I’m not trying to be Dikembe Downer here. Really, I’m not. I’m just as excited as the next Hoya for this year’s basketball season. The basketball preview issues are out, the buzz has been going since August and JTIII and Co. are a consensus top-10 pick before they’ve even played a game. For us Hilltoppers, it’s really thrilling stuff. I completely understand.
What I don’t get is why everyone is rushing into the whole 100 YEARS OF BASKETBALL AT GEORGETOWN hoopla. I say rushing in, as we basketball fools do, because we’re not quite there yet. That’s right. Hoya round-ball isn’t quite at the century mark. It’s actually a full two years younger! Put a hold on the balloons, the fancy triple-digit labeled logos and the souped up display trucks—we’re really only in our 98th year.
You see, during World War II, the boys took off for a rendezvous with Uncle Sam, and the games that Hoyas can no longer do without were put on hold. A full two years with no basketball. Just imagine our boys Jeff and Roy being shipped overseas (good luck finding a seven-foot fox hole) and having to trade in their Blue and Gray uni for a camouflaged one. We live in different times now, though, and the only draft those guys need to worry about is the one in June when David Stern informs them of their fate.
In 1943 the Hoyas made it to their first ever Final Four appearance in the NCAA Tournament—a marvelous achievement. Of course, there were only eight teams in the tournament that year. During that magical run under Coach Elmer Ripley, they made it to the finals of the tournament. They could smell their first-ever national championship way before Big John Thompson ever filled out his 6’ 10” frame. He was just a two-year-old with a spit-up rag over his shoulder. However, the ’43 squad, led by John Mahnken and his 15.4 points per game, would eventually fall 46-34 to a short-shorted but overpowering squad from Wyoming. Different times, indeed.
The next two years saw the height of American action in the second Great War, and Joe Hoya was left to ponder what Mahnken’s stats would have been like with one more year under his belt. Or if Edward Drysgula (the team’s leading scorer in 1945-46) would have challenged Eric “Sleepy” Floyd’s all-time scoring records with a full four years of basketball service.
Even back then many Hoya fans were left wondering how their team was playing because their home court was Brookland Gymnasium at Catholic University. And we think we have it tough at the Verizon Center. Imagine vying for a front row seat with not just any freshman, but a Catholic University freshman.
Some wonder if the Hoyas were thwarted by the war in the middle of what could have been a mid-1940s dynasty, 40 years before their next. We’ll never know. But one thing we do know is that it is not the 100th year of basketball here at Georgetown. If we’re calling it an anniversary, that’s cool. I can deal. Even though it’s the anniversary of a season where the team went 2-2 and had no coach … Where’s a Thompson-elder when you need him?
Anyway, for most fans, being excited about this season has nothing to do with it being Georgetown Basketball’s supposed 100th year. People are psyched to see Georgetown kick-start its second-ever dynasty, 63 years after they were robbed of the chance at their first.
