As the West Virginia Mountaineers celebrated on the court and the strains of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” echoed through the tunnels of Madison Square Garden, the Georgetown Hoyas sat down for a press conference. They did not have much to say.
The Hoyas had just lost to the Mountaineers in the Big East Championship finals, in a game that came down to the final seconds. Chris Wright had been just inches away from tying the game as time expired, but his shot fell short and Georgetown’s week in New York ended with a 60-58 defeat.
Judging by the funereal atmosphere as they addressed the press, it may have seemed like the Hoyas season had just come to the end. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. If anything, Georgetown’s experience in the Big East tournament was a rebirth. After ending the regular season on something of a slide, losing four of their last six games, the Hoyas vanquished three opponents in three days, and came within a three-pointer of being crowned the best team in what many consider to be the best conference in college basketball.
Georgetown’s performance was impressive enough to earn a number three seed in the NCAA Tournament, up from projections as low as six before the conference tournament began. The Hoyas had convinced many people, including the selection committee, that they were a potential Final Four contender. But at that moment, there was no way they could look to the future.
“It’s hard to analyze that right now just because I’m extremely disappointed,” Georgetown head coach John Thompson III said. “We’ve got three guys up here with me that are extremely disappointed. We have a locker room back down the hall with a bunch of other guys that are disappointed.”
Seated alongside Thompson were Wright, Greg Monroe, and Austin Freeman. Their coach did not need to point out their disappointment—it was visible in their sullen expressions, in the way they hung their heads in their hands. Earlier in the season this group had said there was no such thing as a moral victory, and they backed up their talk on Saturday night. They had come to New York with one goal: to leave as Big East champions. And they had failed.
“Me and Austin, being the leaders of this team, we emphasize that we didn’t come out here to beat Syracuse or to beat one team,” Wright had said after the Hoyas’ quarterfinals upset of the Orange. “We want to win the whole thing.”
But even if the Hoyas would not acknowledge any moral victory, they could not ignore the three actual victories that they earned in the tournament. Georgetown accomplished something in New York. The young Hoyas, many of whom were playing on the biggest stage of their basketball careers, entered the crucible of the Big East tournament, and they thrived.
Few had expected Georgetown, the tournament’s eighth seed, to make a deep run in New York. Their season-ending woes, kicked off by a loss to lowly Rutgers, earned the Hoyas with the dreaded inconsistency label—they were talented, but couldn’t be trusted to come to play every game. Well aware of the doubters, this squad entered the postseason with something to prove.
“I think this team is playing with a chip on its shoulder,” Wright said during the tournament run. “We’re really coming out and being aggressive and attacking people, because we know what we can do and we know what we’re capable of.”
Now people know what the Hoyas are capable of. They’re capable of beating three tough teams in three days. They’re capable of taking down an NCAA tournament number one seed. And not only did Georgetown show its capabilities, it showed it can and will fulfill them.
Indeed, the Big East tournament seemed to be the Hoyas’ time to right the wrongs of the regular season and disprove any conclusions that were drawn from previous failures. Their trip to New York turned into a Tarantino-esque tour of revenge—albeit without a Hollywood ending. All four of Georgetown’s opponents had beaten the team earlier in the year, and at least in the case of the first three, the Hoyas emphatically exacted their vengeance.
The players quickly admitted that the opportunity for payback gave them some extra motivation. After they earned their berth in the finals, Wright, Monroe, and Freeman—Georgetown’s “Big Three”—were asked if revenge was a motivating factor, and they answered quickly, in unison: “Yes.”
“For the record, yes,” Monroe reiterated, making sure no one misunderstood what the Hoyas were playing for.
The first victim of the fired-up Georgetown squad was South Florida, who had dealt the Hoyas an embarrassing home loss in early February. There was no hope for an upset this time around. Georgetown took the lead early and never looked back, winning by a margin of 20 points.
