Duke Game

[Nevada Hoya]

Since it is widely held that the Hoyas downturn happened during the Duke game, what would have happened to our season had we never played Duke this year. I know this is mindless speculation, but would we have suffered the same results had the Duke game with its phantom foul on Greg never happened or was it just a matter of time that we were exposed, so to speak?

[austintex]

I think we eventually would have played a game where we struggled/faced adversity and the downward spiral would have commenced. It was just a matter of time till our confidence was shattered. In fact, it actually
may have happened before Duke, against Pitt...

[sleepy]

Well, we would have just destroyed Syracuse then had a home game against WVU. I think we might have won that WVU game, and then we had a what Seton Hall and Cinci and we could have won both those games. That would give us a 10-8 conference record right now, and I think we even avoid that last St Johns lost too.

[FLHoya]

For me, the "John Cahill Excuse" is one of the most overplayed angles on Hoyatalk this year.

There's still the tricky "we'll never know" regarding Jessie and Chris at halftime...but I don't the Duke game itself started anything that wasn't already in motion. This team was what it was in November, and a few bright spots aside, I think more and more lately that it was destined to be this way.

But I like the idea of this thread. I was thinking in a few weeks doing something similar--making a thread whose premise would be along the lines of "Knowing what we do now about this team...which games were the red flags?" And it would sort of discuss which games signaled certain weaknesses/trends for the team that would come into play later.

[whatmaroon]

We got smacked around during the Pitt game, and seemed to give up after Dajuan stopped keeping us in the game. That was before Duke. If you have a copy of the Memphis game, pull it out and count how many times Chris passed the ball to Jessie, or vice versa. Heck, count the number of times they looked at each other in the half-court set. With the advantage of hindsight, the problems are pretty obvious.

[bubbrubbhoya]

Mar 15, 2009 23:12:07 GMT -5 whatmaroon said:

We got smacked around during the Pitt game, and seemed to give up after Dajuan stopped keeping us in the game. That was before Duke. If you have a copy of the Memphis game, pull it out and count how many times Chris passed the ball to Jessie, or vice versa. Heck, count the number of times they looked at each other in the half-court set. With the advantage of hindsight, the problems are pretty obvious.

Bingo.

[KHoyaNYC]

I don't think the Monroe phantom T had that much impact on our season --- maybe on that game, but things like that happen when you play at Duke. And whatever occurred between Wright and Sapp at halftime probably would have happened at another game if it wasn't Duke.

I think the Summers injury at Cincinnati really hurt us a lot. We were up at Cincinnati, Summers gets hurt, we go down to defeat, we end January on a sour note.

[hoyatables]

Yes, I think we all expected the end result to be this way. It was just the way it happened -- with all the good in the beginning and all the bad at the end -- that make it more painful.

[FromTheBeginning]

When you look back - a half dozen timely baskets or untimely dropped passes or turnovers not made may have very easily put the BE record at 9-9 or 10-8 and we all would have been much more at peace with it - but as Bill parcells always says "it is what it is" and all we can do is move forward from it. As disappointing as this all has been, let's see how they respond this week. Hopefully, they'll show some growth and energy in Waco.

[The Stig]

The Monroe phantom T is a nice symbolic start of our troubles, but I think we were in trouble before then.

The big problem with this year's team is that they were as bad under pressure as the Jeff/Roy/Jon/Pat teams were good under pressure. When games got close this year, we got tight and started playing to not lose instead of playing to win.

[JohnJacquesLayup]

We would have gone undefeated the rest of the way and won the BE tourney, received another 2 seed and returned to the final four. Jesse and Chris would be best friends, and have plans to do something cool together after they both graduate, like open a bar on M street. Players would be so enthused by our season that all would have pledged to stay four years because being part of the GU family is that special, and we would have such a national appeal that all of the UNC recruits till the end of time would be our leftovers.

But alas, that pesky Duke game got in the way of us and our destiny.

[joey0403p]

i dont even point to the T on Greg in that game as the starting point. there was a point in the first half - we got a steal chris had the ball heading down court - jessie was ahead of him and open and chris decided to take it himself.
its not like they were both completely alone - there was a defender in the picture - but either way. I remember that moment saying -jessie is going to be bitter.

now - I have NO CLUE if that is what the arguement was about or any of that stuff. I just remember that moment being one where I thought there was an issue. The T - whatever. as someone said above things happen at duke.

[gtown59270]

in the game that we played this season,we got beat by duke because of three pointers.even when they were hitting them we still played 3-2 zone.it was stupid.the prinston ofence does not work everytime you go down the court that is how we got beat

[JohnJacquesLayup]

Ah, thank you. Very well put.

[centercourt400s]

So, now the talk about the alleged locker room 'incident' has become formalized as an 'argument' between Wright and Sapp. I asked before if anyone had any proof or even reliable hearsay about this and I got one vague reply saying there had been an mention in the Washington Times with no specifics offered. I went back and read recent Times articles but didn't see anything.

