It was a good weekend to be a Hoya.
Two talented Big East opponents left the Verizon Center in defeat, and after the dust had settled, the Georgetown men’s basketball team (13-5, 5-2 Big East) sat atop the conference standings.
The fun began with Butler (13-6, 3-3 Big East) on Saturday night. The Hoyas started slow, with the Bulldogs building a 27-15 lead late in the first half before a Georgetown run towards the end of the half cut the deficit to four at the break.
“Early on we weren’t getting stops,” Head Coach John Thompson III said. “You have to get stops to be able to get out in transition, and we want to get out in transition as early as possible.”
Guarding Butler’s Roosevelt Jones proved a difficult task throughout the game for the Hoyas, as he led all scorers with 28 points. It was no surprise, then, when the Bulldogs gave the ball to Jones on the game’s final possession as the Hoyas led by two. This time, however, he failed to convert, as junior guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera stayed with Jones the length of the court and blocked his lay-up attempt as time expired.
Smith-Rivera, with his team-leading 14 points and game-winning block, was a familiar hero for the Hoyas, but a fresher face provided the game-winning three-pointer with only five seconds left to play. Senior guard Jabril Trawick brought the ball up the floor and found an open Isaac Copeland waiting in the corner. The freshman forward drilled the shot to give his team the victory.
“Isaac was wide open,” Trawick said. “As Coach Thompson always says, one of our mottos is ‘trust each other’ so I snapped it to him and he made a big play for us.”
The game saw a breakout performance from the highly-touted freshman, who scored all 10 of his points in the second half.
“I know [Isaac] has been effective when he’s making hustle plays for us,” Coach Thompson said. “When he’s flying in for rebounds, when he’s getting deflections, when that happens that’s when the ball starts falling for him.”
Trawick had six assists on the day, including the decisive pass to Copeland, while adding 10 points during one of his better games in a Georgetown uniform.
“We feed off of his energy and he provided a lot of energy at the defensive end and the offensive end,” Coach Thompson said.
The Hoyas would carry their momentum into Monday night’s game against the No. 4 ranked Villanova Wildcats (17-2, 4-2 Big East), as the home team opened the game with an effort that was far from sluggish.
After trading early baskets, the Hoyas went on a 17-0 run that saw them play their best basketball of the season. The stretch began with an Isaac Copeland putback dunk, continuing with a barrage of jump shots and transition layups that left the Wildcats reeling and the packed student section in hysterics.
“That was as good a defensive stretch as we’ve had in a very long time. I think our defense is what dictated the game throughout the game and got us to where we took that lead in the first half,” Coach Thompson said.
The Hoyas took a 42-20 lead into the half, and the lead would never fall below 12 points for the rest of the game, although the Wildcats kept it just close enough to keep nerves high within the Verizon Center.
“I kept thinking that we were going to [come back],” Villanova Head Coach Jay Wright said. “That’s why I say you have got to give Georgetown credit. They never got tentative with the lead, they just kept attacking, and I think that is a sign of a really good team.”
The Hoyas were led by 17-point nights from both Smith-Rivera and Copeland, who continued his breakthrough weekend with the best game of his young career. Once again, it was Trawick who provided a defensive spark while also adding two three-pointers in the first half that helped to build the Hoyas’ insurmountable lead.
“It’s two outstanding games in a row [for Trawick],” Coach Thompson said. “It was a selfless game, making plays that might not show up on this [stat] sheet right here.”
The crowd kept the noise level high throughout the blowout. As the seconds ticked down, the student sections surged forward. Despite the efforts of Trawick and other players to stop the court-storming, the students rushed the floor just after the final whistle.
“They’re excited so they storm the court,” Coach Thompson said to Bill Raferty. “I probably wish that they hadn’t done that, but they watch a lot of TV.”
For now, the question of when to storm can wait. The Hoyas seem to have put it all together, and provided fans with a near-perfect weekend of basketball. Next, the team travels to Wisconsin to take on Marquette (10-7, 2-3 Big East) on Saturday for a 2:30 p.m. tipoff.
