Class of 2000-2005

[Cambridge]

Out of curiosity...how many of us on this board harken from those darkest of dark days and lived to tell about it as a Hoyafan.

I was SFS'02 lived in New South as a frosh.

[edited time span to reflect growing outrage...]

[Deleted]

Well seeing as how I had multiple classes with you (despite not being a "cool" SFS schlub), I can't really hide from this thread.

[Cambridge]

buffalohoya said:

Well seeing as how I had multiple classes with you (despite not being a "cool" SFS schlub), I can't really hide from this thread.

Just curious who else was forged in the fire of those dark years.

[Jack]

Cry me a river. Anyone in the classes of 02-04 has no right to complain- you saw a sweet 16 team at least. Class of 2005 at least had an NIT finalist, but 4 years with no tourney is pretty rough. My class, 2000, had but one NCAA appearance, our freshman year, a loss to UNC-Charlotte when Victor Page led the league in scoring and every game was an aesthetic abomination. The highlight of my time as an undergrad was a thrilling triple-OT victory over UVA in the first round of the NIT, followed up by a beating at the hands of Cal in the next game.

[FormerHoya]

A beating memorialized in verse by "The Game" if I remember correctly.

The Basketball team could not have been less relevant for the class of 2000.

Worst years ever.

[ephoya04]

I was COL '04 BUT transferred in after frosh year so I missed the sweet 16 years and got the three crappy ones...just my luck!

[RockawayHoya]

Class of '05 wins (or loses, depending on how you look at it) this hands down. First graduating class in 30-some odd years to not see an NCAA game. It doesn't get any worse than that. All that Generation Burton stuff, the Iverson/Page teams, the glory days of the 80's, we got none of that. 02'-04 might have witnessed the dark days, but they at least saw the light once.

[Jack]

If your only metric is NCAA tournament games, 05 definitely had the worst 4 years, and that may be a valid metric. However, I would argue that 05 had two bright spots much brighter than anything in the four years of the class of 2000- Mike Sweetney and JTIII. The 1996-97 team that made the tournament was a worse team than both the 2003 NIT finalists and the 2004-05 team. Then again, the 2003-04 season was tougher than any we had to endure. I just don't know who had it worse. What I do know is this: I graduated in 2000, my brother graduated in 2005, and my father graduated in 1974. 12 worse years of college basketball on the Hilltop would be hard to find. The bad news- my youngest brother is still a sophomore.

[SFHoya99]

Class of '99 (obviously). While I can't complain, my fan career was one, long, extended slide. It's hard to care when you've seen the Elite Eight (and when scoring drops 14 ppg IN ONE YEAR).

[3GenerationHoya]

I am a senior now, but i was able to get a job working in the basketball office for one semester as a soph. It just so happens that the particular semester during which I was working was perhaps the darkest times for Hoya fans in the last 25 years. I remember going into work the morning after we lost to the undermanned SJU team... it was extremely painful, as a life long Hoya fan, to watch what was happening and to be so close to it all. It was my dream job, but I just had some rough timing I guess.

That is why I want to go to the Elite 8 this year - it will make my 4 years here completely worth it.

[Cambridge]

cambridgehoya said:

Out of curiosity...how many of us on this board harken from those darkest of dark days and lived to tell about it as a Hoyafan.

I was SFS'02 lived in New South as a frosh.

[edited time span to reflect growing outrage...]

[Nevada Hoya]

Come on, guys. Quite complaining. My years there 1962-66, we weren't even close to making even the NIT! I think lichoya and easyed can say the same thing, as well as some of the "older" posters.

[williambraskyiii]

class of 2001 here - diehard fan through the dark days at the end of the JTII era, into the darkest of dark crevices during the Esh years. At least we saw Sweets and the NCAA run my senior year, but it was a sad time...My 5th year still partying as a college ass in DC was equally painful...

[Cambridge]

nevadahoya3 said:

Come on, guys. Quite complaining. My years there 1962-66, we weren't even close to making even the NIT! I think lichoya and easyed can say the same thing, as well as some of the "older" posters.

Expectations make things worse though. We came on the heels of Ivo and gang and watched the program freefall from slumped to irrelevant.

[lichoya68]

lichoya68 when we were there the big chant was... beat bc.. and the nit which we didnot do till later.. with mike laska and company... so I AM GLAD WE ARE BACK .. go hoyas .. beat navy..

