It was a tale of two halves this past Saturday in front of 7,526 at the MCI Center. A difficult contest against Vanderbilt (4-0) marked the beginning of a tough stretch of out-of-conference games, including Oregon (4-0) and Illinois (6-0). The Hoyas were outplayed at their own game, squandering a seven-point halftime lead en route to a 68-61 loss at the hands of the Vanderbilt Commodores.
“Most games are won in the second half,” sophomore guard Jonathan Wallace said. “There’s not going to be a single game that we play during the year that’s going to be determined by a first-half performance.”
Nowhere was this more true than in Georgetown’s home opener against a major conference foe from the SEC. The Hoyas dominated every area of the stat sheet in the first 20 minutes: shooting 56 percent from the field to Vanderbilt’s 40 and scoring 11 of their first 15 baskets on lay-ups or dunks. After running their motion offense flawlessly even without 7-foot-2-inch sophomore center Roy Hibbert, who played only 13 minutes due to foul trouble, the Hoyas were staked to a 36-29 halftime lead.
“It’s like guarding ourselves in practice,” Vanderbilt Head Coach Kevin Stallings said. “We didn’t want to make a lot of adjustments because our guys should know how to defend this stuff. But Bowman’s quickness and Green’s ability to shot fake and get by us kept hurting us in the first half.”
Stallings’ team, which runs the same motion offense as Georgetown, did a better job of knocking down their open jumpers in the second half and stepped up their defensive effort, quickly erasing the halftime deficit.
“I thought the key to the game was in the second half, we defended and rebounded much better and got to the foul line more,” Stallings said.
When sophomore swingman Shan Foster dunked one home at the 15:30 mark in the second half, Vanderbilt took their first lead at 41-39. The dunk capped a 12-3 run for the Commodores. They regained the lead for a second time soon after a three-pointer by Georgetown’s first-year forward Marc Egerson and were catapulted to the seven-point victory.
“They just came out and played harder than us,” sophomore forward Jeff Green said of the Commodores in the second half. “We couldn’t match the intensity. They put out a lead. They kept it. … They just came out and wanted it more.”
Vanderbilt shot nearly 60 percent in the second-half, and 50 percent from three-point range, lead by Foster’s 13 second-half points. The ex-Georgetown recruit finished the game with 20 points and shot five for eight from downtown.
“The kid can make shots.” Georgetown Head Coach John Thompson III said. “And we let him make shots.”
While the Commodores lit it up, the Hoyas fell cold in the final 20 minutes, notching only four points in the paint and shooting a meager 34 percent, including four-of-15 from behind the arc. There seemed to be a lid on the basket during the Hoyas’ four-minute scoring drought when they missed nine consecutive treys near the end of the game.
“There’s very little that they did that we didn’t know was coming,” Thompson said. “There was very little that we did that they probably didn’t know was coming. It just comes down to focus, execution and making shots. I think we did execute. The ball just didn’t go in.”
Green, who contributed 14 points and nine rebounds, and senior forward Brandon Bowman, who contributed 12 points and nine rebounds, combined for only five second-half points. Senior guard Ashanti Cook was held scoreless the entire game.
The tough loss, along with the Hoyas’ 75-57 loss to Temple last season, marks the first time that Georgetown has lost consecutive home openers since 1968. However, the team is not letting one game weigh heavily on their minds.
“A challenge up front at the beginning of the season will always help us at the end of the season,” Wallace said.
The Hoyas will look to put together a complete effort on their next two-game road trip. Georgetown heads west to face the Oregon Ducks next Saturday at 3:00 p.m. and then travels to face Dee Brown and No. 15 Illinois on Dec. 8.
