When the Georgetown men’s basketball team tips off its season against Hartford, the program will be entering its 100th season. Georgetown boasts one of the nation’s most storied college basketball programs, which began in 1907. If the Hoyas are going to throw any kind of birthday party this year, you can expect it to be a dance party, just like the ones that have become a staple of Midnight Madness at Georgetown.
Georgetown basketball learned to dance at an early age, winning the Southern Conference in the program’s second year of existence. In just the fifth season of the NCAA Tournament in 1942-43, Georgetown made it all the way to the title game, but fell to Wyoming 46-34.
The Hoyas must have misplaced their dancing shoes after 1943, as it took them 32 seasons to get back in the NCAA Tournament. However, in 1972 John Thompson Jr. was hired to coach the team and he quickly taught the Hoyas some flashy new moves, getting them back to the NCAA in 1975. Unlike most dancers, his moves never went out of style, and he coached for 27 years, leading the Hoyas to the Dance 20 times, including a 14-year streak. The 1980s were by far the most successful decade for Georgetown basketball, when the Hoyas made it to the finals three times and won the National Championship in 1984.
Before last season, the Hoyas had been to the NCAA Tournament only one time since Thompson Jr. left in 1999. However, the Hoyas have been returning to their top form in the past few years. Last year, expectations were high on the Hilltop and the Hoyas danced their way to the Sweet 16. This year high expectations have expanded and the team is receiving more pre-season national attention than it has in years.
“We haven’t lost a game yet, but we haven’t won one either,” Head Coach John Thompson III said of the attention on his squad.
This national attention includes a song that may fit the team perfectly. It is a tune they can groove to on their march to the Madness. In the music video of “Stuntin’ Like My Daddy,” rapper Lil’ Wayne can be seen sporting a fitted Georgetown cap with quite the “G” on the front. As an artist who hails from New Orleans, Lil’ Weezy could have worn a LSU or New Orleans Saints hat, but he chose Georgetown. This is a sure sign of the Hoyas’ reborn national prominence. You don’t see too many rappers wearing George Washington gear.
This season the Hoyas will be “stuntin’ like their daddies” as they continue to uphold the team tradition. Much has already been made of Thompson and junior forward Patrick Ewing Jr., who are both following in the footsteps of their fathers at Georgetown. Sitting out last year due to NCAA transfer rules, Ewing Jr. could be seen sharply dressed in a clean suit moving to the beat of the Verizon Center music while his teammates warmed up before games.
“It’s having something taken away from you for a year that you love so much,” Ewing Jr. said of missing out on last season. “It’s hard.”
“We’re looking forward to having the option of looking down the bench and, instead of seeing [Patrick] in a suit, seeing him in a jersey,” Thompson said of Ewing Jr.
The jersey Ewing Jr. will be wearing bears the same “33” that his father Patrick Ewing wore in the ‘80s. Ewing Jr. refuses to cave into any pressure from the legend of his father.
“No not really,” he responded when asked if he feels any pressure. “I’ve had to deal with it ever since I was born.”
“I think that in this building at this school, maybe more so than anywhere else on Earth, you’re going to have to worry about those kind of questions,” Thompson, who followed his father as a Georgetown coach, added while talking with the media in McDonough Gymnasium.
The tradition flows like blood and the program is so respected that it even extends outside of Georgetown. Thompson honored this tradition when he took the team to the wake of legendary Boston Celtics Head Coach Red Auerbach, under whom Thompson’s father played under.
A long line of great players have come out of Georgetown. There are the big men, Patrick Ewing and Alonzo Mourning. There’s the former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. There’s the Answer, Allen Iverson. There’s an ambassador of the game, Dikembe Mutombo. There are the lesser-known but still important Eric Floyd and Reggie Williams. There have been 51 NBA athletes whose jerseys hang prominently in McDonough.
This year’s team has plenty of players who could be added to this list in the future. The biggest stars are junior center Roy Hibbert and junior forward Jeff Green. Both are part of a group of 50 front-running candidates for the Men’s 2006-07 John R. Wooden Award. Hibbert is ready to join the ranks of all the past big men who have led their respective Hoya squads and Green realizes Hibbert’s importance to the team.
“He’s the centerpiece of this team,” Green said. “We’re really on his back. He’s going to take us where we need to be.”
Hibbert has taken great strides in his strength in the paint, while Green adds to the inside presence of the Hoyas and is versatile. Hibbert says he’s worked on his shot during the off-season in order to add to his game like Green.
“Roy can shoot. He’s a great shooter for his size,” Green said of his teammate’s improvement. “But I’m a much, much, much better shooter.”
The Hoya basketball tradition doesn’t include only players but also moments. Some were good memories, such as the 1984 Championship or 1985 Sweater Game against St. John’s. Others weren’t so sweet, such as the 1982 title game against North Carolina when the Hoyas were struck by a dagger from a Tar Heel freshman guard named Michael Jordan.
Some of those memories are much more recent. Georgetown really broke out onto the national scene last year when the team knocked off the undefeated No.1 Duke Blue Devils. The country finally found out what the Hoya players and fans mean when they say, “We are Georgetown.”
What moments lie ahead for Georgetown this year is a question that remains to be seen. The 2006-07 season will close out a century of Georgetown basketball, and the Hoyas want to do so on a high note. The team doesn’t want to get too far ahead of themselves, as some of the hype has, and need to take things on a step-by-step basis.
“It’s a long season, a lot of games, a lot of different opponents,” junior guard Jonathan Wallace said. “We just got to take it one game at a time, come in every night focused. Our ultimate goal is to play to win. We want to be successful, so that’s the approach we’re going to take; you know, come out every night, play with everything we got and let winning take care of itself.”
This “one game-at-a-time” attitude does not mean the Hoyas haven’t set high goals for themselves. They have come a long way over the past two years. In the 2004-05 season the Hoyas got their basketball program back on the map. Then they returned for a Sweet 16 run last year. Now it’s time to take the next dance step.
“This year is making sure we bring home the National Championship,” Hibbert said of his goal for this year. “I’ve said before we’ll all work hard on and off the court, and it’s not going to be for nothing. So we have to bring home the National Championship.”
With history of the Georgetown basketball program and the high expectations and goals, the Hoyas will have a lot to live up to in this 100th year of basketball. The Hoyas started the season with another dance extravaganza during Midnight Madness and are looking forward to one more dance at their 100-year-old party at the end of the season. Thompson hopes that this dance is a winning one.
“We hope that they can play ball better than they can dance,” he joked at Midnight Madness.
Luckily for Georgetown, in college basketball, when you can play ball and win, you don’t have to worry about dancing. It comes naturally in March.
