BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 13, 2021

Greg McDermott

Creighton Bluejays

Madison Square Garden

Postgame Media Conference

Georgetown - 73, Creighton - 48

COACH MCDERMOTT: Congrats to Georgetown. They played a terrific game on both ends of the floor. I'm just thinking in games like this where obviously they played three days in a row and we've played two days in a row, and we were in a very physical grind-it-out game late last night. So I think so much of it is momentum, and when you have momentum you don't think about being fatigued and you're not a half a step slow. We had that momentum early. We got off to that lead, and then they really captured it after that.

And even, I think, it's a three-point game with a little over five minutes to go in the first half. And we just had a collapse there at the end of the first half, offensively and defensively.

So I feel for our guys. They've worked hard to get to this point. And you want to finish it when you get here. At the same time we have to have the maturity to flush it and learn from it, move on and get ready for next weekend.

Q. You haven't really had a performance like this all season yet. How do you get the guys to use the short part of their memory and make sure they're confident going into March Madness?

COACH MCDERMOTT: I mean, the good side is we don't have to play in a day or two. We won't play for possibly a week. So we have some time to get a little bit of rest and some time to get on the practice floor and get everybody healthy, hopefully for a good run in the NCAA Tournament.

But we've got a mature group and I think they understand this hasn't happened to us very often over the course of the last couple of years. I don't think, as you mentioned, it hasn't happened all season this year, where we just didn't have it on either end of the floor, but once in a while it happens. You just hope it doesn't happen on a night like tonight.

Q. You mentioned momentum. You guys have taken some gut punches at times this year and bounced back in games, down early to Providence, forced that game, came back against Seton Hall. Why was it so difficult to flip it in this one?

COACH MCDERMOTT: We just couldn't ever hit that big shot. I thought there were times where we ran pretty good offense and got an open shot and missed it. Then we'd have a pretty good defensive possession and they'd hit a shot the last five seconds or get an offensive rebound and stick it back in there.

So to get out of those holes you need some good things to happen. And after that first 15 minutes of the game, we didn't have much good happen the rest of the way.

Q. Obviously you guys didn't play well today. But it seems like Georgetown is a completely different team than they were during the early season and during the regular season in general. How do you feel about that and what makes them so difficult to play now?

COACH MCDERMOTT: As I told Coach Ewing after the game, I'm just really happy for the Georgetown program, especially happy for Patrick. I think he's done a terrific job of building that program and has done it the right way.

And obviously there's been a lot of adversity this year with a couple of pauses that they've had. And he found a way to get them to bounce out of that.

So they have length on the inside. They really challenge you at the rim. And they've got length on the wing as well with Blair and Pickett. And I really think Harris, his maturity over the course of the year has really changed the trajectory of the team in my opinion because he's really became a reliable ball handler, distributor and scorer as well.

So I think he was playing at the end of the season as well as any freshman in our league.

Q. Georgetown played pretty good defense against you guys, strong to the floor, held you to 28 percent in the first half. But was I wrong in seeing that you guys just missed a lot of shots that you typically make?

COACH MCDERMOTT: We shoot a lot of 3-point shots and tonight obviously we didn't shoot it well. I think we had three starters combined 3-of-27, and those are guys that have been pretty efficient most of the season.

So it happens once in a while and obviously their ability to protect the paint kind of forces you out to the 3-point line. And to loosen that defense up and get those guys out of the paint you have to make some shots and force them to kind of stretch out a little bit and that creates some driving lanes. And we couldn't get them out of that because we couldn't make a shot.

Q. Obviously today didn't go as planned. But what are some positives you guys can take out of this game going forward into the NCAA Tournament?

COACH MCDERMOTT: I don't know there's a lot of positives we can take out of the game. I think we can take some positives out of the weekend. We played really well against Butler on Thursday. Really were able to win a rock fight last night against a very good UConn team.

So we'll take from those games, and then we'll look at this film and try to break it down and figure out what things could have we done different, where was some mistakes in terms of our coverages defensively, execution offensively that we can try to clean up as we move into next weekend.

Q. Obviously not the way you wanted things to end. What do you feel like you need to do better getting ready for March Madness? And how good is this team down the road? Because this is a very well run organization.

COACH MCDERMOTT: Thank you, I appreciate that. And I've got a great group of guys in that locker room. And we've been solid defensively really all year and our offense has been one of the top 15 or 20 offenses in the country. And tonight it wasn't. You credit Georgetown for their ability to take us out of rhythm.

But we can accomplish everything, anything that we want to because this is a team that understands how to play the game. They play together. And defensively we're usually really connected and tonight we weren't.

So we'll fix a few things, and, like I said, we're excited to take part in Selection Sunday tomorrow, see where we're going, and get ready to play next weekend.

Q. You still have a very experienced roster. When it comes to this time of the year in the NCAA Tournament, experience tends to be a favored asset of teams that want to make a deep run. So, how much of a role do you want the experience you have on your team to play, to get to where you want to be in the tournament, which is the second weekend?

COACH MCDERMOTT: Yeah, and it's everything. Leadership at this time of year is so vitally important, especially when you're coming off one of these games. Those guys have to have the ability and the maturity to kind of process what happened, maybe learn from it, then almost pretend it never happened, because we haven't had one of these games all season in 28 games until tonight.

So that's where that leadership and maturity, you don't want self-doubt to creep in this time of year. So we'll get our bounce back in our step and we'll be excited to play this weekend.