HOYAS-Duke RECAP

[FLHoya]

HOYAS-DUKE RECAP (1/30/10, 89-77 W)

Still Delusional.

In a reality check to those out there who doubted whether Georgetown remained a nationally relevant program after last year’s disappointing NIT finish…or last Monday’s limp effort in the Carrier Dome…the Hoyas responded with a dominating 89-77 victory over the Duke Blue Devils in front of a spirited crowd of 20,039 at the Verizon Center, including (not insignificantly) the President and Vice President of the United States, distinguished Georgetown alumni, and even the wallet of Ted Leonsis.

Something was clearly broken in the Hoyas 73-56 loss against Syracuse, when Georgetown struggled against a physical front line, failed to penetrate a trapping 2-3 zone defense, and couldn’t blunt any of the Orange’s lengthy scoring runs. It was up in the air who wanted to “fix it”—the task JTIII once famously left in the hands of point guard Jonathan Wallace.

On a given afternoon, that task could fall to any of Georgetown’s “Big Three”—Monroe, Freeman, and Wright. Indeed, this writer has noticed certain trends in how the Hoyas play depending upon which of the three takes primacy.

Saturday we were treated to something different: for the first time this season, all three Hoyas were hitting on all cylinders, combining for 62 points on 23-31 shooting and an irresistible inside-outside combination that befuddled Duke’s lineup of highly-recruited sharpshooters and hustle players, many of whom will undoubtedly head for moderately successful professional careers in short order.

The balanced scoring was for the stat sheet what the brilliant offensive display was to the eye. Mismatches abounded on the court at any given time, and it was the highest achievement of the afternoon that the Hoyas always knew where to find them, from Chris Wright’s energetic slashing and shooting display in the first half to Greg Monroe’s all-purpose dominance of the inside and outside in the second half.

Duke led for 13 seconds midway through the second half, but soon succumbed to a 18-3 scoring surge from the men in gray, who never looked back and never let the Blue Devils within 7 points for the remainder of the game.

My favorite way to describe the extent of the Hoyas’ offensive mastery against the Blue Devils is through the words of Verne Lundquist, who gave the CBS audience these folksy gems after Georgetown baskets during the final ten minutes of game action:

“What a BEAUTIFUL pass from Freeman!”

“OH YEAH!...OH MY GOODNESS!”

“Okay…go ahead and stand up!”

“In the meantime…this has become a blowout.”

Indeed.

Frankly, it may all sound foolish, but this Gray Out was a celebration of what is currently great about Georgetown basketball when played at a high level. For most of the 20,039 in attendance it was a great opportunity to re-connect with Georgetown basketball. For the gifted but unhappy Duke fan population, a head scratcher: pundits in recent years (and Stewart Mandel today) are wondering about Duke’s continued relevance on the Final Four landscape and its downfall from the heights of the early 1990s.

That’s all premature talk of course—if we’ve learned nothing in the past week, it’s that overreacting to losses in the heat of the moment accomplishes little. Duke will be just fine soon enough.

The real question is: what does this result say about Georgetown’s future?

There are three readily available points of reference from which one could choose to glean wisdom from this result, and each holds merit in my view. They are:

Last Monday’s loss to Syracuse

Just five days earlier, the Hoyas faced another top ten-ranked opponent, and the result was much different. Despite racing out to a 14-0 lead before the first media timeout on the back of hot shooting, the Hoyas were ill prepared for the Orange’s intensity or their 2-3 zone defense over the course of a forty minute game. For much of the second half, the Hoyas looked listless and lost against Syracuse, a loss low-lighted by Greg Monroe’s disqualification for foul accumulation.

There was a fair amount of soul-searching and sniping on The Internets about every issue from whether our lack of a deep bench finally caught up, whether Coach Thompson messed up Georgetown’s offensive strategy (a view echoed by assorted television and print pundits), whether the team was heading into a tailspin, and strangely, whether Frank McCourt was still an active member of the GU alumni community.

A week later, it’s now Duke Blue Devil fans bemoaning depth, fatigue, time off, and coaching strategy.

As the incessant 2006 World Cup promotions on ESPN told me, one game changes everything.

To be fair, every game is a unique challenge and the Hoyas were playing with a few built in advantages they hadn’t enjoyed on Monday: a raucous home crowd, an opposing coach that stubbornly refuses to stick with the very defense that Jim Boeheim used to shut down the Hoya offense, and an opponent with depth but not overwhelming quality on the bench.