[lichoya68]

but one of the greatest games was at mcdonough... where we played nationally ranked columbia ...who had two all americans ..and we beat em ..with jerry pyles shutting down their all american guard.. i think in the second half .. any one else that old to remember that game?? gohoyas.. new and old im sure dfw has got some info or links to that game? ;D

[FLHoya]

Well, you can probably imagine where I stand on this one. I can't speak for everybody obviously, but I know that being able to experience that Sweet 16 run as a student makes me look back a lot more fondly on my four years (00/01-03/04), which were not as a whole incredible.

It comes up a lot when I talk to people about the infamous "Gerry McNamara game". Understandably, the 2005 kids and the students still at GU who saw it are reeeeeeeealllllly messed up by it. For some reason, even though I was there (with my parents, sitting in a section where we may have been the only GU fans) that game doesn't really dig at me.

I always felt like I got to see such a great season (on so many levels) my first year that I could never really complain TOO much even as things took a turn for the worse. Of course, maybe I have a low standard as a fan ;D. I like going to college basketball games so much just for the experience that I could probably follow a winless team--actually, one of the first years I remember watching college bball religiously, my team (Miami) DID go winless in the Big East. It wasn't so much the single Burton game, the fact that we made the Sweet 16--it was a collection of great experiences on the court and in the stands that made that year so special and it's kind of hard to explain it unless you were there.

But...the reason I started writing columns, the reason I came up with the idea of something called "Generation Burton" was b/c I found out that every class of kids that followed mine at GU didn't have that same experience, and they saw their time as fans differently. And you can't deny those were some depressing seasons from 02-04...it finally got to the point where I was at a game my Senior year listening to all the student fans and watching around the student section and it hit me--this really isn't that fun anymore. It was actually depressing to go to basketball games.

And that was really what I was wondering as I wrote my first column--I mean, clearly an era at GU was about to end on two fronts. It was a funny coincidence that Esherick got fired a day after the anniversary of the GU-Arkansas NCAA game. Because while this last group of students who'd seen an NCAA tourney game on campus was about to leave, and with it, I wondered whether that last bit of optimism, there was also the end of the Esherick-induced misery.

I still sit in the student section, and I wrote at the end of last year after the last home game that "it's fun again" to be a student fan. So the post-Generation Burton era has a happy beginning at least, and I'm reminded in a lot of ways looking at the start of this season and the atmosphere around campus, the way Hoya Blue is working, of my freshman year. And honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if this were the kind of year people in the classes of 2006-2009 are going to remember fondly years from now.

I do feel for the 2005 kids though. I know a lot of them, and it was tough on them.

[vagrant]

Lic,
I remember the game. I was there. Class "71. Columbia came in ranked in the top 10. 4 or 5 maybe. How we thought we had a prayer was beyond my comprehension, but somehow, we thought we could win.. They came with their 2 All Americans, Jim McMillian, and Heywood Dotson. McDonough was rocking. Standing Room only. All the cheers were there: the comments about blondes, etc. As the game wore on and the Hoyas were hanging in, the excitement which was palpable before tipoff, became unbearable. Unbearable when it became obvious we could win. It is that point when some close their eyes as the shot goes up. I will never forget that win which is why I am reliving it now, almost 40 years later, after a tough day at work.
Now for that great Pinot Noir my wife just uncorked.
-vagrant

[Nitrorebel]

I was '03, so it was just miserable. The Sweet 16 was cool, but o'wise it sucked. Just remember screaming at Esh during games - and opposing fans. Really miserable. No good memories really.

But that's the past - I can't wait for Friday.

[FLHoya]

Now, just to throw an argument out there, I propose that if you want to talk about frustrating years as a student fan in this range, you could go with 2003-2004 and nobody's going to argue.

But I'm going to throw out there for your consideration the 2001-2002 season. A different kind of disappointment. It's one thing to bottom out as a program, to realize you're in the lowest of lows. But to have actually sat through the SERIES of "almosts" of 2001-2002...I guess this is like a choice between acute depression and a heart attack...neither one's pleasant.

