Year Three under Ed Cooley has not exactly gone according to plan for Georgetown. After winning 18 games a year ago, they started 5-0 this year including a win at Maryland and a home win against KenPom #23 Clemson. Then came the Big East opener against Xavier, where they lost 80-77 and missed a potential game-tying three at the buzzer. The headline, though, was Cooley’s response: he angrily hurled a water bottle into the crowd, and hit a young child sitting in his mother’s lap.
An angry Ed Cooley chucks a water bottle into the crowd after the loss pic.twitter.com/rWgd5qKZCY
— Jared Kotler (@JaredKotler) December 21, 2025
Suspended for their next game, a win over Coppin State, the Hoyas haven’t won since. A three-game losing streak featuring defeats at the hands of St. John’s, DePaul and Seton Hall is bad enough on the surface, but in the loss to the Blue Demons, Georgetown made one shot in the second half after going the final three minutes of the first half without making one, either. The Hoyas shot 1-of-23 in the second half and stayed afloat thanks to free throws (and the fact that DePaul was only slightly better) in a 56-50 loss. Think about that: they went 23 minutes with one made field goal!
And so midway through the third year of the Ed Cooley Era, the portion of the Hoya fanbase that isn’t apathetic is increasingly restless. There’s no more damning stat than this one: Patrick Ewing’s record through his first 82 games at Georgetown 46-36. And Ed Cooley’s record through his first 82 games at Georgetown is the exact opposite: 36-46.
This year’s squad is led by a pair of backcourt transfers in KJ Lewis (Arizona) and Malik Mack (Harvard). Lewis leads the team in scoring with 15.1 points per game, though he’s an inefficient shooter. He’s taken a whopping 27.1% of their shots when he’s been on the floor, and made 62-of-143 inside the arc (43.4%) and 13-of-45 of his threes (28.9%). A physical downhill driver, Lewis draws an average of six fouls per 40 minutes, and is 78-of-102 from the free throw line. That’s his true offensive strength: in four Big East games, he’s 28-of-32 from the line including 10-of-10 vs St. John’s, 9-of-9 vs Xavier, and 8-of-11 vs DePaul. Not coincidentally, the one league opponent to defend him without fouling — Seton Hall — is also the only opponent to hold him below his scoring average. The Pirates only gave him two free throw attempts, and Lewis scored 10 points.
Lewis is also a really good perimeter defender who can blow up passing lanes, and he averages 2.1 steals per game (third in the Big East). He’s their key defensively: the Hoyas aim is to slow the game down, force isolation plays, and then turn Lewis loose to cause chaos on the perimeter.
Mack, on the other hand, is a smaller, craftier guard who creates shots for his teammates. He averages 14.4 points per game, though he too is inefficient (32-of-97, 33.0% from three; 42-of-107, 39.3% from two). Similar to Lewis, he can get downhill and initiate contact, drawing 3.9 fouls per 40 minutes and he’s made 50-of-62 from the line. He’s taken 26.7% of their shots when he’s been on the floor, which like Lewis is most of the time; those two have combined for 53.8% of the Hoyas’ shot attempts.
But Mack also leads the team in assists at 4.3 points per game, and his assist rate of 27.4 is among the best in the country.
Inside, 7’1” Vince Iwuchukwu was slated to be the starter after transferring from St. John’s. But after missing 10 games due to a scheduled medical procedure, Iwuchukwu is still rounding back into form. In six games, all off the bench, he’s averaging 9.8 points and 4.3 rebounds in about 21 minutes per game. Impressively, despite playing a fraction of the minutes, he’s third on the team with 12 blocks and with a block percentage of 10.6, he’s swatted twice as many as any other Hoya. He has close to zero range offensively, with 76.5% of his shots coming at or near the rim.
His prolonged absence created an opening for 7’0” Julius Halaifonua, and he’s started all 16 games while averaging 10.9 points and 4.9 rebounds. 67.3% of his shots have come at the rim, and he’s not really a threat to either attempt or make jump shots. But he’s made 58-of-94 on twos (61.7%), a percentage that jumps to 68.9% at the rim. But he’s often struggled to defend without fouling, averaging 5.0 fouls per 40 minutes (and has been whistled for 47 fouls over 16 games). He’s fouled out twice already.
