OMAHA, Neb. — D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera scored 24 points and No. 21 Georgetown held Creighton without a field goal for more than 17 minutes in a 67-40 victory Saturday.
The Hoyas (15-6, 7-3 Big East) bounced back from a 13-point home loss against Xavier with a dominating performance against the conference’s last-place team.
Smith-Rivera had 12 points during a 31-3 run spanning the halves, with Jabril Trawick’s 3-pointer giving Georgetown a 43-18 lead with 13 minutes left. Creighton missed 24 consecutive shots before Avery Dingman’s 3-pointer from the corner drew a roar from the CenturyLink Center sellout crowd of 17,499.
Trawick added 15 points for the Hoyas. Dingman finished with eight points to lead Creighton (10-13, 1-9 Big East).
Georgetown, which beat Creighton 76-61 in Washington on Jan. 3, dropped out of first place in the Big East with its loss to Xavier on Tuesday. The Hoyas scored a season-low 53 points, shot 39 percent and turned over the ball a season-high 17 times in that game.
They were sharper Saturday, shooting 50 percent and cutting their turnover total to 10. They used their superior athleticism to frustrate the Bluejays, never more than when 6-foot-10, 350-pound Joshua Smith threw down a backboard-shaking dunk over two Creighton players in the second half.
Creighton shot 17.9 percent over the first 20 minutes, its worst mark for a half this season, and a season-low 20.8 percent for the game.
Georgetown scored the first nine points and led 12-2 less than five minutes after tip-off. Will Artino missed a point-blank shot underneath the basket and Toby Hegner air-balled a wide-open 3-pointer as Creighton continued to be plagued by poor starts in Big East games.
The Hoyas briefly let Creighton back into it, missing nine shots in a row and going scoreless nearly six minutes. Creighton rolled off 13 consecutive points and led by three after Devin Brook’s lay-in with 10:09 left.
But the Bluejays didn’t make another field goal for 17 minutes, 18 seconds, after they had fallen behind by 25 points.
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