After winning a pair of nail-biters, beating Duke by three points in regulation and surviving a double-overtime thriller to Notre Dame, the No. 17 Hoyas have reversed course and started to act like a nationally ranked team, burying opponents early and giving them no chance at victory.
After soundly beating Cincinnati 76-57 last Saturday, Georgetown extended their winning streak to five games by manhandling DePaul 64-44 Tuesday night.
“At the end of the day I thought we played well,” Head Coach John Thompson III said. “To go on the road in this league and come away with a win is important and hard. This is a very, very good win for us.”
The 9,258 in attendance at Allstate Arena were able to cheer their Blue Demons (8-11, 1-7 BE) for all of about 10 seconds. After DePaul went up 2-0 right after the opening tip, sophomore guard Jonathan Wallace hit a three at the 18:50 mark and the Hoyas (15-4, 6-2 BE) only needed about six minutes to put the game away, as they promptly went on an 18-0 run and held their opponent scoreless for over six minutes.
“They stop those fights,” DePaul Head Coach Jerry Wainwright said, comparing that stretch to a boxing match. “If they don’t there’s going to be blood from the first row to the fifth.”
The Hoyas put the Blue Demons away with their characteristically efficient offense and a dominating performance from sophomore center Roy Hibbert. After shooting 54 percent in their last two games combined, the Hoyas, with just under 10 minutes gone in the first half, had eight field goals on seven assists. They were five of six from behind the arc, but only three of six from inside it. With their tallest player on the court at six feet nine inches, the Blue Demons also had trouble stopping the seven foot two inch Hibbert, who finished the game with 17 points and eight rebounds in 25 minutes of action.
“Roy played well, particularly in the first half,” Thompson said of Hibbert, who was seven of nine from the floor. “His confidence is up. He played well early in the year then there was a ten-day stretch where he forgot he was good and now he’s starting to remember he’s good again.”
Hibbert was also helped by six foot eight inch frontcourt mate sophomore forward Jeff Green, who tallied 15 points and seven rebounds, as the Hoyas exploited their advantage in the paint. Georgetown dominated the glass, with 38 rebounds to DePaul’s 25.
“The nature of our team is that we can be versatile and today that is where we decided to attack” Thompson said.
Despite the blowout, Wainwright was happy with his teams’ defensive effort.
“We spent two practices getting a feeling of how they play offense and I feel that we did a great job of guarding it,” he said. “We worked really hard to hold them in the 60s. They had to work for what they got.”
The Hoyas were also solid on defense against one of the Big East’s worst offensive teams. After giving up only 20 first-half points to Cincinnati, Georgetown held DePaul to only 18 and their starters to only six points. The 18 points were DePaul’s worst output in a half all season, falling short of the 22 they put up against Old Dominion on Dec. 17.
It also didn’t help that DePaul senior guard Sammy Mejia was suffering from the lingering effects of a sprained ankle. Mejia, who leads the team in scoring at over 15 per game, played 24 minutes against Georgetown and only rattled home five points.
“We had an opportunity to make shots,” Coach Wainwright said. “There’s just a point now where you have to make them.”
The win gave the Hoyas their best conference start since 1995-96 when they started 7-1. It also put them into a tie with No. 9 Pittsburgh (17-2, 6-2 BE) for fourth place in the conference, making Sunday’s matchup with the Panthers ever more important since the top four finishers in the Big East get a bye in the first round of the conference tournament at Madison Square Garden. Coach Thompson realizes that that game will present different challenges than any other game in the conference.
“I think that is the beauty of this league,” he said. “What makes it so tough is that the kinds of teams you play, the style of play, is different night in and night out. The good teams in this league are able to adjust and adapt. The coaching styles are all over the board so the good teams in this league will have to be versatile. We just have to adjust and adapt and get ready for it.”
Tipoff is slated for 12:00 p.m. at the MCI Center.
