Friday afternoon’s media availability was overshadowed by the announcement that junior center Josh Smith is out for the rest of the season and there is no timeline on junior guard Jabril Trawick’s recovery from a broken jaw.
Before the Hoyas headed to Omaha, however, Head Coach John Thompson III, senior forward Nate Lubick and junior forward Mikael Hopkins provided some additional color on tomorrow’s matchup with Creighton.
The Bluejays impressed Georgetown and the rest of the nation on Monday night after turning in a 96-68 shellacking of No. 4 Villanova.
“They are a great shooting team,” Hopkins said. “We have to come out there, defend and force these guys to shoot tough twos.”
As my colleague Ashwin Wadekar pointed out in his preview, Creighton relies heavily on senior forward Doug McDermott, who averages 24.8 points per game.
“They run a lot of stuff for him but he’s in constant, perpetual motion,” Lubick said. “They put him in a lot of ball screens and his ability to shoot, his ability to pass, make him pretty special.”
Georgetown has struggled down the stretch of its last three losses, surrendering sizable leads against Xavier and Seton Hall and faltering in the final seconds of regulation to Marquette. Finishing strong defensively has been a major point of emphasis in practice this week.
“We have to do a lot of things differently. We are not protecting the three-point line and that’s something we’ve really worked on the last couple days,” Lubick said.
The trip to Omaha is the first leg of the toughest stretch of Georgetown’s schedule. The Blue and Gray will return home for a Monday night date against Villanova before playing Michigan State at Madison Square Garden next Saturday. That’s a lot of potential pitfalls, but could be a turning point for the Hoyas.
“We’ve got to win some games,” Lubick said. “Being able to set the tone here with a win at Creighton, getting the chance to play Villanova on Monday, if we can get those wins, we’ll be in a great place.”
Thompson, however, was unwilling to look that far ahead.
“All our energy needs to go into the here and now,” Thompson said.
‘Pink Out’ in Omaha
On January 26, 2013 in a game against Louisville, John Thompson III wore pink sneakers.
Basketball coaches across the country will be wearing sneakers as part of “Coaches vs. Cancer” this weekend but Thompson III and Creighton coach Greg McDermott are taking the special day a step further by participating in a ‘Pink Out’ that specifically targets breast cancer.
“Coach McDermott’s wife and my wife, Monica, were fighting the battle at the same time,” Thompson said. “That’s when I got to know him, we’d call each other up and say, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’”
As part of the ‘Pink Out,’ players for both teams will be wearing pink shoes and Thompson and the other coaches will also wear pink.
