Georgetown
- Feb 8, 2023
- 9 min read
Georgetown Hoyas (6-16, 1-10) vs. Creighton Bluejays (13-8, 7-3)
Wednesday, February 1, 2023 @ 6:30 PM
Washington, DC
Capital One Arena
THE SCHOOL
Georgetown University is a private Jesuit research university in Washington, DC. Founded in 1789, Georgetown is actually older than the District of Columbia, which was not organized until 1790. Additionally, it’s the oldest Catholic institute of higher learning in the United States. Today, Georgetown has about 20,000 students with 8,000 or so undergrads.
The Hoyas play in the Big East Conference in NCAA Division I. You may be wondering, “what is a hoya?” No one really knows. It comes from the school chant “Hoya Saxa!” which is a Greek/Latin translation of “What rocks!” which doesn’t mean anything at all. Their mascot is a bulldog.
Georgetown has a proud basketball tradition. For most of the last fifty years, the Hoyas have been a mainstay in the NCAA Tournament, and they’ve won more Big East titles than anyone else. When you think of Georgetown basketball, you think of some of the biggest figures in the game, such as John Thompson, Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, and Allen Iverson. However, Georgetown has slipped and faceplanted in recent years. In 2021, they would have missed the NCAA Tournament for the sixth straight season, but they got hot in March and surprisingly won the Big East Tournament. Since then, they have lost twenty-eight of their last twenty-nine Big East basketball games. Currently, Georgetown basketball lies somewhere between a laughingstock and an afterthought.
Normally, when a team falls so far, the coach gets canned long before it can get to this level. But that’s not easy at Georgetown, because the coach is the previously mentioned Patrick Ewing, a heralded and beloved figure on campus and around Washington. Do you fire the famous alumnus, potentially ruining the relationship with him? Or do you become okay with losing to avoid the awkward conversation? Thus far, Georgetown has chosen the latter, but firing him seems like an inevitability at this point. It’s just not a good situation.
Creighton University (an old friend of the blog) is a private Jesuit research university in Omaha, Nebraska. The Bluejays also compete in the Big East. Creighton had high hopes coming into the season; they were projected to win the conference and were ranked as high as seventh in the country. The year has not gone how they hoped, but they are starting to get back on track, with seven wins in their last nine games, including two wins over top-twenty teams.
THE TOWN
There are three Division I universities in the United States with the name George in them (not including Georgia): George Mason, George Washington, and Georgetown. Isn’t it weird that they are all within a few miles of each other and all named after different Georges? George Mason is named after a Founding Father, George Washington is also named after a Founding Father, and Georgetown… well, we don’t actually know.
I’m going to tell an embarrassing secret. I used to think “Georgetown” was just a nickname for Washington, DC. “It’s named after George Washington, so it’s George’s Town.” This is woefully inaccurate. Georgetown is in the western part of the District, across Rock Creek.
Georgetown used to be a city of its own. Back when this was all still Maryland, a man named George Gordon owned a tobacco inspection house in the 1740s. Around the same time, a man named George Beall was a prominent landowner. And it was established during the reign of King George II. It might have been named after any one of these Georges, but no one’s sure.
Anyway, Georgetown continued being a town when it was incorporated into the District of Columbia. Initially, there were three separate DC settlements: Georgetown, Washington, and Alexandria. In 1847, Virginia slaveowners became concerned that DC would outlaw slavery and close Alexandria’s slave trade, so Virginia took Alexandria back. Later, the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 combined everything inside the District under one jurisdiction and one name: Washington, DC. Nowadays, the Georgetown neighborhood is mostly known for the university, lots of shopping, a cupcakery, and snobby rich people.
This is normally when I talk about the college campus. However, Georgetown plays three miles away from campus. Therefore, I don’t have any pictures of Georgetown, though I did walk by their law school on the way there. (Why did I write three paragraphs about a place I didn’t go?)
Instead, the Hoyas play in Chinatown, close to the center of DC. Chinatown’s a pretty bustling place with the basketball arena, the National Portrait Gallery, and several high-dollar hotels and restaurants. While there are still some Chinese businesses and restaurants (including the very tasty Chinatown Express), many remnants of old Chinatown have been replaced over the past twenty years or so. According to the Washington Post, only about 300 Chinese-Americans live in Chinatown now. Many of the newer businesses have their names in Chinese on their sign (for example, a hotel will say “Hilton” and then it has Chinese characters under it that may or may not say Hilton, I don’t know), so that’s something, I guess.
Georgetown plays at Capital One Arena, also home to the NBA’s Wizards and the NHL’s Capitals. I’m going to talk more about the arena and the environment within it in just a bit, but the first thing to know about Capital One Arena is that it is way, way, way, way too big for Georgetown. Per the arena’s website, the arena has a capacity of 20,356. Per the NCAA, Georgetown had an average attendance of 5,525 in the 2021-22 season (and this game had an official attendance of 4,042, though, per my eyeballs, I suspect there was only about three-quarters of this number). Conference rivals Villanova and St. John’s both have on-campus arenas that hold about 6,000 people where they play most of their games, and they’ll borrow the local NBA arena when they play a game where more people will come. This is exactly what Georgetown should do, but unfortunately their on-campus court only holds about 2,000. There is nothing wrong with Capital One Arena; I’ve heard it provides for a great hockey environment. But it isn’t a good fit for Georgetown.
THE GAME
Fortunately for me, Capital One Arena is just about a thirty minute walk from my apartment. Easy stuff. I almost always purchase the cheapest ticket I can find, but tickets to this game were particularly inexpensive, so instead of buying one for $4 I decided to splurge for the $13 one. “Live a little,” I told myself, while putting it all on a gift card.
