In 1999, John Reagan (MSB ’84) launched hoyasaxa.com, a website hosting news and historical information about Georgetown football and basketball. For the past 27 years, he’s devoted 45 minutes each morning and evening to updating the site. The site has no ads—Reagan does it, quite literally, for the love of the game.
A key element of hoyasaxa.com is its HoyaTalk message board, which boasts nearly 5,000 registered users. There, users share their thoughts on everything from new high school and transfer prospects to the most recent game.
“It was an opportunity for fans to comment on the teams and on games in an era before widespread social media,” Reagan wrote to the Voice.
Reagan says the site has logged over 1.1 million posts in the past 22 years. Today, Reagan also runs the account @hoyatalk on X, where many Hoya fans now discuss the team.
For every Georgetown men’s basketball game, there are thousands of posts about everything from who missed shots to what Hoya legends are in the stands. Featuring clever Georgetown reference-filled usernames and occasional insider knowledge on the team, the accounts and people that make up “Hoya Twitter” have built an online alliance based on school pride. Beyond being just a place to rehash games, Hoya fans have turned this online community into one of genuine care, fostering friendships and connections that reach far beyond the screen.
Rasheen Carbin (SFS ’98) shares his thoughts from the moniker of @HoyaOptimist33 to just over a thousand followers.
“It’s just an extension of my passion for Georgetown University and for Georgetown basketball,” he explained.
Eventually, Carbin started co-hosting “spaces,” rooms on X where different accounts can audio chat with each other. As a result, Carbin was invited by the BIG EAST Energy Network, a family of podcasts about different BIG EAST men’s basketball teams, to become host of Bleeding Blue and Gray, which debuted in August 2025.
While Carbin may seem like a natural fit to run a podcast about the team, his cohost hasn’t attended Georgetown—because he has yet to graduate high school.
Owen Rosen, Carbin’s cohost and owner of the account @BigEastHoyas. He became a Hoya faithful when his older brother, a current junior, got into Georgetown.
“Ever since he was at Georgetown, I’ve been rooting for them because I was kind of waiting for a college basketball team to zero in on and follow and focus on. And so I one day just started a Twitter account and started posting, and it kept growing,” Rosen explained.
When he’s older, Rosen wants to be in sports management or reporting, so his involvement online served as a perfect pipeline. After launching his podcast and gaining more contacts online, he’s also become an inside source, developing relationships with players, coaches, and their parents.
His favorite players to chat with include former Hoya forward Drew Fielder, current senior guard Jeremiah Williams, and junior guard Caleb Williams—he also chats with Caleb Williams’ father.
“They have given me quotes that helped grow my page way bigger than I ever thought it was going to become,” Rosen explained. “It’s been very fun to talk with them and also their parents, and just get to know the community.”
Colin (CAS ’24), who runs @TidalBlueHoya and requested to only be referred to by his first name to maintain anonymity, became a Hoya basketball fan after he watched Georgetown beat rival Syracuse in 2021.
“It wasn’t until we beat Syracuse that I had that like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what sports are all about’ out of your body experience,” Colin explained. “You’re with a group of people, [and] that aspect of cura personalis took hold and I [was] like, ‘Okay, this is fun.’”
Colin emphasized the welcoming, kind nature of Hoya spheres online, something others said is pretty rare.
As a young person learning the ropes, Rosen says that the community has been extremely open to helping him out and teaching him along the way.
“I’ve been able to meet a lot of people and just gain connections. There’s a lot of people on Twitter that I can just DM or people I can text and just be like, ‘How do you think I should go about this?’” he explained. “It’s been very fun, and it’s also helped me learn a lot about how to navigate the sports world, which I don’t think a lot of people have at my age.”
This community also expands beyond the internet and into real life. Ryan Yohn runs @_HoyaParanoia_, but he was also never officially a Georgetown student. Yohn became a fan through his mom, who was a professor at Georgetown for 17 years.
“My childhood was Georgetown basketball games,” he said.
While Yohn no longer lives in the DMV, he makes a point to meet up with online friends in person when he makes it to Capital One.
“When I do make it up there, I get a couple DMs to meet up with people, and it’s been great,” he explained. “There’s definitely a community outside of the internet that comes with the territory, which is cool.”
Carbin also meets up with online friends at Clyde’s before games. Reagan has made similar in-person connections, even with people who may have known his work before they knew his name or face.
“Last month, I was sitting with a fan at the Big East tournament who mentioned how he follows HoyaSaxa.com on Twitter but didn’t know much about it,” Reagan recalled. “I opened my phone to the site and asked ‘This one?’”
@mw_hoya_enjoyer, a current student who asked to only go by their screen name, has had the same experience.
“There have been a couple times I’ve met people in person, at actual games, and we’re like, ‘Oh, I’m this person on Twitter.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, you’re that person? Oh, I’m this person on Twitter!’” they said.
Even if they can’t meet in person, online interactions and activities like a Hoya Twitter fantasy baseball league keep fans in touch.
Right now isn’t the greatest time to be a Hoya basketball fan, which Yohn is well aware of: his account bio simply reads, “no question about it I’m ready to get hurt again.” Still, he sees a future where the Hoyas return to glory.
“Georgetown still is in the DMV, has fantastic recruiting pipelines, is a fantastic school, [a] beautiful campus. And so, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be there,” Yohn argued. “I think the ones that are still left and still on Georgetown Twitter or online still hold out hope that we can do it.”
Carbin agrees—in fact, he didn’t always operate under the username of @hoyaoptimist33. Up until three years ago, he was @frustratedhoya—but after another user suggested turning to a brighter outlook, he agreed.
“The biggest thing that keeps me engaged is that I just have hope. I see no reason not to have hope,” Carbin said. “I think they’re, they made some miscalculations, but it’s much more fun to be an optimist than to be negative all the time.”
As a current student, @mw_hoya_enjoyer sees Georgetown basketball as a way for the student community to come together offline.
“I think that it is something that a lot of people at this university can share. This university, with school and with clubs, can get very divided into little sections of campus,” they explained. “Basketball, or really just Georgetown sports in general, I think, can really bring people from across those clusters together.”
As a former student, Carbin emphasized the same. Even though he still cheers on the Hoyas every game, he says he still remembers going to games with his friends as some of his best memories of his college years. Taking a break from the grind and cheering on your classmates, he says, should be something that extends beyond X.
“You’re not going to have very long at Georgetown. You have four years. And part of that is not just being in the classroom or doing an internship. Part of it is sharing a communal experience with your friends,” Carbin said. “You’re going to remember the huge victories, and you’re going to remember the defeats, and you’re going to remember the bus rides you’ve shared to the arena. You will never have this experience again.”