But let me throw out all the things the fans of 2001-2002 dealt with in Year 1 A.B. (After Burton):

--Preseason Top 15 ranking, and there was legitimate buzz on campus this time...Hoya Blue manufactured it in 2000-2001 and it built up over time. This season it was there from the start and everyone had that taste of Sweet 16 in their mouths.

--Which was quickly replaced by the sour taste of the 73-59 butt-whooping on national TV at the hands of Georgia, in which, true story, we were outrebounded 34,706 to 4. Prompted DFW's famous recap line: "How can you kill six months of optimism and favorable national attention in forty minutes?" and GPHoya's prescient: "For those of you who said you would be bitterly disappointed with a 9-7 Big East regular season record, what say you now?"

--The biggest hyped game of the season--I have the "Stay for UVA" poster on my wall--a national TV contest against #5 UVA, the highest ranked opponent to come to MCI since 1999 and until #1 Duke blew our brains out in Esherick's final year. One of the most frustrating I can remember as a GU fan--watching the tape (which I've since "lost") over X-mas break, I counted something like 8 chances we had in the final minutes of the game to cut the margin to one possession. 0 for 8.

--The three consecutive losses to ranked teams over winter break that knocked us out of the Top 25 for good.

--An 0-4 mark for the year in Overtime games...which made a huge difference for a team that was 19-11, 9-7 in the Big East and saw their bubble burst...and believe me, the Hoyatalk board was completely insane those few days before selection Sunday, even though you kind of knew...

--For good measure, in addition to the UVA game, GU student saw AT THE MCI CENTER:

1. The "Jaron Brown game". On the same weekend as Pitt had ended GU's 16 game winning streak the year before, they did something a heck of a lot more painful than Julius Page dunking on Ruben. I was sitting right under the basket and I was convinced when that shot left Knight's hands it was an airball, and it got the funkiest bounce I've ever seen off a rim and Jaron Brown put it back LEFT HANDED for a one point victory. And Drew Hall's game-winning three attempt? Literally halfway down in the net before it popped out.

Two things that should also be pointed out about that game:

GU was down 59-43 midway through the second half and came all the way back...they took the lead on the possession before Brown's putback...

...on 1 of 2 FT's by Mike Sweetney...who had made 13 STRAIGHT FT's in the half leading to those two attempts. He misses one the entire GAME. We lose by one.

2. The 4 OVERTIME GAME. I still can't describe this one. I mean, it was a noon game and I walked out of MCI at a quarter until 4pm and the last TWO HOURS of that game in the stands was at the intensity level of the final possession. The student section's NEVER come close to that since for me. Just completely a devastating experience but in a sick way one of the more amazing games I've seen as a fan.

3. The "Ben Gordon Game". Also known as the "What the ^&$W# are you doing not fouling, Esh? Game". Out of a timeout with about a minute to go, Ben Gordon, just kinda standing over there by his bench. And of course the decision not to foul with only a 4 second differential and down by one. Get the rebound, drive down the court, Braswell PASSES the ball off to Riley who cant get a shot in time. After the kind of season of finishes we had, my roommate Jon's remark after the buzzer was great: "When we actually WANT Braswell to take the shot, he passes it off!!"

A kid from my theology class, who was a senior, was sitting front of me that game. His remark at the buzzer: "I can't believe my senior year is going to end like this!" That was the last MCI game most students went to that year.

--And the sad part was, that team wasn't bad. They were capable of doing so much better. They had this annoying way of playing their best and winning when you had gotten your hopes DOWN: a 70-43 beatdown of #13 BC on the ROAD after a 4-game losing streak...twice over Syracuse, including at the dedication of Jim Boeheim Court the NEXT GAME after the Ben Gordon game. Just frustrating.

--The awful emotional combo of the Providence game in the BET (hey, maybe we're just lucky enough to...) and blowing the game and then the OT against Miami in the quarters to finish out the season.

--But of course, even when our bubble burst, we still had a chance to make a run in the NIT...oh wait, what's that? We totally declined the NIT bid for reasons that still don't make much logical sense even today (and yeah, I know what the reasons were, and I don't buy them at all)...AWESOME!!!

Basically, Georgetown fans that year were treated to some of the most exciting, tense endings of basketball on almost a nightly basis at MCI...and we lost just about every one in a more heartbreaking way then the last.

The 4th overtime of the ND game? Now THAT affects me...

...or at least it did until January 23, 2005.