“Hoya Saxa!” proved to truly be the yell of all yells as the Hoya faithful sang unchallenged under the direction of an uncharacteristically emotional John Thompson III. Behind the proud conductor, the team basked in the glory of a Big East Tournament Championship. But it wasn’t the coaches or the players that captured my curiosity in the Big Apple. It was the fans.
For an athlete, the goal is always the same whether in the regular season or in a tournament: win. But when the fans of 12 different teams descend upon the same location, the sports enthusiast is witness to a fascinating variety of attitude and emotion.
There is one type of fan that I know better than any other: the pessimist. My various sports allegiances have forced me to wear this badge for years now, and it was a very difficult one to bear in this particular tournament. From the moment I entered my hotel room and turned on the television, I was bombarded by expectation—the pessimist’s worst nightmare. ESPN analysts praised the Hoyas, and their regular season record had earned them a number one seed. As if this weren’t enough, Georgetown had won the tournament all three previous times that they had entered as the top seed. Others might have found this comforting, but my pessimism would not allow me to expect anything but disappointment.
At the Tuesday night award ceremony, Jeff Green was awarded Big East Player of the year, and Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese continued to pile on the expectation.
“We are celebrating the Big East Championship’s 25th year at the Garden this year,” he reminded us. “It was always a goal of ours to move the tournament here to the big stage, but we were just waiting for the right time. When I heard that a young man from New York by the name of Ewing had decided to attend Georgetown, I knew it was the right time.”
As if a successful season didn’t provide enough expectation, now we had to deal with history as well. Ewings, Thompsons, and anniversaries—as badly as I wanted my team to win, I couldn’t help but think that I was about to witness an epic disappointment.
A first-round bye gave me the day off work on Wednesday, and I stumbled onto a new type of fan in the unlikeliest of places.
I had been to St. Patrick’s Cathedral many times, but never before a big game. Inside were the normal camera-wielding, fanny-packed senior citizens shuffling about to the tight itinerary of a weekday bus trip. But two people caught my attention as I scanned the crowd. One man stood quietly by the candles lining the altar of St. Anthony. From his Fighting Irish ball cap down to the bright green sweatpants that surely covered shamrock boxers, the man touted his support of Notre Dame more than the collared priests around us displayed their allegiance to God.
At the opposite end of the rows of candles stood a man whose Villanova garb rivaled his Irish counterpart. Here was the archetype of the desperate fan, a man so emotionally taxed by his own team that he will go to any lengths to ensure victory. As the two began their candle-lighting spree, I mimicked the disgusted look of an elderly woman next to me. She too knew that these men’s prayers were not going out for friends, family or world peace, but a Big East Tournament championship.
I followed the Notre Dame fan out of the church, but he declined to comment, apparently taking no pride in his irreverence. As I watched the green-clad figure fade away down Fifth Avenue, I did what any fan would do: walked right back into that church and lit two candles for the Hoyas of Georgetown. Not that Patrick Ewing Jr. hasn’t been great off the bench, but I couldn’t let my team be the only one lacking a saintly sixth man.
I didn’t lose any sleep over my minor blasphemy that night. My tossing and turning came at the thought of the upcoming day’s game against Villanova. SportsCenter was still on the television as I drifted off to sleep with visions of upsets dancing in my head.
I was no less worried as I took my seat in the upper press box the next day, just below the shadows that engulfed the upper-half of the seats at the Garden. A family of beetles seemed to be finding ample food amidst the cracks in the table, and I dared not run my hand along the underside for fear of finding Ewing-era bubblegum. All this in “The World’s Most Famous Arena.”
My filthy surroundings were immediately forgotten as Villanova poured out of the tunnel behind star point guard Scottie Reynolds. Reynolds is a full foot shorter than Hoya junior Roy Hibbert, with less than a third of the tournament experience of junior Jeff Green, but the diminutive freshman had proven himself once before to be a bona fide Hoya-killer.
But before I hit the halfway point of my Coney Island corndog, the Hoyas held a 25-point lead. Not even the Saint of Lost Possessions could help Villanova find their shot. Against all of my better judgment, I began to relax.
That’s when the text messages and phone calls began to roll in. The optimists, the naïve souls opposite me on the spectrum of fandom, tortured me with their premature declarations of victory. An ill-advised group of students behind me chanted “it’s all over” far too soon. The stage was set for a second-half comeback.
The Wildcats did not disappoint, cutting into the lead almost immediately. The Hoya fans had no time to recover from complacency, and stared in silence as the Nova Nation made itself heard.
In the end, Jon Wallace and Jeff Green were able to stem the tide enough to preserve the victory. But even as the game appeared to be over, two fans remained on the edge of their seats.
Jim and Keith of Pennsylvania had no strong allegiance to either team, but they were cheering as loudly as any Villanova fan during the comeback. The only clue to these fans’ intentions was a small notebook that Keith clutched in his hands.
