Creighton basketball hosts Georgetown after bumpy stretch in rebuild -

Georgetown men's basketball Coach John Thompson III is plenty familiar with the transition process after the departure of a foundational player for the NBA. First came Jeff Green in 2007. The next year it was Roy Hibbert, and Greg Monroe followed in 2010. So Thompson speaks with a hint of fellowship when discussing the tribulations this season of his counterpart for Saturday afternoon's game against Creighton.

Tip-off is set for 2 p.m. at CenturyLink Center in Omaha, with Georgetown (14-6, 6-3 Big East) seeking to shake off a 66-53 loss to Xavier on Monday that knocked the Hoyas out of first place in the conference standings.

The Bluejays (10-12, 1-8) opened Big East play by losing their first eight until outlasting St. John’s on Wednesday. That slow start underscores the impact of being without Doug McDermott, the 11th overall pick in the NBA draft who graduated as one of the most accomplished players in college basketball history.

“Does that have an effect on your team? Yes,” Thompson said. “But at the same time, you know it’s coming. You prepare for it, and every year is different. We’ve had to do it, and they’re doing it now. The composition and feel for every team is different. I don’t think you go through the year saying, ‘Woe is me. We don’t have Doug.’”

Greg McDermott, Creighton’s coach since the 2010-11 season and Doug’s father, addressed those circumstances well before the start of the season. The expectation then was for perhaps a hiccup or two as this group adjusted to life without the reigning national player of the year. No one in the locker room, though, could have anticipated the drop-off over the first half of the Big East schedule, according to the coach.

Creighton’s recent nine-game losing streak matched its longest in the 99 years of basketball at the school. The 77-74 victory over the Red Storm in Omaha was the Bluejays’ first in 40 days and ensured they would not equal their longest conference slide of nine in a row set in 1994-95, when they played in the Missouri Valley.

“This last whatever-it’s-been, it seems like an eternity, it’s been hard on the fans, it’s been hard on our coaching staff,” Greg McDermott said. “But that doesn’t compare to what it does to our players, the guys that keep going to work every day and keep trying to do what we ask them to do and come up a little short, so to win a close one, it’s refreshing.”

For the first time in his coaching career, McDermott used a senior-only starting lineup against St. John’s in an effort to shake up the rotation. His players responded by making 9 of 18 three-pointers in the first half on the way to a 10-point lead at the break.

In his first game as a reserve, freshman Toby Hegner scored a season-high 21 points and made four free throws in the final 12 seconds to seal the win. Junior James Milliken came off the bench to score 17 points.

“We hit the slumps, but we just came to practice fighting every day,” Hegner said.

Hegner and Milliken are the third- and fourth-leading scorers for the Bluejays, and the second-leading scorer is sophomore Isaiah Zierden. Zach Hanson, another sophomore, has played in 19 of 22 games with six starts and is averaging 14 minutes.

Other parts for the future include highly rated prospect Justin Patton, a 6-foot-10 forward, and 6-8 Slovenian forward Martin Krampelj, who also had scholarship offers from West Virginia, Rhode Island and Virginia Tech. Both signed national letters-of-intent in November.

“I think we expected certainly to have to rebuild the program in some ways simply because even though we have five seniors, four of them have never played the role we were going to ask them to play,” said Greg McDermott, who has directed the Bluejays to three straight NCAA tournament berths. “They were backups in the past, and obviously we relied a lot on what Doug did with his movement to create things for our offense.

“You’re putting guys into new positions, and there’s going to be some growing pains. I think I expected it to be challenging. I wouldn’t have expected to be 1-8 and lose three conference home games at this point."

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