Post by FLHoya on Oct 17, 2008 22:32:45 GMT -5
It's no longer ends after Midnight, and there's very little Madness these days, but thanks to a few surprise guests and some spontaneous performances, tonight's 10pm Greet-n-Cheer at McDonough Arena was both highly successful and in many ways more satisfying than years past.
A lot of schools throw a party, complete with pyrotechnics and silly costumes and occasionally a guest rapper who can't possibly really be friendly with Jay Wright.
What Georgetown has done lately is put on a low-key celebration of...well...Georgetown. Among the many tried and true constants trotted out again tonight was the JT3-led instructional video version of the "We Are...Georgetown" cheer. It's really not a basketball cheer though.
"Huh?" you say.
I think the phrase has taken on a different context--maybe the one it was intended for all along after it was revived by JT3 four seasons ago.
Consider the mantra, repeated both by Coach Thompson and Special Guest Big Man Dikembe Mutombo, that Georgetown is one of the pre-eminent educational institutions in the country. Think of how often you've heard a similar refrain uttered by Hoya recruits lately--four of them were in attendance tonight, and I'd bet they're well aware what they're getting goes beyond some confetti and a coach emerging from a fake coffin.
A recent article on Rivals.com suggested Duke's recent recruiting success with targets who were also considering Georgetown was an indication that Duke's history as a successful basketball program still held considerable weight. I'd argue that our recent recruiting success--including one particular Duke target--would suggest that our PROGRAM (all caps) holds considerable weight right now.
I always chuckle though at articles and comments suggesting that somehow our Midnight Madness is a magnet for immediate recruiting commitments. Not that I don't see the evidence--just look at the dates of the commitments--but I ain't buying that Groove Theory (awesome as they are) is convincing Joe the Basketball Recruit (
) to come to Georgetown.
We don't turn recruits on with a fancy song and dance. We turn them into men like Dikembe Mutombo, Alonzo Mourning and...yes Durham, there is a present tense!...Roy Hibbert.
That's why they come to Georgetown.
Back to the low-key celebration...
...and it was decidedly lacking in Madness early on. The new wrinkle in attendance-control as of last season is to hand out a set number of wristbands to students at an appointed time on the day of MM.
It works like a charm for crowd control. During the Esherick era, the beginning would be a humungous mess of energy, impressive in numbers but lacking any reasonable control, often to degenerate into chaos. The JT3 MM system is structured, promotes ease of movement, and though decidedly less flashy is highly efficient and produces a much nicer end product. [/obvious metaphor]
The downside is that when students aren't forced to mill about in a parking lot for hours trying to be first through the doors...they take their sweet time getting to that parking lot. At 7:37 less than 200 students milled idly about the McDonough lot, as Steve Alleva desperately tried to gin up some enthusiasm for an ESPNU cutaway shot.
The ESPNU "You Make the Call" (or w/e) contest didn't help things much, as the three contestants called the end of the GU-Louisville game* as if they were narrating an episode of All Things Considered, This American Life, or On the Media. All Things Considered emerged victorious on the third round of voting (they couldn't quite get the whole TV thing worked out), so the lucky student will get to share commentator duties for the GU-Providence game on ESPNU, which thanks to Comcast is seen by far fewer people in Northern Virginia than who listen to NPR.
(*Interesting that for an ESPNU contest they chose a game originally broadcast on CBS...especially when ESPN had the perfect clip for this kind of contest: )
An early (and efficient) start to the proceedings as the doors opened at 8:17, with Brian McGuire helping the effort by encouraging students to "Get Your Pom-Poms"--GU shelled out for light-up Pom Poms (okay?) this year.
Lots of nods to MMs of the recent past tonight, including the presence of GU MM YouTube legend Jerry Rice, the first song to generate any sort of buzz in the crowd--Kanye West's once-ubiquitous-about-this-time-last-year "The Good Life," and--speaking of songs--the woman immortalized in nodak89's most famous work--Jeff Green's mom, decked out in her traditional #22 Sonics jersey.
"The best basketball school in the Big East!" yelled the announcer 40 minutes after doors-open time to a still only 80% full McDonough. A lengthy performance from the swelling ranks of the GU Step Team gave the crowd time to file in before the first notable announcement of the night...
...that the student body had spared us all from a year of embarassment having to wear the "word" SWAGGA on our backs.
Our Heroes Change
The Legend Lives On
In the end, they picked the shirt slogan that sounded the most like a shirt slogan.
Perhaps next year we can explore giving each of the 3,000 or so student ticket holders a unique name on the back of their shirts, as the always-entertaining Groove Theory does with their performers (Loch Ness Groove being an example...Generation Burton Groove has a ring to it). GT generated the largest cheers yet (despite opening their set with a Coldplay song), which is almost always the case.