6’7” Caleb Williams has similar numbers (10.3 points, 5.7 rebounds) but a bit more shooting range; he made a pair of threes against Seton Hall and is 18-of-51 for the year from three (35.3%). The 6’7” Isaiah Abraham has also started all 16 games, averaging 6.6 points and 2.6 rebounds per game. At 18-of-43 (41.9%) from three, Abraham leads the Hoyas in three-point shooting percentage. He will occasionally shoot from the paint, but that’s not his game.
Off the bench, the biggest contributors are Jeremiah Williams (4.8 points, 2.2 rebounds, 2.4 assists), Jayden Fort (4.2 points, 1.0 blocks, 3.7 rebounds), and Langston Love (3.9 points, 1.9 rebounds). Williams in particular has been huge: his 39 assists and 17 steals are both second on the team behind Lewis.
The problem Georgetown often faces is that they rely so heavily on free throws (25.4% of their total points, 14th most in the country). That makes them very reliant on a friendly whistle, and if they don’t get it — or they play an opponent who can defend them without fouling — they have trouble scoring. Couple that with a big two who’ve never met a shot they didn’t love, and they often end up with long scoring droughts.
Defensively, they want to force an opponent’s guards into 1-on-1 situations where their athleticism can speed you up. They don’t force an especially high number of turnovers (17.5% of opponents’ possessions, right at the D1 average of 17.3%) or grab a ton of steals (10.9% of possessions, 100th in D1). But if you can get them scrambling with crisp ball movement, you can often create open looks — and if you hit a few threes, Georgetown doesn’t have the firepower to keep pace.
As for Creighton, they’re coming in off one of their most lopsided home defeats in three decades. The 90-73 loss to St. John’s was just the fourth home loss of 15+ points since moving to CHI Health Center in 2003, and just the sixth since the Dana Altman era began in 1994. It’s pretty remarkable that the list is so short over a 32-year span that every one of these games is stuck in the memories of Bluejay fans.
-#14 Iowa State 70, Jays 52 (1/18/1995)
-Nebraska 88, Jays 67 (12/6/1995)
-Wichita State 89, Jays 68 (2/11/2012)
-#21 Georgetown 67, Jays 40 (1/31/2014)
-St. John’s 83, Jays 67 (1/30/2019)
-St. John’s 90, Jays 73 (1/10/2026)
“We sat a lot of (our rotation) late in the game just to try to make sure we’re not wearing them out,” Greg McDermott said after the loss. “We’ll listen to Jeremy (Anderson) and Ben (McNair) on what we’re able to do the next couple days to prepare for Georgetown to make sure that we can be as fresh as we possibly can, and hopefully we can get a great crowd in here. The crowd was awesome today. I wish we could have cashed in on it and got them a little bit more involved with our play, but we’re going to need them again on Tuesday night.”
One of the main beneficiaries of that extra playing time was Hudson Greer. He got on the floor for just the second time since the win over Oregon on November 27, and played 10 minutes with six points. Noting that the rotation has changed a ton since the last time Greer played, McDermott said it’s been a challenge to re-fit him into the new rotation and find a role for him to fill.
“He’s not where he was pre-injury, either,” McDermott said. “We’re using him a lot on the scout team in practice to get him some confidence, and to get him out there the whole time. He’s working himself back into shape. There were certainly some good things that he did today, especially his cutting and some of the things he does off the ball, but we’ve just got to continue to work him back into it.”
queue_play_next How Can I Follow Along?
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sports_basketball Scouting the Opponent
In the last outing, Georgetown (9-7, 1-4 BE) fell to Seton Hall, 76-67, at Capital One Arena. Malik Mack led a quintet of Hoyas in double figures with 14 points on four made baskets and a 5-for-7 performance at the charity stripe. Isaiah Abraham followed up with 13 points that were fueled by a trio of triples, while KJ Lewis, Vince Iwuchukwu and Caleb Williams had 10 points apiece. Iwuchukwu led GU on the glass, snagging a squad-best seven rebounds. He also had a game-high and career-best four steals. Lewis paced the Hoya offense with three assists.
