There are many good reasons why Hoyas should breathe a big sigh of relief after receiving the news of the expansion of the Big East conference, which will take effect in the 2004-05 season. While the addition of Cincinnati, DePaul, Louisville, Marquette and South Florida to the league will have a positive impact on the competition level of many sports Georgetown participates in, the effects will be felt most on the hardwood floors of the MCI Center. Men’s basketball is what put Georgetown on the national map, and it continues to be an important part of the University’s identity. With the expansion of the Big East, the future of the program just got a whole lot brighter.
Until the formal announcement came last week that the remaining Big East universities had voted unanimously to allow in the five new schools, the overall future of the conference looked grim. Virginia Tech and University of Miami had both announced their intentions to leave the Big East for the ACC, and when a third football powerhouse, Boston College, was surprisingly given an invitation to do the same, the Big East was left with a severely depleted lineup. But as men’s basketball Head Coach Craig Esherick said, “Football was in the driver’s seat, and as a basketball coach, I thought we had been relegated to the sidelines in this discussion. I could not be happier with the way things turned out.”
Coach Esherick’s glee is justified, since the new Big East, an already powerful league, is set to become one of the two or three most dominant basketball conferences in the nation. The Georgetown program will get an increasing amount of national exposure, not only because of the overall improvement in the quality of its conference, but also because the new Big East schools are all located in either the Midwest or the South, thereby expanding the league’s geographical reach. More college basketball fans living outside the Eastern seaboard will be able to watch Georgetown play, and perhaps even more importantly, potential recruits living in other regions will become more exposed to the Georgetown program. The most important benefit of the expanded conference will be access to more top high school players.
Big East expansion is not a panacea for the woes that have plagued the basketball program over the last couple of years. However, there is now much to be optimistic about. Although we may only see the very beginnings of a turnaround as students, it will be nice to have a perennially strong basketball team to follow and cheer for as alumni in the years and decades ahead.
There have also been whispers over the past few years about the possibility of renovating and expanding McDonough Gymnasium to accommodate all home games. If this event were to become a reality, students would finally have a true “home gym” at which to attend games, where the atmosphere would improve immensely as more students would be able to attend big games in a much more intimate setting. Now is the time for athletic and university officials to seriously consider making plans to achieve the goal of on-campus basketball within the decade. If accomplished, this objective would do much toward regaining the electric environment created by John Thompson and Patrick Ewing in the 1980s. There is hope for Hoya hoops.
