With the men’s basketball team experiencing a season of extremely impressive wins coupled with equally embarrassing losses, Georgetown students are left with a choice of what kind of Hoya fan they want to be.
Let’s look at the facts. Last year the team was 16-15 after ascending to a No. 8 ranking on the heels of a lopsided win against then No. 2 UConn. After that victory, a tangible, but esoteric mistrust among the players—of the system, of their own abilities, of one another (who knows)—burned hopes for an NCAA Tournament run down to the ground.
With such a heartbreaking and anticlimatic end to last season, there can be no doubt that Hoya fans had differing attitudes towards the team coming into this season.
Despite the memory of last year, some of you expected the team to rebound this season because they retained a considerable nucleus of talent while most of the country’s other top programs had entered so-called rebuilding mode. The squad spoiled you with impressive early-season victories (Temple, Butler, Washington) that inflated your fan-ego further. But then they lost to Old Dominion—again!—in that stupid little gym and you wrote them off, declared them unchanged from the nightmarish season of a year ago. After splitting a brace of games against Marquette and UConn, they have become the absolute epitome of the Jekyll and Hyde archetype, winning all the games you expect them to lose (Pitt, Duke, Nova) while fizzling out against weaker opponents (South Florida, Rutgers). This, to you, can only indicate that they are chronic underperformers, and any prospect of an extended run in the tourney is wishful thinking. If they can’t top the Big East’s bottom-feeders, how can they expect to beat four, even three, consecutive quality opponents in March? To you, it’s best to write this team off now, before they can break our hearts again.
Another group of fans entered the season with a very different outlook. Those of you in this group decided to enter this season with tempered expectations. After early nail-biters against teams (Temple, Butler) that you had no idea at the time were top-25 caliber squads, you remained steadfast with your cynicism. Then, the team lost to Old Dominion, rekindling old demons from freshman year in snowed-in McDonough. At this point, you laughed at the coincidence and hoped it would be an omen of the 2006-2007 team’s success, when they made the Final Four. And then the omen seems to be coming eerily true when the team went on a superb tear through the meatiest portion of the schedule, first beating UConn with a 19-point comeback that may as well have been the team performing open-heart surgery on itself, pumping lifeblood back into the storied program. The Hoyas then upended Pitt, pulling the cord on the nation’s second-longest home win streak, and blew out Duke on national TV with the president in attendance. You also can’t forget about the payback against Nova in a snowed-in Phone Booth. Sure, a couple of hiccups came along the way, namely defeats to South Florida and Rutgers. There was also the drubbing at Syracuse, but that team is simply damn good. But you’ve got the Orange coming back here today. You’re thinking it’s going to be another payback game. And perhaps, it will be just another stepping-stone in a vindicating season.
As a loyal Georgetown fan, you are faced with a choice: are you the pessimist, or the optimist?
This is one of the best Hoya columns I have seen in a long, long time! Much has been said about the Jekyll and Hyde Hoya fan but I am definitely in the group that entered the season with “tempered hopes.” I am the optimist fan. And more of us need to stand up and be counted. Thank you Walker for your excellent point of view.