There are 679 members in the facebook.com group “2007: The Year of the Hoyas,” 439 in the group “If you don’t like Georgetown, you must also hate Christmas morning,” and 541 in the group “Where do you go to school? That sucks, I go to GEORGETOWN.” If these recently-formed and quickly multiplying groups are any indication, school spirit has never been higher at Georgetown, and there has never been a more just reason for it. Thank you, Hoya basketball, for giving our often-fractured school an achievement we can all rally around.
The on-court style of the Hoya offense—cerebral, unselfish—reflects the off-court behavior of the team. Just look at the contrast between Jeff Green and Jared Dudley if you need proof of that. Jonathan Wallace was going to play at Princeton until JTIII took the Georgetown job. Roy Hibbert has said he wants to stay four years to get a Georgetown education. Coach Thompson runs a tight ship, keeping the team focused on basketball and the classroom.
Perhaps that’s part of the reason that they displayed remarkable perspicacity in both games at the Meadowlands last weekend, staging two incredible come-from-behind victories when it would have been the easiest thing to simply give up.
Georgetown’s students responded to the victories with a show of unity unprecedented in recent memory. To stand on N Street following Sunday’s victory was a remarkable experience; students of all grades, all cliques, all different levels of sports familiarity came out to the streets to demonstrate, with remarkable civility under the circumstances, their utter joy at being a part of the Georgetown community. Students who disagree on politics and religion, students who spend most of their lives concerned with their own grades, internships and social lives all came out to agree on one thing: We Are Georgetown.
So thanks again, JTIII, Jeff Green, Roy Hibbert, Jonathan Wallace, Patrick Ewing Jr., Tyler Crawford, Vernon Macklin, DaJuan Summers, Jesse Sapp, Jeremiah Rivers, Kenny Izzo, Sead Dizdarevic, Octavius Spann and everyone else involved with the team. Good luck in Atlanta. Now all we ask of you is to give us another reason to celebrate together.
