Entering the Big East tournament quarterfinals looking to upset the No. 2 seed Creighton University Bluejays (25-5, 16-2 Big East), the No. 10 seed Georgetown University women’s basketball team (12-19, 4-14 Big East) led the heavily-favored Bluejays by as much as 12, but ultimately fell 72-70.
Coming off a career-high performance from graduate guard Kelsey Ransom in a first-round upset of the No. 7 Providence College Friars, Georgetown matched up against a Creighton team that blew out the Hoyas in both regular season games this year. The Bluejays, the No. 23 team in the country, are a national title contender this year, whose only conference losses came against the superstar-laden No. 1 University of Connecticut (UConn) Huskies.
Ransom grabbed the opening tip, but the Hoyas’ first possession ended in a loose ball turnover off an inbound. Guard Lauren Jensen and forward Morgan Maly cashed in on Creighton’s first two possessions, opening up a 5-0 lead.
Junior guard Victoria Rivera led Georgetown’s response as she drained a free-throw line jumper. The next possession, Ransom found a backdoor pass to senior center Ariel Jenkins for a wide-open layup.
As both teams struggled to settle in offensively, Creighton’s lead was 8-4 going into the first media timeout.
Creighton started building momentum from beyond the arc, knocking down 5 3-pointers in the quarter. Georgetown Head Coach Darnell Haney was forced to use his first timeout after Georgetown conceded a wide-open three.
Defensively, the Hoyas looked more confident after the reset, and while they started to make their shots, they still trailed. The first quarter ended with Creighton leading 22-16.
Ransom, despite some important playmaking for the Hoyas, did not score in the first quarter — a rare occurrence for the conference’s leading scorer.
Not to be kept off the statsheet, she opened the second quarter with a tough, banked layup over a defender. She became the third Georgetown player to score 2000 points as a Hoya off an elbow pull-up shot two minutes later.
Georgetown pulled the game back to within 3, as they started to heat up from the field. Creighton fouled standout first-year guard Khadee Hession while she went for a layup, and she nailed both free throws to make it a 1-point game.
A couple possessions later, Hession pulled up from three, as Jensen knocked her over. Despite the contact, she sank the three and the free throw, giving the Hoyas their first lead of the game.
From there, the Bluejays looked helpless, missing seemingly every shot. Georgetown would ride a 9-0 run into a two-possession lead. A buzzer-beating three from Hession off a kick-out assist from Ransom emphatically put the Hoyas in the lead to enter the break.
The Bluejays only scored once in the last three minutes of the half, trailing 46-38.
Creighton’s offensive woes continued into the third quarter. On their second possession, the Bluejays missed three consecutive layups before the Hoyas recovered a rebound.
Maly made from three to stop a potential rout, ending the Hoyas’ run with a manageable deficit that peaked at 12. As the Bluejays desperately tried to get back into the game, the Hoyas had a response to every Creighton move until the end of the quarter.
The Bluejays then dialed up a full-court press, looking to get some momentum going into the final quarter. Georgetown immediately turned the ball over, giving Jensen a wide-open transition layup to cut the lead down to 6 entering the fourth. The early part of the fourth quarter followed much of the same back-and-forth pattern of the third.
The Bluejay storm began with six minutes left just as the Georgetown offense started to falter, and Creighton brought it back to a two-possession game.
With two minutes to play, Jensen’s layup tied it at 68-68. Then, out of a timeout, Creighton forward Mallory Brake intercepted the Georgetown inbound and gave the Bluejays the lead on a transition layup with just over a minute left.
Ransom tied it up again as she was fouled while shooting and made both from the charity stripe.
Both Creighton and the Hoyas were unsuccessful as they tried to take the lead. After Georgetown missed a layup and the Bluejays took the ball across half-court, Rivera fouled Creighton guard Kiani Lockett. Rivera appeared to forget the game was tied, as the Hoyas did not need to foul and she dove as if she were trying to intentionally foul.
Lockett, who missed important late-game free throws in Creighton’s game against St. John’s University on Feb. 19, knocked down both to give the Bluejays the lead with 4.3 seconds on the clock.
Haney called his final timeout to draw up a play in order to get one last shot with the game on the line. Rivera received the inbound pass off an elevator screen, dribbled across the court, and leapt forward for a deep, off-balance 3-point attempt. Her shot missed the rim entirely as time expired.
Georgetown did not make a field goal in the final 5:42 of the game. As the final buzzer sounded and reality began to set in, Rivera broke down in tears and her teammates gathered around to comfort her.
After the game, Haney said the season was an important one for the team to build and that he was proud of their work.
“I am extremely proud of our group,” Haney said in a postgame press conference. “This group played their butts off. We were able to get through a tremendous amount of adversity.” Ransom — whom Haney labeled a “first-ballot hall of famer” — joined Haney in a rare media address from a player after a loss.
Ransom, who registered 20 points, 9 rebounds and 10 assists in her final college game, echoed her coach’s sentiments, tearfully saying she was proud of the season.
“This was the place I was supposed to be,” Ransom said in a postgame press conference. “My coaching staff and Coach Haney gave me everything I needed, and I wanted to give them everything I had. It’s just been the most joyous and rewarding year of my life.”