The Bulls, however, were little more than a tune-up. Georgetown was the higher seeded team, and USF suffered the disadvantage of playing on one day’s rest. Twenty-four hours later, the Hoyas would have to play from that same position, against no less a team than Big East regular season champion Syracuse. And the Orange, of course, had already beaten the Hoyas twice.
It didn’t help matters that, after the elimination of St. John’s, Syracuse was the closest thing to a home team at the Big East tournament. The color orange was ubiquitous around Madison Square Garden that afternoon. It was unavoidable—an hour before tip-off, the Syracuse band took over the concourse outside Tower A of the arena, creating an impromptu pep rally and an intimidating sight for any Georgetown fans coming to the game.
But it was hardly as if the Hoyas were walking into the Carrier Dome. The all-inclusive set-up of the Big East tournament, and the aura of the Garden, prevent any matchup from becoming like just another home or away game.
“It’s crazy,” Freeman said. “It’s a lot of fun just to be playing in the Mecca of basketball, in Madison Square Garden, and in New York.”
Especially in the first days of competition, the arena is a mixture of the entire conference, with fans of every school taking in the other games while waiting for their team to play. Even a sizable fan contingent can be overwhelmed by the support of thousands of spectators whose allegiance is up for grabs.
And then there is the spectacle that naturally arises from a big-time sporting event in the heart of New York City. The media flocks to the games, the fans who have obtained the limited student section tickets are a little more boisterous, and celebrities, from President Bill Clinton (SFS ’68) to director Spike Lee (a fervent Georgetown supporter), look on from courtside.
“If you can’t get excited to play in this building, in this tournament, you should be doing something else,” Thompson said.
The Hoyas were certainly excited, but they needed no special motivation against Syracuse. The way their biggest rival had defeated them previously—first mounting a comeback en route to a blowout, and then withstanding a furious Georgetown rally—left the Hoyas with the knowledge that they could outplay the Orange.
And in their third attempt, Georgetown did. The Hoyas hung tight with the Orange all game, never lapsing and allowing the kind of run that allowed their previous matchups to get out of hand. Syracuse, however, did stumble, and Georgetown took full advantage, going on an 18-2 run in the middle of the second half that secured the lead and the victory. With a final score of 91-84, the Hoyas clinched their biggest win of the season.
The key to beating the Orange had to be Wright. Considering the competition, the junior guard unquestionably played his best all-around game of the season, scoring 27 points, grabbing six rebounds, and handing out six assists.
“He really had a great game,” Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. “I thought when he plays like that, that’s when they beat people.”
It was no surprise then that Wright was on top of his game for the entire tourney. After being snubbed for every level of All-Big East honors earlier in the week, he earned a well-deserved spot on the All-Tournament team, posting per game averages of 19.3 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 4.8 assists in New York.
But the numbers don’t tell the whole story with Wright—the most impressive aspect of his game didn’t show up on the stat sheet. The point guard found the delicate balance between his role as facilitator and scorer. He worked to make his teammates better, but he had the sense to know when he needed to take over and score a crucial basket.
As a player whose biggest criticisms had been inconsistency and poor decision-making, Wright’s play was a revelation. By the end of the tournament, the Hoyas could put the ball in Wright’s hands with the utmost confidence, trusting the junior to make the right play. In the Big East tournament, Georgetown’s most vocal leader only had to lead by example.
“I think it was time for me to step up a little bit,” Wright said. “We just needed plays to win the game and I tried to do whatever I could to help us.”
Wright’s teammates were no slouches either. The point guard was joined on the All-Tournament team by Monroe, who challenged Wright for best Hoya performance of the week in their semifinal beatdown of Marquette. The sophomore big man was a threat for a triple-double all tourney, and against the Golden Eagles he nearly got one, with 23 points, 13 rebounds, and seven assists.
