Following Georgetown’s thrilling upset of then-No. 1 Duke, students left the MCI Center in a state of euphoria no current class at Georgetown has ever experienced. Georgetown hadn’t been ranked in just over four years and hadn’t knocked off a No. 1 team in over 20, so the celebrations, the closing down of streets, the verbal assaults on Duke fans and the constant congratulations for the players as partying went on late into the night were all warranted. The Hoyas earned it, but more importantly, they deserved it.
While Head Coach John Thompson III sounded ecstatic with the pro-Hoya turnout in the MCI Center last Saturday, senior forward Brandon Bowman was a little less willing to heap the same praise on the fans pouring upon him after his 23-point MVP-like performance.
When I asked him how the crowd and atmosphere helped Georgetown hold off Duke’s relentless charge, the four-year starter said, “It’s great. I mean this is the game everyone has been talking about since we got back for our senior year. It was really good they came out and supported us. I wish it could be every-game, though. We could make this an every game thing. We feed off of it when the crowd is hyped and chanting the way they were and that’s something we can have every home game.”
As a reporter, that comment doesn’t really mean much more to me than the MCI center was electric on Saturday, that perhaps a little more than usual. But as a fan, this comment hurt. What hurt more, though, is that Brandon Bowman is right. And every student, alumni and Hoya fan should heed his word.
Every other top-25 team in the nation packs their house every night, regardless of the opponent or the date and time of the game. There is absolutely no reason that the emotional lift the crowd gave Coach Thompson and the Hoyas can’t happen every game.
We’ve heard all the excuses: we don’t have an on-campus arena, they schedule too many games over breaks or during finals, it is impossible to make the cavernous MCI Center seem like a true home court and not like Gaston Hall for a Bill Clinton speech. We shouldn’t worry about things we can’t control, but rather try hard to affect changes that we have some influence over.
We have a great thing in Georgetown basketball and we should make our home sound like a KISS concert, for South Florida just as much as for Duke. If crowds turn out and make noise like they did last Saturday, then opponents will come to fear our stadium just as much as our team. Rutgers hasn’t made the NCAA tournament since 1991, but no team wants to play at the RAC because of the crazy atmosphere that gives the Scarlet Knights a huge advantage every single home game.
Now that the Hoyas are in the top-25, have beat the hated Duke Blue Devils and have survived a double-overtime nail biter to Notre Dame, we should have a huge turnout on Saturday against Cincinnati. I’m sure the Hoyas appreciate everything Hoya Blue and the diehard fans have done over the last five difficult years for Hoya basketball, but now I say we use last Saturday as a springboard for something greater. We can’t realistically expect the 1,000 diehards and 5,000 or so disinterested folk to carry our team on the court, just as we can’t expect over 20,000 to show up for every game, but we can do better than we’ve done in the past. The people who jumped on the bandwagon should stay on and show up in droves to downtown D.C. to show the nation, and, more importantly, our own Georgetown Hoyas, just how important they are ––and how feared they should be.