If you’ve ever thought, “Wow, I’m really happy. I’m too happy. I need someplace to mellow my mood,” I suggest attending a Georgetown basketball game.
This is an exaggeration of course, but there’s a lot to be desired with the environment. Here’s a list:
Again, the arena is way too big. Even if all 4,000 or whatever people were cheering and clapping the whole game, the sound would get lost in this cavernous place. If you don’t mind the sound of squeaking shoes, you could probably take a nap.
All 4,000 or whatever people were not cheering and clapping. The majority of the crowd seemed pretty disengaged, and between a third and a half of them were Creighton fans. The two men sitting to my right were on their phones throughout the first half and left at halftime.
The people in the athletic department and event management try their best to get fans involved, but when twenty cheerleaders try to pump up 17,000 empty seats, it gets a little depressing.
Since Capital One Arena is three miles from campus, only the most dedicated students are going to take the bus to Chinatown. When the basketball team is as bad as the Hoyas have been for their entire time in college, there aren’t many dedicated student fans. This leads to a lackluster student section, particularly at 6:30 during the week.
I’m a big fan of pep bands – I think every school should at least have a little brass section at basketball games. Georgetown had the worst pep band I’ve ever heard. They were mic’d weirdly, which didn’t help, but they got all the way to the second verse of “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” before I figured out what they were playing. They were out of tune, playing varying tempos, and just not hitting the right notes. I did not feel pepped.
A basket of chicken tenders costs $14 and you don’t even get a drink.
I am seeing Georgetown basketball at their lowest. The team stinks and they’ve stunk for years, this is an early evening game on a weekday, and Creighton is not a historic rival. I’m sure all of this was different back when Georgetown was a consistent title contender, or when they’re playing UConn or Villanova, or when people have had more time to get off work. Or maybe not, Washington isn’t a college sports city anyway. But overall, Georgetown basketball just makes you kind of sad.
~~~
I’m gonna be honest, this was one of the most boring basketball games I’ve seen. From my vantage point, it seemed that Creighton knew they could sleepwalk through this one and still probably win, and Georgetown came in expecting to lose. This is not a good setup.
The Hoyas play a particularly ugly brand of basketball. They have a talented team: their point guard, Primo Spears (#1), is legitimately one of the best players in the Big East (though not tonight, he did not score in the first half and missed 13 shots in the game); they have two big men, Qudus Wahab (#34) and Akok Akok (#11) who could be really dangerous if either of them developed a consistent shot; their two-guard, Brandon Murray (#0), was an effective player back when he was at LSU. But their offensive flow is nonexistent. So much of what they do is isolation based: the person who gets the rebound brings the ball up the court, stands around the three-point line and dribbles fancily, puts up a shot that has no chance, and everyone in the stands sighs because this is all the Hoyas do. It’s maddening to watch. Per sports-reference.com, Georgetown averages 11.7 assists per game, which ranks 300th in D-I basketball.
Creighton was also not terribly good during this game. Despite the preceding paragraph, the Bluejays struggled to pull away in the game. At least they had a few guys who could make shots, namely #55, Baylor Scheierman (10 points, 3 threes, 11 rebounds), #2, Ryan Nembhard (15 points), and #11, Ryan Kalkbrenner (16 points, 8 rebounds, 2 blocks).
I’m not going to give a play-by-play of this game. You’re going to be bored reading it ‘cause I’m going to be bored writing it. Creighton led 35-21 at halftime, but Georgetown cut the lead to 5 (46-41) with 9:26 left. No one believed they’d actually come back and win, and they didn’t. Creighton won by 10.
Final: Creighton 63, Georgetown 53
Maybe I’ve been particularly negative today, so let’s end with a positive. Let’s end with the loudest the arena ever got.
During a TV timeout in the first half, a Georgetown student played that game where you have to hit a layup, free throw, three-pointer, and halfcourt shot in thirty seconds. You know the one, everyone does it. Today’s challenger was wearing khaki pants and a bucket hat, so you know he’s ready. Let’s see how he did:
Step One: Layup
He blows it immediately.
Time is valuable in this game; you need to preserve as much as you can for the last two shots. One of the most inefficient things you can do is miss a layup. It wastes time you probably don’t have.
So of course, our friend clunks his first attempt. He does make the second, and heads to the free throw line.
Step Two: Free Throw
He misses. And misses. And misses again.
Our boy has no arc on his shot. He’s trying to get shots up as quickly as he can and he’s failing to come close. But there’s an unsung hero in this story: whoever is rebounding for him. I didn’t pay attention at the time (because who’s paying attention to the rebounder?) but the man in the hat is getting shots off at a good clip. To miss three free throws and still have a chance to shoot the three-pointer means that the rebounder must be going above and beyond to get him the ball.
He makes the fourth attempt and runs back to the three-point arc.
Step Three: Three-pointer
He misses.
This is where most people flame out. Making a shot from 22 feet, 2 inches away is difficult if you haven’t practiced, and especially difficult when under a time crunch and watched by thousands of people. But our hero does the nearly-unthinkable: he makes his second attempt.
This gives him just enough time to run back to the midcourt logo and hoist one shot.
Step Four: Halfcourt Shot
What do you know, the son-of-a-gun did it.
Our champion banked in his halfcourt heave, sending the crowd into its first and only frenzy of the night.
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people attempt this exact challenge. A couple dozen, perhaps? I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone actually win.
It’s a difficult game, so there’s usually a good prize. I’ve seen it be a couple thousand dollars before, sometimes it’s even a portion of a student’s tuition. What did the victor win on this night?
This poor man won a $250 gift card to the Georgetown Bookstore. Based on my experience as a former university bookstore manager, I am confident he can buy 0.75 calculus textbooks with his winnings.
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