and this was with a poor shooting night from 3PT range and we got the rim a ton all night. I thought I saw some different motion, especially with Baylor where we looked to get the ball to him headed to the rim

Team is still a work in progress, but they want on the road and did what they needed to do. Road games in the BE are always physical and tough and despite Cooley getting a slow game without a lot of whistles, we demolished them on the boards. Even in the first half we beat them on the boards 23-13. Turnovers were ugly in the first half (even uglier for a slow paced game), but we came out and dealt with the problem in the second half

Thankful that we are getting Providence at home next as I don't think the team is gelled enough to go on the road to play in that stadium just yet, but I like our chances at home and like our chances to keep building what we need to build

[drbluejay]

I was ready to give my standout player to Baylor once again until Trey exploded in the 2nd half so I give the award to Trey.
Baylor is the best player on this team and probably the only one deserving of first team all conference up to this point.
Of our 8 rotation players, I believe Baylor and Bello are the only 2 playing playing better than I expected prior to the season.