My question is, can anyone raise this above the level of pure speculation? If not, isn't it irresponsible of us to continue to discuss it as if it actually happened? Not that the truth ever got in the way of the internet...

[CO_Hoya]

This is the most exhaustive discussion of the incident I've come across in sources acceptable to the mods:

Like many of the players who rebuilt the Hoyas -- Jeff Green, Tyler Crawford, Jonathan Wallace and Hibbert -- Sapp wasn't thought of as a premier talent coming out of high school.

Sophomore Chris Wright, who finished the Cincinnati game, came to Georgetown as a McDonald's all-American. He was the first boys' basketball player since Adrian Dantley to be named All-Met three times. He's used to putting up shots, having averaged 30 points per game his senior year at St. John's College High School.

Those mind-sets are partly why the two exchanged heated words near the end of the game at Duke on Jan. 17, when Georgetown's 1-6 slide began. Two people with knowledge of the situation told me Sapp and Wright also exchanged more than fist-bumps in the locker room afterward, although J.T. III called any reports of a ruckus "inaccurate," and the players denied any kind of fisticuffs when asked Thursday.

"Nothin' happened between me and him," Sapp said. "We're fine. We're going to agree on certain things and disagree on certain things -- that doesn't mean we were actually in there fist-fightin' or doin' all this crazy stuff."

"We have no issues whatsoever," Wright said, repeating the words three times. "We have no issues."

[rosslynhoya]

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/23/AR2009022303075_pf.html

Blame unbridled youth. Blame the rugged Big East. Blame the chemistry problems that have plagued this team since Jesse Sapp and Chris Wright had to be separated at halftime at Duke on Jan. 17. Heck, blame the officials, if you need an artificial scapegoat.

[tgo]

This team exhibited alarming signs of the "i am going to hit the 7 point shot that gets us back in the game" mentality from the opening tip of the season. They were not completely buying in to the offense and the team, when you have a lot of talent you can get away with not buying in at times especially when the right people get hot it can hide the fact that they are taking too many long range jumpers.

I feel like this was sufficiently exposed in the game at ND to where III had a chance to get them on the right track, unfortunately…

Enter the game against Cuse. in that game, multiple players were unconscious against a good team who happens to be our biggest rival. They started to read their own press clippings and all the players who had been shooting a little too much started to think they were right to be shooting too much and not looking for greg or other higher percentage options. Where they were occasionally not buying in before, III had now lost them. In the next 2 -3 games including at Duke, when we got down the players tried to shoot their way back into the game- this exacerbated an existing problem. now the players thought they were correct to have that mind set. it didnt work though, we went cold – or at least not on fire- against good teams. The team as a whole quickly lost confidence in their own shots when after playing duke & wva are tough opponents but then they lose to the hall and in a alarmingly quick turn around the players who had learned in the cuse game that they could shoot their way past any team found they couldn’t beat one of the worst teams in the league and now played with no confidence and began to play not to lose instead of to win. nothing worse than a team of jump shooters who have no confidence in their shot. miss 20 in a row but if your shooters still have confidence you have a chance. you can assume there was no infighting or arguments or whatever and still see it this way, add in some friction amongst teamates and it makes even more sense.

Two things as it relates to the original question-
1-this was bound to happen regardless of if the next game was against duke, WVA, pitt or whomever. If we played the hall instead of duke I think we win by 30 but at some point they would have lost several games to good teams and likely lost confidence in the same way as they did.
2- just another in a long line of reasons I hate cuse.

[FLHoya]

Mar 16, 2009 16:04:41 GMT -5 rosslynhoya said:

Heck, blame the officials, if you need an artificial scapegoat.

To state the obvious, the reason I didn't like it then and haven't since is because blaming the officials ultimately implies that (a) the loss at Duke; or (b) the subsequent collapse of our season wasn't our fault, or at the very least was precipitated by something out of our control.

The team did plenty--and perhaps more accurately, DIDN'T do plenty--to cause us to fall to where we have.

And that, in a sentence, is your sneak preview of Hoyatalk from April 6 through the start of the Kenner League.

[the_way]

if folks want to blame the Duke game, go ahead. But we had our flaws from the very beginning of the season. Teams are what they really are down the stretch of the season, when games matter most and in crunch time. And you saw who we really were or weren't during that period.

i don't think the players, as a whole, really bought in to what JTIII was teaching.

And the great shooting earlier in the season hid that fact.

When adversity and reality set in, we got caught with our pants down, so to speak, and exposed us for what we really were.

I think when JTIII said this was the most frustrating season of his career, i think its because its the 1st time a lot of guys didn't buy into what he was doing. And what is more dumbfounding is that these are all of his recruits. With the previous regime, guys bought in for the most part, and if they didn't initially buy in, they sought and met JTIII's challenge head and trusted him. I don't think the players this year trust what JTIII is doing. They didn't play defense, they didn't really run the offense at all. It was pass it around and chuck 3's on offense, and play the role of matador on defense.

Coach is going to have to go to the drawing board in a lot of areas with his program. Back to square one. Hopefully it starts with the NIT, but more than likely it will start next year.