Just as Georgetown seemed to have turned the corner, the team took another step backward Monday night, suffering an ugly loss to unranked Villanova 56-52. After blowing out twenty-second ranked Notre Dame, the Hoyas looked poised to break from the pack and regain their status as a dominant team. But in a conference filled with NBA-level talent and legendary coaches, fortunes can change quickly. In the Big East, teams that don’t come to play get burned, and on Monday night Georgetown never showed up.
Most indicative of the team’s performance and most disappointing for the fans was the play of Roy Hibbert. Coming off a great game against the Irish, 8 for 9 from the field for 18 points, Hibbert looked awful in the Hoyas’ first nationally televised game. In 24 minutes Hibbert didn’t even attempt a field goal and totaled only two points. Hibbert wasn’t totally to blame. Most of his teammates, except Freshman DaJuan Summers, chipped in with their own poor performances. Star forward Jeff Green totaled only seven points and the bench wasn’t much better, contributing eight points to the losing effort.
Georgetown looked perplexed, and was out-coached throughout much of the game, unable to break Villanova’s 2-2-1 press. Junior guard Jonathan Wallace, who played all but one minute, had one of his worst games of the season. A steady leader and creative playmaker for most of the season, Wallace looked confused by the press, committing a season high six turnovers while dishing out only two assists. The team as a whole committed twenty-two turnovers, killing chances of sustaining a tempo of Coach Thompson’s liking.
“They’ve been running that for a few years now. They try to slow you down and get you out of rhythm,” said Coach Thompson of the Villanova defense. “They were very effective with that today. It definitely slowed us down, and that’s what they were trying to get out of it.”
Wallace echoed his coach’s sentiments.
“They double-teamed and tried to take away his [Hibbert’s] looks and they got turnovers when we tried to get it inside,” said Wallace after the game. “We were not satisfied with the outcome.”
Despite the loss, there were several positives. Defensively, the Hoyas played hard with a lot of emotion. The tough man-to-man defense held the Wildcats to a season low 56 points. The effort also produced several highlight blocks. Another bright spot was Summers, one of Georgetown’s highly touted recruits, who had one of his best games of his young collegiate career. Still, as Coach Thompson said, the energy level, while decent, was not to his liking.
“I thought that our effort was good, but it wasn’t good enough. Villanova made plays when they needed to make plays,” said Thompson. “They got rebounds when they needed to get rebounds and got after loose balls. The effort just wasn’t good enough.”
With a big game ahead, the Hoyas must regroup and regain the swagger they had to open the Big East season. They will head to Big East-leading Pittsburgh on Saturday night. The seventh-ranked Panthers and their hostile crowd will be the toughest test yet for Georgetown, and should provide another measuring stick for how the team will fair through the heart of their season. Georgetown’s second nationally televised game will showcase many interesting match-ups, none bigger than Pittsburgh center Aaron Gray versus Roy Hibbert.
Pittsburgh will tell a lot, but the season is just beginning.
“When you start the Big East season you start all over again,” said Wallace. “We’re still a young team and this was only the second game of league play, and sure we’re disappointed with the outcome and maybe it will give us experience for the future.”