That being said, reading back over various posts and articles and comments concerning the Georgetown team in the interval between Monday night and Saturday afternoon, everything pointed to a squad determined to put the loss behind them and get better in time for an important game on the weekend. For whatever reason, when Coach Thompson says the Hoyas will fix things and get better, you believe it this season where you did not in 2009.

Well actually there is a reason: they DO get better after a loss, to the tune of 4-0 on the season with impressive wins over Harvard, at Pittsburgh, and now Duke to go along with the comeback victory over Connecticut.

There’s no better cure for the offensive blues than a 71 percent shooting performance.

Last year’s loss to Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium

I myself was even blindsided by how much Greg Monroe’s mystery technical figured into the pre-game coverage of yesterday’s game. The most interesting aspect for me is the technical foul takes precedence in the media narrative over the rumored locker room scuffle or anything Gerald Henderson did as a cause of the Hoyas’ loss that afternoon.

Of course, this all leads to the one part of the story that DOES appear in every media account—that the Duke game sent the Hoyas on a multi-game tailspin including all the nasty bits we’ll leave to the Hoyatalk archives, not the least of which was a NIT first round loss.

Here’s the thing I don’t like about this: by reducing the Duke game in 2009 to a phantom technical foul, too many of the media accounts allow the Hoyas’ 2009 decline to originate from something unforeseen and completely random. And if randomness can trigger a season-ending tailspin once—one highlighted by “chemistry” issues on the team, another amorphous hard to understand concept for outsiders—couldn’t it happen again? Thus, EVERY loss, every puzzling decision, every change in a player’s mood, could be the start of another Hoyas tailspin if we believe some folks.

It seems fitting then that the game which last season prompted stories of a fight between the members of Georgetown’s backcourt ended this season with Chris Wright and Jason Clark embracing at center court and offering encouraging words to each other.

The January 2006 victory over Duke at MCI Center

I won’t improve on the succinctness and, frankly, accuracy of the posts in the thread linked here on the subject of 2006 vs. 2010: hoyatalk2.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=21272 so I won’t try.

I will note, however, an interesting phenomenon that I observed and overheard during the four hours I spent in the Verizon Center.

It started with pre-game discussions, which noted Duke’s potential for great shooting but looked upon their weak road record with much skepticism. It continued at halftime when multiple fans discussed a key advantage the Hoyas would have in holding their halftime lead in this iteration against Duke was the Blue Devils’ lack of a J.J. Redick-like scorer. It became painfully obvious when in the second half JimmyHoya turned to me and stated that on the previous GU possession, all five Hoyas had touched the basketball, and he’d take any of the five one-on-one matchups we saw.

The obvious difference between 2006 and 2010 is that Georgetown is no longer the upstart program trying to rebuild a past legacy of greatness, searching for its first program-defining victory in a new coaching era. We’ve been there and done that since 2006 to the tune of two Big East regular season titles, a Big East Tournament championship, and three NCAA appearances to include a 2007 Final Four appearance.

But it’s not merely the trophy case…it’s the attitude. Verne and Clark spoke at length about the full length mural in McDonough Gym depicting the post-game celebration in January 2006 after Georgetown beat Duke. There won’t be any murals this time—nobody stormed the court. Most students I reckon will just ditch the newspaper inserts reading BEAT DUKE—and certainly nobody decorated the John Carroll statue. And the mood on campus after the game was…well, like after most good Big East games.

Not that there is no joy on F Street, or that the 20,039 fans in the Verizon Center didn’t make Saturday a day to remember.

It’s just…well, my fellow fans couldn’t have stated it any clearer when I asked them how they felt after the game:

This was a team that we should beat in January 2010.

And we should beat more teams like Duke on the way to better things this season. Are we Final Four bound? That isn’t something one can answer in January—even the second weekend of March when brackets are announced only offers a clue in the form of potential matchups. But the spirit is high among Hoya fans on the last day of January 2010—something we could not say in 2009—and I guess what I’m saying right now is: we shouldn’t give up the dream.

How delusional of us.

[FLHoya]

PLAYER EVALUATIONS

Chris Wright: 21 points, 8-9 FG (1-2 3FG), 4-5 FT, 4RB, 2A, 3TO, 2BLK, 3STL

16 points in the first half, 5 in the second half.

Ask yourself this question: do you feel Chris was contributing anything less to the team in the second half?

I sure don’t.