A "Hey Baby" later at 9:20 Jessie Sapp hit the first shot of the unofficial GU season, a 16 footer from the right side.
Unfortunately at 9:21 was the kickoff of the freshman/sophomore vs. junior/senior (not that junior/senior ) shootout...an Esherickean mess of four men's and four women's bball players, about a dozen students, and a 15% shooting percentage dragged out over what felt like an hour and a half.
Our first guest of the evening, QUI (Jerry Rice's daughter Jacqui) stepping into the enormous shadow of Bubba Sparxxx as a Midnight Madness musical guest. Where she managed to do one thing Bubba couldn't (sing), she didn't manage to get Chris Wright to dance.
9:35 and the men's and women's teams depart for locker room as the mostly freshman and sophomore crowd (they polled the audience before the interminable Shootout) proved they didn't get nodak CDs in their NSO packs by singing along with Joan Jett's version of I Love Rock and Roll...
...and then the most interesting thing happened for no good explainable reason. The DJ put a song on, called for a few members of Groove Theory to continue the crowd dance-along on the court, and all of a sudden a Ferris Bueller-like parade scene broke out. Weirdness.
But everyone cleared the floor quickly at the lights went out at a quarter to 10 for the women's team (best musical choice--Bel Biv Devoe's "Poison" ).
Next the two aforementioned Big Men--Roy Hibbert, represented by his parents at the unveiling of his #55 Indiana Pacers jersey on the McDonough wall, and Roy's inspiration Dikembe Mutombo live and in living color. Try getting a crowd revved up by bringing Christian Laettner back to Midnight Madness.
And it was all spotlights and dancing and posing as the men's team was intoduced. Omar Wattad took over Jon Wallace's mantle of "Southern Native Who Pays Playful Homage to His Heritage" coming out to the strains of "Cotton Eye Joe" and performing a line dance on quaaludes. Nikita Mescheriakov went even less subtle with "Ice Ice Baby" and almost had it until Bryon Jansen was introduced to a song even more closely associated with white people with no dancing skill:
Dajuan Summers went with Lupe Fiasco's "Superstar"...we can only hope.
But in the end two songs ruled the day once more:
JT3's "Soul Train Line" choice--his tried and true classic "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5. JT3 even got his daughter into the act with a cute choreographed father-daughter dance routine that I would never be able to pull off in a million years.
And for the full-court drill, what else:
Hi Hater!
And with that final bit of Hustle Hard, it was all over at a minute of 11 o'clock.
One month to go. Until then remember:
Never trust a big butt and a smile.
GUHoyas.com Recap
GUHoyas.com Photo Gallery
A lot of schools throw a party, complete with pyrotechnics and silly costumes and occasionally a guest rapper who can't possibly really be friendly with Jay Wright.
What Georgetown has done lately is put on a low-key celebration of...well...Georgetown. Among the many tried and true constants trotted out again tonight was the JT3-led instructional video version of the "We Are...Georgetown" cheer. It's really not a basketball cheer though.
"Huh?" you say.
I think the phrase has taken on a different context--maybe the one it was intended for all along after it was revived by JT3 four seasons ago.
Consider the mantra, repeated both by Coach Thompson and Special Guest Big Man Dikembe Mutombo, that Georgetown is one of the pre-eminent educational institutions in the country. Think of how often you've heard a similar refrain uttered by Hoya recruits lately--four of them were in attendance tonight, and I'd bet they're well aware what they're getting goes beyond some confetti and a coach emerging from a fake coffin.
A recent article on Rivals.com suggested Duke's recent recruiting success with targets who were also considering Georgetown was an indication that Duke's history as a successful basketball program still held considerable weight. I'd argue that our recent recruiting success--including one particular Duke target--would suggest that our PROGRAM (all caps) holds considerable weight right now.
I always chuckle though at articles and comments suggesting that somehow our Midnight Madness is a magnet for immediate recruiting commitments. Not that I don't see the evidence--just look at the dates of the commitments--but I ain't buying that Groove Theory (awesome as they are) is convincing Joe the Basketball Recruit (
) to come to Georgetown.We don't turn recruits on with a fancy song and dance. We turn them into men like Dikembe Mutombo, Alonzo Mourning and...yes Durham, there is a present tense!...Roy Hibbert.
That's why they come to Georgetown.
Back to the low-key celebration...
...and it was decidedly lacking in Madness early on. The new wrinkle in attendance-control as of last season is to hand out a set number of wristbands to students at an appointed time on the day of MM.
It works like a charm for crowd control. During the Esherick era, the beginning would be a humungous mess of energy, impressive in numbers but lacking any reasonable control, often to degenerate into chaos. The JT3 MM system is structured, promotes ease of movement, and though decidedly less flashy is highly efficient and produces a much nicer end product. [/obvious metaphor]
The downside is that when students aren't forced to mill about in a parking lot for hours trying to be first through the doors...they take their sweet time getting to that parking lot. At 7:37 less than 200 students milled idly about the McDonough lot, as Steve Alleva desperately tried to gin up some enthusiasm for an ESPNU cutaway shot.
