No. 23 Creighton hopes to benefit from ‘learning opportunity’ against UMES

The last thing Creighton coach Greg McDermott wanted was to get crushed by No. 19 Gonzaga, a perennial power.Unfortunately for the No. 23 Bluejays (1-1), that is exactly what happened in a 90-63 loss Tuesday.McDermott, however, predicts his team will bounce back just fine Friday when it hosts Maryland Eastern Shore (1-3) in Omaha, Neb.”The second half was just a nightmare,” McDermott said. “We played soft on offense and it carried over to what we were doing on the defensive end of the floor. Then it was just a learning opportunity.”The Bluejays trailed by only six points at halftime, but Gonzaga outscored them 46-25 in the second half, including a 21-0 run.Creighton shot just 36.7% (18 of 49) from the floor and 28% (7 of 25) from the 3-point line.The Bluejays turned the ball over 18 times and were outrebounded 41-33.McDermott said he wants to see a lot more of the first-half Bluejays than the second-half Bluejays.”The first half was a great half of basketball,” he said. “I really like what we did defensively. We rotated very well.”Blake Harper and Nik Graves led the Big East school with 12 points each.Graves, a 6-foot-2 guard, leads the team in scoring with 13.5 points per game. He is a transfer from Charlotte, where he started all 33 games last season as a junior and hit double figures in 31 of them.He led the team with 17.5 points per game and was 15th in the nation in free throws with 233 attempted. He made 180 of them (77.3%).Forward Owen Freeman is averaging 10.5 points per game for Creighton.

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