Post by GUHoya07 on Mar 24, 2005 2:46:41 GMT -5
true showcase for it. The atmosphere in there is something that I doubt anyone who was there will ever forget. That was the greatest atmosphere I have ever experienced at any sporting event in my life.
The students right on top of the court wrapping along the sideline to the great baseline bleachers were a truly wonderful sight to behold and for one night made me feel proud of our home court.
On Tuesday Night there was no gym in the country I would have rather called home, and there was no team I would have been scared of playing in there. There were 1 or 2 Fullerton fans (rather than 1 or 2 thousand opposing fans at MCI) and when one of them walked past the student section they were promptly made aware of the fact that they were in OUR HOUSE!!!
I am well aware of the fact that there will never be a permanent on campus arena built during my time as a student on the Hilltop, and I am thankful that I was able to at least experience it once.
However, it is time to start planning this for the future. Our program needs it, our alumni need it, and our students need it. Let me give you an example of how this can unite people.
-I know a kid from Kansas City who is a major Kansas Jayhawks fan and I dont think had ever been to one of our games. However, this one got him interested, he got a WE ARE GEORGETOWN shirt from me, he went to the game, and afterwards he was raving about how awesome it was and how great it was to be able to just walk over to it.
Finally seeing alumni getting into the excitement and joining in on the cheers had to be another one of the highlights of the night for me. That kind of atmosphere truly unites people and makes everyone feel so much closer.
This would benefit every part of the Georgetown University community. I can see a lot of happy alumni graduating from Georgetown and wanting to give back after having those kinds of experiences for 4 years, WE MUST GET THIS DONE!!! NO EXCUSES!!!
This article from the front page captures my feelings as well. It's time to end the nonsense of only giving the Georgetown community one truly meaningful HOME game every 12 years.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
A decade later, McDonough Gym was the home for another classic game, this time in the second round of the NIT in a 71-44 win over Texas El-Paso. Neal McCluskey (C'95) sent in this account of what it was like that evening, and what it could be like again:
"I grew up addicted to Georgetown basketball. When I was a kid, I posted a picture of Patrick Ewing, which I'd removed from my father's alumni magazine, in my bedroom. I'd forged Ewing's autograph on it. Growing up I followed the team through 14 straight NCAA appearances. Georgetown was college basketball to me.
When I arrived at the Hilltop it was Alonzo Mourning's senior year, and though Georgetown hadn't been quite as dominant the past few seasons as it had been in the mid-eighties, it was still among the nation's premiere programs. Hoya Paranoia was at worst a very recent nightmare in the collective psyche of college basketball. We were still the mighty Georgetown of old -- but you'd never know when you entered cavernous, lifeless, USAir Arena, the forebear of today's Phone Booth.
USAir was a dank hole, and worse, far too large a dank hole for the basketball team of a small, academically-oriented university located miles away. Try though many students did, it was simply too large to be infused with the atmosphere of a Phog Allen Field House, a Cameron Indoor Stadium, or even Villanova's Pavilion. It was too easily rendered a neutral or even hostile court by opposing fans, especially those of hated rivals like UConn or Syracuse. And it was far too inhospitable to students, who were corralled behind the baskets and constantly harassed by arena personnel whose sole function seemed to be to hassle students so the "grown ups" who bought the good seats wouldn't accidentally have their pulses raised.
To me and the friends of mine who were able to get past that deadened atmosphere and still bring enthusiasm to Hoya-fandom, it was clear that much of our failure to make the 1993 NCAA Tournament could be chalked up to barely having a home court, much less a home court advantage. We simply couldn't produce the sort of deafening din that can destroy the ability of enemy point guards to hear, or even think. We couldn't provide the raw electricity needed to spur on furious Hoya comebacks. The arena was simply too big, and the Georgetown student body too small.
So in 1993 we were relegated to the tournament we'd always thought had been for "other" teams. To my friends and me, it was practically a joke. In our dorm we hung a pathetic copy of the NIT brackets, a Bizzaro-World facsimile of the NCAA brackets that held the prominent position on our Harbin cluster wall, and with which we, and the rest of America, were primarily engrossed. Posting NIT pairings was gallows humor at best.
