It's pretty incredible to think that the Georgetown Hoyas made it as high as number 8 in the men's basketball rankings earlier this season. Now, after a distasteful loss to St. John's in the first round of the Big East tournament, they're looking at playing in the NIT, where the winning team's fans get to chant "we're number 66."It was a disappointing year for the Hoyas. They are a young team, but they were certainly better than their final record. They started out great. They beat Memphis and Maryland, and then clobbered UConn on the road to start the Big East season. While no one expected the Hoyas to run the table through their brutal Big East schedule, it was certainly reasonable to foresee Georgetown in the conference's upper tier by season's end.
Instead, the Hoyas lost their Mojo. They lost to Notre Dame; they lost to Cincinnati--TWICE; they lost to St. John's. They lost games in OT. They squandered leads against Marquette and couldn't sustain their rally against Syracuse. What they really lost was the ability to win games.
Georgetown has a lot of talent. John Thompson III has been a good coach up to this point, but we have to blame the coach in significant part for what happened in the second half of this season. When a team begins to unravel like the Hoyas did, it's up to the coach to figure it out and bring them back together. At times, Georgetown's offense was just pathetic. Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, BRICK.
And Thompson needs to teach his teams how to rebound. Last season, even with 7'2" Roy Hibbert the Hoyas were a poor rebounding team. This year they were downright awful.
The good news for us Hoya fans is this: the big price increases Georgetown foisted on us the past two seasons should be history, at least for one year. In a down economy, with a disappointing team, they'd better not increase seat minimums and ticket prices.
We hope the Hoyas have gotten over their youth, coming together as a real contender next season!
4 comments:
1. Since half the teams in the NCAA are there on automatic bids and many of them wouldn't have made it without them, its closer to "we're 45", but your pouint is valid.
2. Cry me a river Georgetown. After my alma mater's coach got essentially banned for life by the NCAA, most of the players quit and the team won a single conference game. This from a program that has 4 national championships! Ugh. The NIT would be a blessing.
I can't figure out why you care about Georgetown basketball. It's not like the law school was anywhere near the campus or had anything to do with the university. You should be rooting for George Mason as it's closer to home for you. Go Carolina!
The Curmudgeon was in law school during the Ewing years, so we got hooked. And rooting for GMU would do us no better--we'd still be looking at the NIT.
Ah, yes, the Ewing years. Also known as the Freddie Brown years on Tobacco Road.
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