25 minutes of solid basketball weren’t enough for the Georgetown women’s Basketball team to win their Big East Tournament game against Virginia Tech on March 6. A summary of the team’s last game could also serve as an abstract of their entire season: Despite a great effort from senior forward Rebekkah Brunson the Lady Hoyas were edged by slightly superior opposition.
Going into the Big East conference tournament, the Hoyas knew that they had to win at least two games to qualify for the second-tier NIT tournament, and two more to realize their dream of capturing a bid to the NCAA Tournament. However, after losing their first postseason game to Virginia Tech, the team returned to the Hilltop to face rain, classes and regrets.
The game against Virginia Tech was close throughout. Georgetown took a 13-10 lead with 13:41 left in the first after junior Mary Lisicky, Georgetown’s all-time leading three-point shooter, sank her first trey. It would be Lisicky’s only points of the day, as she went a dismal 1-11 from the field. With the guard mired in a shooting slump, Georgetown was forced to look elsewhere for offense against the Hokies, and with the exception of Carmen Bruce, who finished with nine points no other Hoyas were able to rise to the occasion.
Georgetown took the biggest lead of the first half with 7:05 to go, as Sarah Jenkins hit consecutive baskets to push the Hoyas’ advantage to nine, 22-13. The teams traded baskets the rest of the half, as Georgetown took a 28-21 lead into intermission.
After a solid start to the second, during which they increased their lead to 40-28 with 14:58 left, the bottom fell out on the Hoyas’ season. The Hokies went on a 15-3 tear over the next 7:30 to tie the game. Georgetown turned the ball over multiple times and missed shots-difficulties that would continue for the next five minutes, when Tech took a 54-43 lead. VT’s remarkable 28-3 run sealed the Hoyas’ fate, as the 56-47 final failed to indicate the turn of events that sent Georgetown back to McDonough, Yates and Econ problem sets.
After the game, Head Coach Pat Knapp cited boxing-out on rebounds and sloppy ball handling as he explained the loss. “We had 28 turnovers and we gave up 19 offensive rebounds, which was even worse of an anomaly,” Knapp said. “I think some players got very frustrated and didn’t follow through on their job-descriptions … Our players in that game broke down mentally before Virginia Tech beat them physically, and that’s inexcusable.”
Despite its disappointing conclusion, Knapp put the Hoyas’ season in a positive light. “We’ve beaten six teams that have gone on to postseason play. So our 13-15 is light-years away from being embarrassing or frustrating, Knapp said. You gotta look at our shooting stats. We have four players who averaged 57 percent from the free-throw line. You can’t have that and win. Our defense and our rebounding improved dramatically from last year, which shows that the kids played hard.”
According to Knapp, if a few bounces had gone a different way, the Hoyas season would have been significantly different. “Our young women played hard, they kept bouncing back,” Knapp went on to say. “If we didn’t bounce back we wouldn’t have been in those games till the end. We improved our defense and our rebounding, but there’s a few more things we could have done … If we shot a little better, we’d be playing this week, and not sitting here.”
One player who did shoot well was Brunson. Brunson had 18 points and 17 rebounds on 7-14 shooting against Virginia Tech. She became the only Hoya women’s basketball player to ever record a thousand points and a thousand rebounds, and the only woman to lead the Big East in both scoring and rebounding. After the Virginia Tech loss Knapp predicted that Brunson would be a top five pick in the WNBA draft.