Monroe’s display in Madison Square Garden showed why he is a likely NBA lottery pick, and inspired some to question whether he belonged in the same class as Ewing, Mourning, and the other great Hoya centers of yore. The sophomore was a dominant interior presence at points, but nearly as often he was showing off his highly-touted passing skills. He let the game come to him, and didn’t worry how the nature of his game jelled with his 6-foot-11-inch frame.
“My nature is to win,” Monroe said. “Hitting the open man, scoring myself—when those opportunities present themselves I’m trying to take advantage of them.”
The Hoyas all did what they needed to win. When Freeman’s three-pointers weren’t falling, the junior guard started going inside. Despite throwing up on the sideline in multiple games, junior forward Julian Vaughn persevered to give Georgetown valuable minutes in the frontcourt. Seldom-used freshman Vee Sanford made the most of his time on the court, hitting a teardrop floater to give the Hoyas the lead for good against Syracuse.
Sophomore guard Jason Clark was the Hoya role player who made the biggest splash, averaging 16 points in Georgetown’s three wins, and filling in gaps on offense and defense wherever he was needed.
“We call Jason ‘Loose Change,’ because you never think about him,” Thompson said. “But if you keep collecting that loose change all of a sudden it adds up. Jason makes the hustle plays. He usually guards the opposition’s best perimeter player. He’s an underrated offensive player. He does the little things that make teams win.”
Of course, Georgetown wasn’t perfect, as the loss to West Virginia made clear. Every Hoya couldn’t be on all the time. Clark only had two points against the Mountaineers, and Vaughn picked up three fouls and fouled out in a span of 20 seconds. Perhaps most egregiously, the Hoyas got destroyed on the boards, allowing West Virginia 38 rebounds to their 24, including 20 offensive boards.
In the end, Georgetown couldn’t stop the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, Da’Sean Butler. With ten seconds left in the game, the senior forward, guarded by Monroe and Freeman, somehow found his way to the basket and rattled home the winning shot.
That left Wright with four seconds to mount a frantic drive down the court, but his desperate shot clanged off the front of the rim. He could do nothing but break down in Clark’s arms as the Big East champion Mountaineers celebrated.
Less than 24 hours after that crushing moment, however, the Hoyas were ready to move on. They returned to campus and received heroes’ welcomes in Leo’s, where the team gathered to watch the NCAA tournament selection show.
“Everyone out there understands that we did play well in New York,” Thompson said after the show. “We came up short. I think everyone realizes to some disagree how disappointing it is—particularly for the coach—but I think they appreciate the effort the guys gave, and we appreciate the support.”
The selection committee appreciated Georgetown’s effort in New York as well, rewarding the Hoyas with the number three seed in the Midwest Region. They tip off their tournament tonight at 7:25 p.m. against 14-seed Ohio in Providence.
With the distance of time, the sting of the last-second loss to West Virginia lessened, and the Hoyas were able to appreciate what they accomplished in the conference tournament.
“We found a rhythm,” Monroe said. “We found exactly what we can do and what we have to do to win games in a tournament scenario, and on a big stage.”
It may not have been enough to win the Big East, but that rhythm could carry Georgetown far in the NCAA tournament. The Hoyas all said that they have always had confidence in their team, and in New York they made that confidence evident to everyone else, proving they could compete with the best in the country every night.
But the Hoyas did not come into Madison Square Garden as a team fully formed. They grew over the course of those four days, their bonds forged by shared triumphs and failures.
The morning after the championship loss, they had already begun to realize what had happened. Clark took to Twitter: “This last week I really realized how much I love my teammates and how much we stay together,” he wrote.
By the time Georgetown prepared to leave for the NCAA tournament, the pain and sorrow present Saturday night had apparently faded. And while the Hoyas could not forget the game that got away, they looked back with a hint of fondness.
“That week we learned so much about our team, so much about ourselves,” Monroe said. “We accomplished a lot of things in that one week that we couldn’t have over the season.”
Totally amazing story…Jason “Loose Change” Clark…I like that! Great team, great thoughts about each other, this is what it’s all about team unity…