The ESPNU "You Make the Call" (or w/e) contest didn't help things much, as the three contestants called the end of the GU-Louisville game* as if they were narrating an episode of All Things Considered, This American Life, or On the Media. All Things Considered emerged victorious on the third round of voting (they couldn't quite get the whole TV thing worked out), so the lucky student will get to share commentator duties for the GU-Providence game on ESPNU, which thanks to Comcast is seen by far fewer people in Northern Virginia than who listen to NPR.
(*Interesting that for an ESPNU contest they chose a game originally broadcast on CBS...especially when ESPN had the perfect clip for this kind of contest: )
An early (and efficient) start to the proceedings as the doors opened at 8:17, with Brian McGuire helping the effort by encouraging students to "Get Your Pom-Poms"--GU shelled out for light-up Pom Poms (okay?) this year.
Lots of nods to MMs of the recent past tonight, including the presence of GU MM YouTube legend Jerry Rice, the first song to generate any sort of buzz in the crowd--Kanye West's once-ubiquitous-about-this-time-last-year "The Good Life," and--speaking of songs--the woman immortalized in nodak89's most famous work--Jeff Green's mom, decked out in her traditional #22 Sonics jersey.
"The best basketball school in the Big East!" yelled the announcer 40 minutes after doors-open time to a still only 80% full McDonough. A lengthy performance from the swelling ranks of the GU Step Team gave the crowd time to file in before the first notable announcement of the night...
...that the student body had spared us all from a year of embarassment having to wear the "word" SWAGGA on our backs.
Our Heroes Change
The Legend Lives On
In the end, they picked the shirt slogan that sounded the most like a shirt slogan.
Perhaps next year we can explore giving each of the 3,000 or so student ticket holders a unique name on the back of their shirts, as the always-entertaining Groove Theory does with their performers (Loch Ness Groove being an example...Generation Burton Groove has a ring to it). GT generated the largest cheers yet (despite opening their set with a Coldplay song), which is almost always the case.
A "Hey Baby" later at 9:20 Jessie Sapp hit the first shot of the unofficial GU season, a 16 footer from the right side.
Unfortunately at 9:21 was the kickoff of the freshman/sophomore vs. junior/senior (not that junior/senior ) shootout...an Esherickean mess of four men's and four women's bball players, about a dozen students, and a 15% shooting percentage dragged out over what felt like an hour and a half.
Our first guest of the evening, QUI (Jerry Rice's daughter Jacqui) stepping into the enormous shadow of Bubba Sparxxx as a Midnight Madness musical guest. Where she managed to do one thing Bubba couldn't (sing), she didn't manage to get Chris Wright to dance.
9:35 and the men's and women's teams depart for locker room as the mostly freshman and sophomore crowd (they polled the audience before the interminable Shootout) proved they didn't get nodak CDs in their NSO packs by singing along with Joan Jett's version of I Love Rock and Roll...
...and then the most interesting thing happened for no good explainable reason. The DJ put a song on, called for a few members of Groove Theory to continue the crowd dance-along on the court, and all of a sudden a Ferris Bueller-like parade scene broke out. Weirdness.
But everyone cleared the floor quickly at the lights went out at a quarter to 10 for the women's team (best musical choice--Bel Biv Devoe's "Poison" ).
Next the two aforementioned Big Men--Roy Hibbert, represented by his parents at the unveiling of his #55 Indiana Pacers jersey on the McDonough wall, and Roy's inspiration Dikembe Mutombo live and in living color. Try getting a crowd revved up by bringing Christian Laettner back to Midnight Madness.
And it was all spotlights and dancing and posing as the men's team was intoduced. Omar Wattad took over Jon Wallace's mantle of "Southern Native Who Pays Playful Homage to His Heritage" coming out to the strains of "Cotton Eye Joe" and performing a line dance on quaaludes. Nikita Mescheriakov went even less subtle with "Ice Ice Baby" and almost had it until Bryon Jansen was introduced to a song even more closely associated with white people with no dancing skill:
Dajuan Summers went with Lupe Fiasco's "Superstar"...we can only hope.
But in the end two songs ruled the day once more:
JT3's "Soul Train Line" choice--his tried and true classic "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5. JT3 even got his daughter into the act with a cute choreographed father-daughter dance routine that I would never be able to pull off in a million years.
And for the full-court drill, what else:
Hi Hater!
And with that final bit of Hustle Hard, it was all over at a minute of 11 o'clock.
One month to go. Until then remember:
Never trust a big butt and a smile.
GUHoyas.com Recap
GUHoyas.com Photo Gallery
