It’s safe to say that nobody in the Georgetown men’s basketball program was happy with how last season went. After finishing the 2023-24 season second to last in the BIG EAST, with losses to Holy Cross and Rutgers, and a KenPom finish of 192nd nationally—the second worst in the Hoyas’ history, narrowly beating out the 2022-23 team—the Hoyas performance on the court was disappointing from start to finish.
And, at the center of it all, trying to make lemonade out of dirt, was none other than now-junior-then-sophomore guard Jayden Epps.
“It hurts losing that many games. It’s probably my first time ever [while] playing basketball,” Epps said at Georgetown basketball’s media day.
Unsurprisingly, this season is about one thing for Epps: winning more games. Achieving that, however, is easier said than done. To that end, Epps named two primary areas for growth: “my percentages and my leadership.”
Leadership takes many forms, but for Epps, it boils down to being the guy who sets the tone on and off the court. According to coaching staff, Epps has been coming into his own in both aspects. At Georgetown media day, coach Ed Cooley pointed to Epps as one of the players leading with “their voices and with their actions.”
Following the departure of all but three scholarship players, this offseason has been one of major adjustments for everyone, Epps included. As the second most experienced player on the roster, it is paramount that Epps plays an important role in bringing the team together. The early returns, though, have been promising. “It’s definitely a lot of new faces, but we all get along well. After practice, we go get food together, we go watch movies together, we do a lot of stuff together,” Epps said.
While Epps has stood out as a vocal leader lately, it hasn’t always come naturally to him. “I’ve always been told that I’m naturally not that type of person, that vocal, loud person. But I’ve always been told if I want to have an opportunity to keep playing basketball at the next level I’m going to have to grow into that and be a leader and talk and lead my team vocally, as well as by example,” he said. “It’s just something I’ve been growing into and working on every day.”
While leading off the court may be something Epps has to grow into, leading on the court has always been within his wheelhouse. After all, who can forget his back-to-back 30-point outings last November against American and Jackson State, and again in February against St. John’s and DePaul?
A major challenge for Epps this year will be efficiency. Despite averaging 18.5 points per game last season, Epps’s shooting splits were nothing special, as he hit only 39 percent of his field goal attempts, 31 percent from three, and 76 percent from the charity stripe. While those numbers were on a very high shooting volume, partly out of play style and partly out of necessity, and were similar to his splits as a freshman at Illinois, there is still a lot of room for Epps to improve in this department. While his flurries against American, Jackson State, and DePaul were fun, they were also just that: flurries against American, Jackson State, and DePaul.
If Georgetown is going to exceed expectations this season and compete, or at least belong, on the floor with the likes of UConn, Creighton, and Marquette, Epps will need to be more consistent on a night-to-night basis and play more efficiently at all levels. That begins with better shot selection on his part, which will hopefully be aided by better offensive teamwork.
A common criticism of Epps’s game has been that, despite being a very talented scorer, his scoring has not always correlated with winning. While it is true that Epps is not the best defender or rebounder, his impact has always gone beyond his point tally. Last year, he recorded 28.6 percent of the team’s assists while he was on the floor, a higher share than all but four other players in the conference. Moreover, his turnover percentage of 15.7 percent was lower than some stars like former Seton Hall guard Khadary Richmond and former Marquette point guard Tyler Kolek. At the end of the day, nobody in the BIG EAST bore a heavier burden to carry their team to victory than Epps a year ago.
However, it is still fair to point to the other parts of Epps’s game as places for improvement, especially given his role this year will look a lot different from a season ago. Last season he had to carry much of the scoring and creation burden that others could not, as evidenced by his conference-leading usage percentage of 31.2 percent. On a team with as much individual scoring talent as this season’s, Epps is going to need to find ways to make an impact outside of just scoring. There are going to be moments where every player may have to take a backseat in the shot attempts column, Epps included.
“There’s going to be games where one of us might get 30, another one might get 30 the next game. One of us might get 20,” Epps said. “I feel like everybody is willing to do whatever it takes to win. So if somebody got to get 10 rebounds, somebody got to get 12 assists, then that’s what they’re going to do.”
At the end of the day, it all comes back to one thing: winning.
“I just want to win. And that’s something that I want to help lead the team to do that,” Epps said. “That’s what I want to do. I want to be a winner.”