Villanova trailed by eight points as the final seconds ticked off the clock, and senior forward Curtis Sumpter threw up a seemingly pointless, stat-padding three-pointer at the buzzer. As the shot hit home Jim and Keith were out of their seats in ecstasy, cheering loud enough to put the lukewarm Hoya fans to shame. I was baffled.
“Unbelievable,” Keith said after the game. “I took Villanova plus five-and-a-half, and that three cut it to five.”
Unbelievable indeed. After being down by as many as 25 points, Villanova had stormed back to cover by a half-point. I was so entranced by the backdoor cuts of the Princeton Offense that I had totally overlooked the proverbial backdoor cover: gamblers, another type of fan to be found amidst the tournament crowd.
With an early collapse now out of the question, I slept much more soundly on Thursday night. But I did not overlook the dangers of Friday’s game against the Fighting Irish. Visions of Scottie Reynolds were replaced with the image of Notre Dame’s sharpshooter Colin Falls. There was just something about Georgetown playing against an Irish three-point shooter in the Big East semifinal that didn’t sit well with me. Just last year, Syracuse’s Gerry McNamara ended Georgetown’s tournament run from behind the three-point arc.
As I retook my position atop the Garden on Friday, my fears seemed to be playing out exactly on the court. Colin Falls, like McNamara, made it rain from three and seemed destined to send the Hoyas packing early. This was the pessimist’s chance to sit back and say, “I told you so,” an always bittersweet privilege.
My eyes fell upon an older woman from Notre Dame. Well, it was more like they were violently jerked onto her by the irresistible pull of her Notre Dame sweater. It belonged in a church bingo hall in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day, but anyone bold enough to wear that emerald atrocity had to be worth talking to.
She was very pleasant, even after I told her that I was a Georgetown student. I noticed a rosary hanging around her neck, and guiltily thought of my experience at St. Patrick’s Cathedral two days before. I thought I had seen just about every type of fan there was to see, but a pious fan? This was something new. I told her about St. Pat’s and asked her what she thought of my actions.
“Oh honey, praying for sports is perfectly fine,” she said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Haven’t you ever heard of Touchdown Jesus? We practically invented the whole concept. What do you think these are for?” she asked, motioning to the rosary.
I was floored. It was all I could do to keep from breaking out into a “Rudy” chant in honor of this wonderful old woman. But the second half was about to begin, and Georgetown was still trailing.
In the second half, the saintly sixth man began to emerge. Patrick Ewing Jr., who has played in the shadow of his legendary father all year, was literally in the shadow of the massive Knicks’ Ewing banner that hung at the west-end of the Garden. Despite the pressure, the younger Ewing recorded what was probably his best half of the entire season. Adding 15 points of offense to his consistent defensive energy, Ewing Jr. sparked a second half comeback that opened the door for the game’s real hero: Jeff Green.
The Player of the Year drove to the basket and converted a difficult shot in traffic to give the Hoyas the win. I hurried down the steps to get a final word from my pious friend, but as she spotted me she shot me a wicked glance that I would have never thought possible. So much for loving your enemy.
As the long lines of Notre Dame fans poured out of the arena in disappointment, the Hoyas lingered on the court. The only Green left in the building was wearing gray.
“It was a lucky shot,” he said after the game.
Call it what you will, Georgetown was in the finals.
The University of Pittsburgh did not disappoint those who wanted to see the anticipated rubber-match between Big East giants when they defeated Louisville in the other semi-final game. The stage was set for a Pitt-GU final. I wanted to be happy, but all I could imagine was Pitt’s star center Aaron Gray doing to the gray of Georgetown what Jeff Green had done to the green of Notre Dame.
In the end, the final game was disappointing to those who craved tournament drama. Georgetown embarrassed Pitt, and Roy Hibbert dominated his seven-foot counterpart. Any trace of Pitt support had vanished from Madison Square Garden with more than five minutes left to play in the final game, and cheers of “Hoya Saxa!” went unchallenged in the closing minutes.
The people who remained were those who had reached the pinnacle of fandom: the victorious. With opponents behind us and with all possibility of disappointment safely past, I was able to enjoy a few moments of unfettered happiness. The Hoyas had won the 25th Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden in the 100th year of Georgetown basketball. Patrick Ewing senior embraced his son at center court and John Thompson Jr. waited at the bottom of the ladder as his son climbed up to cut the nets down. It was the perfect end to the perfect story—a touching rebirth of Georgetown sports history.
But even as those around me enjoyed past and present, the voice of my sports pessimism came back to life inside of me and turned my eyes to the future. There are six more games between Georgetown basketball and true glory, and six more opportunities for disappointment. It’s no wonder I didn’t notice the Garden as I slid down into Penn Station to catch my train. The tournament there is over and the joy that came with it is past. As I slipped in and out of sleep on the train ride home, all I could think about were the announcements of Selection Sunday, and a fresh bracket to tell me who to fear next.
