Winston-Salem

I think tomorrow will be a bad night for Winston-Salem. Based upon the press coverage, it would seem that the Hoyas were thoroughly embarassed by their loss to ODU at McDonough. I would not expect them to lose there again this season.

Unfortunately, that is where Winston-Salem has to play Georgetown. The Rams are a dismal 1-12 on the year. Their one win came against a non-NCAA school--Anderson. In the majority of their games Winston-Salem has only scored in the 40s. They have played two other Big East teams and have lost by 35 (to the Irish) and 20 (to South Florida).

I feel bad for them.

Go Hoyas!

The Answer in Boston

Jim O'Brien has lots of nice things to say about Iverson and notes that he'd be a good fit in Boston. I wonder if they miss Jim up there. It seems like as soon as your son leaves Georgetown the Celtics fire you. Hopefully, Jeremiah will have four good years in Hoya gray.


http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime?page=dailydime-061214a&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab6pos1

This Year & Next

Jerry Meyer on the Hoyas this year and next. He does not think that Austin Freeman will go pro after next year and notes that the Hoyas will be getting a major back court upgrade with Freeman and Wright.
He also has some interesting analysis about the Hoyas woes so far this year. He is the first observer to actually point out that the guards have been playing well (Seth Davis, I'm looking at you). It is the big men who have been absent. But anaylsis seems to stop there without any conclusion, other than the Hoyas will be a factor but probably won't be in the Final Four (as if only the 4 best teams make the final four).

http://basketballrecruiting.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=616455

Will Iverson be reborn in Boston?

Money quote:

For three years, Boston has been stockpiling assets and waiting for someone like Iverson to become available. Now they could probably get him for Sebastian Telfair, Gerald Green (that part would kill me), their 2007 No. 1 and Theo Ratlif's corpse, er, contract (which expires in 2008) and make immediate noise in an awful conference. Remember, in a league where only a few teams have more than one good perimeter defender, the Celtics could exploit matchups every night by playing Iverson and Pierce at the same time. I also believe those guys would refine their games to make room for the other, because that's what stars do when they hit their 30s -- they sacrifice shots for a chance to win, whether you're talking about Shaq in Miami, Aguirre in Detroit, Monroe on the Knicks, Stackhouse on the Mavs, etc.). This could work.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/061213

It's not how you start....

The Examiner has a piece on the Hoyas that includes a few encouraging words for Pat Ewing, Sr. I thought Jeff Green actually had the most encouraging and articulate words for the fans:

Our defense is getting better, our communication is getting better, and at the end we’re going to be a much different team than we were at the beginning.

http://www.examiner.com/a-450888~It_s_not_how_you_start.html

The role communication plays in such a precise offense cannot be overstated. That was the overridding take-away from the Oregon debacle. The players were visably frustrated with each other not being in position. Even against Oral, there were a few time outs where Macklin or Summers was pulled aside. Speaking of Oral, since nobody did a recap, I thought someone should at least give props to the students for the cheers (and for high attendance in the middle of finals). I counted 10 different chants at the Oral Roberts game. In addition to the three most popular (Hoya Saxa, "Let's Go Hoyas," and "Defense), these all made their first appearances of the year:
1. "That's not Christian" (in response to two near fights)
2. "Our Green's better" (Jeff vs. future NBAer Caleb)
3. "We're not Kansas"
4. "God's on our Side" (better against Notre Dame)
5. "Ev-o-lution"
6. "These refs suck" (so true)
7. "Anal's better" (totally inappopriate)

This Week's Polls

Play better and get less respect. That seems to be the message the pollsters are sending to the Hoyas this week. After destroying JMU and easily beating a good Oral Roberts team Georgetown finally looked like the squad that got all of the hype at the beginning of the year.

And the result? Less votes in the polls. I didn't expect us to vault back into the Top 25. We don't deserve that (yet). But I did think that a couple of the early believers might start turning an eye back towards the Blue & Gray. No such luck.

Last week, after their back-to-back losses to Oregon and Duke, GU received only 5 votes in the ESPN/USA Today poll and 60 votes in the AP poll. After a very impressive week, the Hoyas now only managed 2 votes from ESPN/USA Today voters and 24 votes from the AP.

It looks like the road back to respect will be a long one.

Click here to see all the rankings.

Professor Kirkpatrick RIP

One of my favorite GU professors.


http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/12/08/kirkpatrick.obit.ap/index.html

Tomorrow's Game

I am not sure what to make of Oral Roberts. They obviously beat a very good Kansas team (78-71), but their record thus far is anything but spectacular. The Golden Eagles sport a familiar 4-3 record coming into the Verizon Center and most of their opponents have not been as good as Kansas.

Oral Roberts has wins over the University of Louisiana, Lafayette (54-51), Panhandle State (91-41), and Lamar (88-63). But they have lost to Loyola-Marymount (68-65), Tulsa (75-57), and Akron (61-59). Their road record is 1-2 (Kansas being their only road win).

Apparently, since beating Kansas Oral Roberts has struggled from the field. But in its most recent game, the Golden Eagles' victory over Lamar, they shot 54%, including 8-15 from behind the arc.

I think that a big part of the GU-ORU match up is going to be our perimeter defense. In beating Kansas ORU was 11-19 from three-point land. That was the difference maker. If we can take that away from them, and then shoot anything approaching what we did against JMU, we will be more than fine.

