After a second-half collapse in the first round of the tournament, Georgetown will look for some answers when it faces La Salle in the consolation game of the Jamaica Classic on Sunday in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
The Hoyas (2-2) led Loyola Marymount by 10 at halftime in Friday’s opening-round game, but the Lions outscored them 52-24 in the second half to run away with an 84-66 win.
Loyola’s bench outscored Georgetown’s 30-8.
“Maybe I need to cut down on some of our key guys’ minutes,” Georgetown coach Patrick Ewing said, per SB Nation. “We are playing Brandon (Murray) and Primo (Spears) a significant amount of minutes. We have to find a way to reduce their minutes so that they can be a lot more fresher in the second half.”
Murray led Georgetown with 19 points and Spears had 10, but they combined to shoot an inefficient 11 of 35 from the field, including 3 of 10 from 3-point range. Murray made all three of the Hoyas’ 3-pointers out of 16 attempts (18.8 percent), while Loyola made 12 of 35 from deep.
The Lions, from the West Coast Conference, advanced to the event’s championship game to face Wake Forest, which beat La Salle 75-63 in the other semifinal Friday.
La Salle (2-2) trailed by only two at the half and kept it close until Wake Forest pulled away in the final 10 minutes.
Four players are scoring in double figures for the Explorers, led by Josh Nickelberry at 18.5 points per game. Nickelberry led all scorers Friday with 24, thanks to 6-of-11 3-point shooting and 6-for-6 free-throw shooting.
“We need to take care of the ball better,” La Salle coach Fran Dunphy said after the game. “Our turnovers have to be nine or 10. They can’t be 15 or 16. We need to do a better job of attention to detail on the defensive end. Those two things are always the key to every time we play basketball.
“We got a hot-shooting Josh Nickelberry in the first half. You can’t count on that all the time. We have to make better decisions to share the ball more. And we’ll have our hands full with a Georgetown team who is very talented.”
–Field Level Media