Perhaps as a concession to Georgetown, which had done so much for college basketball in the fourteen preceding years, the NIT granted the Hoyas a home game - a real home game at McDonough Arena. Despite the fact it was in the NIT, a tournament for which we had little but disdain, and a low-point for one of the nation's most highly successful programs, it was by far the greatest Georgetown game that I, and probably every other student in attendance, had ever attended.
By tip-off, the students had been packed into tiny McDonough for well in excess of an hour, our opponent's bus having gotten caught in D.C. traffic. The band was playing. The chanting had long since begun. The bleachers shook. The roar was deafening. Real college basketball had arrived for the student fans of Georgetown University. And the payoff was clear.
Once the game got underway, the students were a mighty Sixth Man, superior to the Cameron Crazies in every way but sheer numbers. The overwhelming, unified voice of throngs of ecstatic students jammed into a tiny concrete box packed to the rafters destroyed the composure of a solid University of Texas - El Paso team. Their point guard, demoralized by incessant chants of "Opie! Opie!," near the end of the contest turned to the students and thrust at them the sort of gesture that would certainly have shocked Andy Griffith, but was the ultimate compliment to the fans at whom it was directed.
By the end of the game, UTEP coach Don Haskins was irate. The stated reason for his anger was that his team had to fly to Washington, D.C., got caught in traffic, and had to take on the Hoyas in a tiny, circa-1950 gym. But one couldn't help but surmise that his real issue wasn't the travel, or the size of the gym per se, but the devastating atmosphere in which his team was humiliated 71-44. He had experienced first hand what a real Georgetown home game can be like, and he was beside himself.
Tonight, Georgetown will play its first NIT game at McDonough since UTEP twelve years ago. This year, though, it will be on national television, and features a program on its way up, not down. Yet as I'm writing, many student tickets remain unsold. Non-student tickets, in contrast, have been sold out for days, and the athletic department has formed a lengthy waiting list for members of the general public still trying to get in. No doubt many of those still waiting are alums, a large number of whom were present in 1993, and, like me, will never forget that exhilarating game, played in that "other tournament," in a tiny gym long-since abandoned for a lifeless professional arena that provides the students with none of the comforts - and opponents none of the horrors - of a true "home" court.
Tonight, the students of 2005 have a chance to experience what Georgetown basketball can, and should, be. For their sakes, I hope they take advantage of it. It could end up being their greatest college memory of all.
The students right on top of the court wrapping along the sideline to the great baseline bleachers were a truly wonderful sight to behold and for one night made me feel proud of our home court.
On Tuesday Night there was no gym in the country I would have rather called home, and there was no team I would have been scared of playing in there. There were 1 or 2 Fullerton fans (rather than 1 or 2 thousand opposing fans at MCI) and when one of them walked past the student section they were promptly made aware of the fact that they were in OUR HOUSE!!!
I am well aware of the fact that there will never be a permanent on campus arena built during my time as a student on the Hilltop, and I am thankful that I was able to at least experience it once.
However, it is time to start planning this for the future. Our program needs it, our alumni need it, and our students need it. Let me give you an example of how this can unite people.
-I know a kid from Kansas City who is a major Kansas Jayhawks fan and I dont think had ever been to one of our games. However, this one got him interested, he got a WE ARE GEORGETOWN shirt from me, he went to the game, and afterwards he was raving about how awesome it was and how great it was to be able to just walk over to it.
Finally seeing alumni getting into the excitement and joining in on the cheers had to be another one of the highlights of the night for me. That kind of atmosphere truly unites people and makes everyone feel so much closer.
This would benefit every part of the Georgetown University community. I can see a lot of happy alumni graduating from Georgetown and wanting to give back after having those kinds of experiences for 4 years, WE MUST GET THIS DONE!!! NO EXCUSES!!!
This article from the front page captures my feelings as well. It's time to end the nonsense of only giving the Georgetown community one truly meaningful HOME game every 12 years.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
A decade later, McDonough Gym was the home for another classic game, this time in the second round of the NIT in a 71-44 win over Texas El-Paso. Neal McCluskey (C'95) sent in this account of what it was like that evening, and what it could be like again:
"I grew up addicted to Georgetown basketball. When I was a kid, I posted a picture of Patrick Ewing, which I'd removed from my father's alumni magazine, in my bedroom. I'd forged Ewing's autograph on it. Growing up I followed the team through 14 straight NCAA appearances. Georgetown was college basketball to me.