P.S. - Obviously, no one posted a review of the Madison game (I guess we were all content to simply bask in the glory of our only dominating performance thus far). However, I couldn't let the victory go without at least some reference. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I will let this speak for itself.

Profile of Father Drinan

Great piece on Father Drinan on Law.com.

Drinan waves hello, then raises his hands and exults, "God heard our prayers!" All who hear him know he's talking about the results of the midterm election.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1164896312488&rss=newswire

Further confirmation

of my previous post.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/recap?gameId=263410087

Check out the 3-point stats (12-28!).

This team will not be the pushover of previous years.

We better be all over these guys...

Is Villanova

supposed to be any good this year? Thoughts?

Rivals ranks the Big East's 2007 freshmen

They name Austin Freeman the best perimeter scorer, best shooter, best player in the clutch, highest basketball IQ, and player with the largest impact among all Big East recruits. Boy, we could sure use him right now.

http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaab/news?slug=rivals-76192&prov=rivals&type=story_recruiting

Easterbrook on Stallion's favorite

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/061205#cheerleader

MASN is the Georgetown network!

Great news. Hopefully, one day we will be watching home games in MASN arena.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR2006120400525.html

5 Votes

The ESPN/USA Today poll is out. As was expected, with back-to-back losses the Hoyas drop out of the top 25. The thing that hurts the most, however, is that we only received 5 votes. Ouch.

Update: The AP poll is out. Georgetown is no longer a member of the top 25, though we did manage to muster 60 votes there; the second most votes among an unranked team. The only team to receive more votes and not be ranked was Oregon, who received 107.

Two Hoyas win Marshalls

http://www.marshallscholarship.org/winners.html

This is a nice little run for GU. That makes 4 in the last two years. Interesting how Princeton cleaned up on these after getting shut out of the Rhodes (or, potentially, declined the Rhodes in favor of the Marshall).

Maryland's Vasquez

On a side note, let me go on the record now to say that Maryland got quite a coup in recruiting Vasquez. You heard it here first. Diamond and I watched him dominate a high school all star game this summer, which is where I first got wind of this kid.

Although he played a poor game this evening, this kid can clearly play and I expect we will be hearing a lot about him over the next four years. Too bad he is not at Georgetown. He possesses a high basketball IQ and is a fabulous passer. He is a big reason for Maryland's early season success, tonight's result notwithstanding.

Notre Dame Scouting Report

I attended this evening's Maryland-Notre Dame game. The scouting report is fairly simple--Notre Dame, like last year's squad, essentially does nothing but shoot threes. We must guard the three point shot against Notre Dame or we will be in big trouble because Notre Dame has about three shooters who are fairly deadly from the outside. Notre Dame also proved fairly adept at driving the ball inside, thus causing the Maryland defense to collapse on the paint, which was inevitably followed by a kickout to an outside shooter who more often than not nailed the shot at a pivotal time. Notre Dame attempted 58 shots, 24 of which were threes (over 40%).

Don't get me wrong...I am not ready to proclaim Notre Dame a beast of the Big East, but I think they are better than last season and should not be overlooked. I believe they might surprise a few teams in the Big East.

At least we no longer have to worry about Bowman fouling these guys while they jack up threes. PE Jr. now seems to have occupied this role, but hopefully he will be riding pine most of the season.

The real story on Gerry McNamara...

according to The Globe's Peter May.

Note who will be coaching him at Bakersfield.


Tuning up with a Jam session
Former Syracuse guard Gerry McNamara is back in the US, and look for him to surface in the NBA's Development League with the Bakersfield Jam. McNamara had signed with the Greek team Olympiakos, but the deal was only for Euroleague play, which, depending on how well the team does, can mean upward of 20 games. (The rest of the schedule is against Greek teams.) McNamara played one minute in the first five Euroleague games. "We asked out," reported McNamara's agent, Bill Neff. "He was getting paid, but he wasn't playing. He wanted to play." Neff said he asked for a "Euroleague only" deal with Olympiakos in part so that his client could get healthy. He said McNamara played with a bad groin all through his senior year at Syracuse and was still hobbled when he went to predraft camp and later when he was trying out for the Orlando Magic. "He just never let it heal, because Gerry wanted to play," Neff said. "He played great one day at the predraft camp. After that, he played well enough to make Jordan Farmar a first-round pick." Neff said McNamara still had options overseas, including one from a team in Iran. "We're not going to field that one," he said. The Jam are coached by former UCLA/URI coach Jim Harrick, and Neff said McNamara thinks that's the way to go. "He can always go back to Europe if he wants to. He has made money [from the Olympiakos deal]. But the NBDL thing looks the most intriguing right now." Among those who think McNamara has a shot in the NBA is Celtics hoops boss Danny Ainge. "In the right conditions, I think he can be an NBA player," Ainge said. "He can shoot. He's tough. So, yeah, he could be an NBA player."

The Dukie's Take on The Game

Here's a link to an article about tomorrow's game from the The Chronicle, an independent daily at Duke. It includes some pretty insightful comments from a few Blue Devil players about where they went wrong last year, and why they think they are in a better position to beat us this year. The article also notes that Duke got a bit of a warm up game by playing Air Force, who runs a Princeton style offense similar to the Hoyas'.