With 5:15 remaining at West Virginia (13-14 overall, 4-11 Big East) Tuesday night, the Georgetown men’s basketball team (14-12 overall, 6-9 Big East) held a comfortable 63-53 lead. But with this year’s Hoyas, no lead is ever comfortable.
While the Mountaineers battled back to tie the game at 63, the Hoyas were able to hold on for a 69-67 win, due to clutch foul shooting, fortunate non-foul calls and a heads-up move by Head Coach Craig Esherick.
Esherick noticed that with 2.6 seconds left, senior forward Victor Samnick tipped the Mountaineers’ inbound pass that sophomore guard Drew Hall slapped out of bounds. within the last two minutes the clock starts off an inbound when the ball is first touched. Originally, the referees did not notice Samnick’s deflection and kept the 2.6 seconds on the clock, but Esherick successfully lobbied to decrease it by a second after the referees looked at instant replays. West Virginia sophomore guard Drew Schifino did not have enough time to get off a quality shot at the buzzer, and Georgetown walked away with a victory.
“I’m going to keep my mouth shut [about the referee’s original decision],” Esherick said to The Washington Post. “I usually get in trouble talking about stuff like that.”
The win, Georgetown’s fourth in its last six games, clinches a berth in next week’s Big East Tournament and makes them eligible for the National Invitation Tournament. The Hoyas currently hold the fifth seed in the Big East Western Division, which they can solidify with either a victory against No. 16 Notre Dame on Saturday or a loss by Rutgers (12-14 overall, 4-10 Big East) in one of its last two games. If seeded fifth, Georgetown will play the fourth seed in the Eastern Division, currently Providence (13-12 overall, 6-8 Big East), who the Hoyas defeated 71-56 last Tuesday. Regardless, Georgetown’s first game in the tournament will be next Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden in New York.
After a 1-0 deficit to open the game, Georgetown led for the next 38 minutes, including a 14-point lead at one point. Junior swingman Gerald Riley topped all scorers with 23 points, including 5-10 from behind the arc. Junior forward Mike Sweetney continued his recently incredible play, scoring 18 points and grabbing 16 rebounds. With his four blocks Sweetney moved into sixth place in Georgetown’s career blocks list with 154. In his last seven games, Sweetney has averaged 24 points and 11.4 rebounds.
Still, Sweetney’s heroics were not able to stop another end of game breakdown. With 3:30 left, Hall and sophomore guard Tony Bethel turned the ball over three times within the next minute and a half in the face of the Mountaineer’s 1-3-1 zone defense. West Virginia cut Georgetown’s lead to 63-61, and after a Hoyas’ timeout, Riley missed a jumper. Mountaineers’ first-year guard Kevin Pittsnogle hit a wide-open dunk to tie the game with 1:22 left.
Despite not hitting a field goal for the rest of the game, Georgetown held off West Virginia with clutch foul shooting. The Hoyas hit six of eight from the line after Pittsnogle’s dunk. Also, Georgetown benefited from two non-calls by officials. With 2.6 seconds left, first-year Mountaineer guard Patrick Beilein hit a lay up to cut Georgetown’s lead to 68-67 with Bethel hanging on his arm, but no foul was called.
“It looked like he got whacked pretty good,” said West Virginia Head Coach John Beilein in the Washington Post.
After Hall hit the second of two foul shots, West Virginia’s inbound pass went to midcourt intended for Schifino and Hall jumped on top of him to punch the ball out of bounds, but again no foul was called.
Even if the Hoyas had lost the game, it could not have been more disappointing than Georgetown’s 93-84 overtime defeat to archrival Syracuse on Saturday. The Hoyas wasted a 31-point, 19-rebound, seven-assist and seven-block effort from Sweetney. Georgetown could neither contain first-year forward Carmelo Anthony who scored a career-high 30 points, nor keep the Orangemen off the boards, who ripped down 60 compared to the Hoyas 43.
“This is probably the worst the rebounding has been all season,” said Sweetney. “That’s especially frustrating because it’s the end of the season.”
In overtime, Syracuse first-year guard Gerry McNamara exploded. He scored 10 points in the period including 2-2 from behind the arc. McNamara’s output vindicated a missed foul shot, only his second in Big East play, that could have iced the game at the end of regulation.
“McNamara hasn’t been shooting well from threes, but he just made big shots,” said Syracuse Head Coach Jim Boeheim.
Despite the loss, Georgetown has finally made it to the Big East Tournament, but not in the way many expected at the beginning of the season.
“What I told [the team] in the locker room after the [West Virginia] game is now we’ve qualified for one postseason tournament, let’s do what we can to try and qualify for two others—the NIT and NCAAs,” said Esherick in Tuesday’s Washington Times.