When I arrived at the Hilltop it was Alonzo Mourning's senior year, and though Georgetown hadn't been quite as dominant the past few seasons as it had been in the mid-eighties, it was still among the nation's premiere programs. Hoya Paranoia was at worst a very recent nightmare in the collective psyche of college basketball. We were still the mighty Georgetown of old -- but you'd never know when you entered cavernous, lifeless, USAir Arena, the forebear of today's Phone Booth.
USAir was a dank hole, and worse, far too large a dank hole for the basketball team of a small, academically-oriented university located miles away. Try though many students did, it was simply too large to be infused with the atmosphere of a Phog Allen Field House, a Cameron Indoor Stadium, or even Villanova's Pavilion. It was too easily rendered a neutral or even hostile court by opposing fans, especially those of hated rivals like UConn or Syracuse. And it was far too inhospitable to students, who were corralled behind the baskets and constantly harassed by arena personnel whose sole function seemed to be to hassle students so the "grown ups" who bought the good seats wouldn't accidentally have their pulses raised.
To me and the friends of mine who were able to get past that deadened atmosphere and still bring enthusiasm to Hoya-fandom, it was clear that much of our failure to make the 1993 NCAA Tournament could be chalked up to barely having a home court, much less a home court advantage. We simply couldn't produce the sort of deafening din that can destroy the ability of enemy point guards to hear, or even think. We couldn't provide the raw electricity needed to spur on furious Hoya comebacks. The arena was simply too big, and the Georgetown student body too small.
So in 1993 we were relegated to the tournament we'd always thought had been for "other" teams. To my friends and me, it was practically a joke. In our dorm we hung a pathetic copy of the NIT brackets, a Bizzaro-World facsimile of the NCAA brackets that held the prominent position on our Harbin cluster wall, and with which we, and the rest of America, were primarily engrossed. Posting NIT pairings was gallows humor at best.
Perhaps as a concession to Georgetown, which had done so much for college basketball in the fourteen preceding years, the NIT granted the Hoyas a home game - a real home game at McDonough Arena. Despite the fact it was in the NIT, a tournament for which we had little but disdain, and a low-point for one of the nation's most highly successful programs, it was by far the greatest Georgetown game that I, and probably every other student in attendance, had ever attended.
By tip-off, the students had been packed into tiny McDonough for well in excess of an hour, our opponent's bus having gotten caught in D.C. traffic. The band was playing. The chanting had long since begun. The bleachers shook. The roar was deafening. Real college basketball had arrived for the student fans of Georgetown University. And the payoff was clear.
Once the game got underway, the students were a mighty Sixth Man, superior to the Cameron Crazies in every way but sheer numbers. The overwhelming, unified voice of throngs of ecstatic students jammed into a tiny concrete box packed to the rafters destroyed the composure of a solid University of Texas - El Paso team. Their point guard, demoralized by incessant chants of "Opie! Opie!," near the end of the contest turned to the students and thrust at them the sort of gesture that would certainly have shocked Andy Griffith, but was the ultimate compliment to the fans at whom it was directed.
By the end of the game, UTEP coach Don Haskins was irate. The stated reason for his anger was that his team had to fly to Washington, D.C., got caught in traffic, and had to take on the Hoyas in a tiny, circa-1950 gym. But one couldn't help but surmise that his real issue wasn't the travel, or the size of the gym per se, but the devastating atmosphere in which his team was humiliated 71-44. He had experienced first hand what a real Georgetown home game can be like, and he was beside himself.
Tonight, Georgetown will play its first NIT game at McDonough since UTEP twelve years ago. This year, though, it will be on national television, and features a program on its way up, not down. Yet as I'm writing, many student tickets remain unsold. Non-student tickets, in contrast, have been sold out for days, and the athletic department has formed a lengthy waiting list for members of the general public still trying to get in. No doubt many of those still waiting are alums, a large number of whom were present in 1993, and, like me, will never forget that exhilarating game, played in that "other tournament," in a tiny gym long-since abandoned for a lifeless professional arena that provides the students with none of the comforts - and opponents none of the horrors - of a true "home" court.
Tonight, the students of 2005 have a chance to experience what Georgetown basketball can, and should, be. For their sakes, I hope they take advantage of it. It could end up being their greatest college memory of all.