10 Hoyas have scored in double figures this season with Julius Halaifonua, Caleb Williams, Isaiah Abraham, Langston Love, Vince Iwuchukwu, Jeremiah Williams, Jayden Fort and Deshawn Harris-Smith all joining their big two of Lewis and Mack.
Georgetown added Gabriel Landeira to the 2025-26 roster during the break in December. Landeira is a 6’6”, 220-pound guard out of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil who has club experience with Club Athletico Paulistano (São Paolo, Brazil) from 2022-24 and Sport Club Corinthians Paulista (São Paolo, Brazil) from 2024-25. Playing the 2024-25 season in Liga de Desenvolvimento de Basquete (LDB), Brazil’s premier U22 national development league, Landeira averaged 10.9 ppg, 4.2 rpg, 5.3 apg and managed 2.3 spg.
ravenravenraven Three Birds
Saturday was Creighton’s 380th home game inside CHI Health Center Omaha, but just its fourth loss by 15 points or more inside the facility that opened in 2003. Since the hiring of Dana Altman in 1994, Creighton is 5-0 in the first home game after a home loss of 15 points or more. Creighton has not lost consecutive home games (by any margin) since Dec. 4 and 14, 2021 and has never lost consecutive home games by 15+ points or more
Jasen Green had career-highs with 23 points and five assists vs. Butler on Jan. 4, then followed it up by tying his career-highs with nine rebounds and two blocks at Seton Hall on Jan. 7. Green is just the fourth Bluejay in the last 20 seasons with a two-game span of 36 points, 15 rebounds and five assists, joining Ryan Kalkbrenner, Trey Alexander and Justin Patton.
Creighton is 10-3 this season when scoring 69 points or more, but 0-4 when being held to 68 points or fewer. In its last 10 meetings with Georgetown, Creighton is 8-0 when scoring 60 points or more against the Hoyas, but 0-2 the two times the Jays have scored less than 60.
calendar_clock The Last Meeting & Series History
Creighton is 17-10 all-time versus Georgetown and has won 14 of the last 18 meetings in the series. Creighton is 10-2 all-time in Omaha against the Hoyas, and has won the last four of those encounters by an average of 21 points. Each of the last 10 Bluejay wins, and each of the last 10 series meetings regardless of victor, have been decided by double-digits.
Last February in Omaha, Georgetown led 36-26 with seven minutes left before halftime. Creighton outscored them 54-33 the rest of the way, including a 34-10 run spanning both halves — 18-6 to end the first half to turn a 10-point deficit into a two-point lead, and 16-4 to begin the second to take a 14-point advantage. Jamiya Neal played all 40 minutes, and had 13 points, 12 rebounds and nine assists, falling just one assist shy of a traditional triple-double in the 80-69 win.
fast_rewind This Date in Bluejay History
On Friday the 13th, 2012, Creighton and Illinois State played a game befitting of that date. It featured double technical fouls, debris tossed from a sold-out crowd to the arena court, the Bluejays blowing most of an 18-point lead, a near triple-double for a Jay, and another standout performance from Doug McDermott. He made 9 of his 14 shots from the field against a front line peppered with size and athleticism, scoring 20 points or more for the thirteenth time in seventeen games, and he did so on just 14 attempts.
From Ott’s Thoughts:
But what about those double technicals?
Gibbs had his performance of the season, scoring 12 points and adding 10 assists and 7 rebounds in 37 minutes against Illinois State. Two points came on technical foul free throws late in the game after he was thrown to the ground by Illinois State’s Johnny Hill. But the calm and collected Gibbs, who actually picked up his own technical foul after questioning Hill’s motives rather loudly and closely to Hill’s face, finished the game just as he had played it all night; under control and deadly in its precision.
troubleshoot The Bottom Line
Creighton is favored by 8.5 in Vegas, and has 83.9% odds of victory according to ESPN’s BPI. KenPom predicts a 10-point win with 83% odds.
Georgetown has the individual talent to compete, particularly in the backcourt. However, their lack of shooting makes them one-dimensional; the Hoyas will probably hang around early by attacking the rim, but Creighton’s ability to generate open threes combined with Georgetown’s inability to match them will likely stretch the lead in the second half.
Jays 78, Hoyas 69