This was his best game of the season in my view because it was the smartest. Not a single shot wasted, and the ones taken—pretty darn effective. (WHAT A PLAYER! WHAT A MAN!)

The play that stands out occurred in the first half, when he blocked a shot on the perimeter that Duke recovered, but managed to get back in position and steal the ball under the basket and start a fast break. With two defenders racing back and a possible charging foul in the making, Chris pulled up for a controlled jumper from the foul line and jarred it. I don’t think Chris Wright takes that shot in November or December.

He didn’t put as many points on the scoreboard in the second half, but he did exactly what was required for his team to win the game, which was play under control and lead the offense. It’s a telling sign that Georgetown fans are beginning to recognize the importance of this aspect of his play that Chris was getting a fair share of applause in the second half for pulling the ball out in transition and setting up an offense that, by this point, had become so automatic in half-court sets, not pressing the issue on the break was a surer way to two points.

Greg Monroe: 21 points, 7-11 FG (0-2 3FG), 7-10 FT, 5RB, 5A, 1TO, 1BLK, 2STL

From my reading what Duke fans had to say online prior to the game, I don’t think this one came as much of a surprise. During the second half, the CBS announcers stated the obvious defensive quandary Duke faced with Monroe: he was too big for one of Duke’s smaller defenders to guard down low, but too quick for Duke’s interior defenders to guard on the perimeter.

Nobody struggled with the dilemma as much as Kyle Singler, whose third and fourth fouls illustrated the matchup nightmare: one foul came in the low post, the other as Monroe went to the rim for a layup off a backdoor pass.

The “full book bag,” Clark Kellogg called it, and Monroe pretty well schooled Duke’s defense on this particular day. He attacked the basket from the perimeter off the dribble, in the low post, and in open space on backdoor plays. Importantly, once Duke sold out to stop Greg, he got teammates involved—you won’t see two better passes out of a double team than when he found Chris Wright in the first half and then Austin Freeman in the second streaking backdoor for easy layups.

It’s the book bag that made Jeff Green a great student-athlete. Monroe still lacks the range and accuracy of Green, but today his versatility and his work off the dribble in particular reminded me of the point forward many Hoya fans seem to assume he replaced.

Austin Freeman: 20 points, 8-11 FG (2-3 3FG), 2-2 FT, 3RB, 5A, 3TO, 1BLK, STL

Of the Big Three, Austin probably left the smallest stamp on the Duke game in terms of dictating style, but left nothing to be desired on the scoreboard. If you find yourself on the receiving end of outlet passes, Greg Monroe’s clever backdoor look, or a well-placed pass for an open three…well, you put the ball in the hoop and reap the rewards.

It was interesting to hear Clark Kellogg cite the 180 stat in reference to Freeman. If you add up Austin’s 2FG% + 3FG% + FT% prior to yesterday’s game, he’s at 189 which if I recall correctly exceeds Jon Wallace at the height of his offense efficiency with the Hoyas.

Jason Clark: 9 points, 4-5 FG (1-2 3FG), 0RB, 3A, 1TO

It was Clark who I felt benefitted least of the Hoyas from the officiating tendencies at play. Having now seen a replay of the game in addition to live action, it would be very hard to find fault with any of Clark’s four fouls. He was nailed a few times on the perimeter for what in some Big East games would be deemed a love tap, but not on this afternoon. Needed to be a little more tidy staying in front of his man and sliding rather than playing D with the bump or the hand check.

Like Freeman, all he needed to do today was put himself in a good position to make plays on run-outs and an open three here or there. Doesn’t have to be special, just put it in the bucket and reap the rewards.

Julian Vaughn: 8 points, 4-4 FG, 0-2 FT, 3RB, 2A, 3TO, 3BLK

And we will punctuate that sentence with an exclamation point, thanks to Julian Vaughn’s soaring offensive rebound and put back late in the second half. Vaughn gets the least minutes of the starting five and at times sits for long stretches due to early foul trouble, so it’s always nice to see him return to games in the second half still ready and willing to contribute effort plays.

About as unsophisticated an offensive showing as you’ll ever need—all four field goals were either layups or dunks, pretty much all of them wide open after smart passes. I really sense some good chemistry between Vaughn and Monroe on the court, the former often benefitting from the attention drawn to the latter, who is more than willing to share the rock and share the wealth. This will be crucial as the second date with Syracuse looms in February.

Hollis Thompson: 6 points, 2-3 3FG, 2RB, 0A, 1TO, 1BLK, 2STL

Not going to go all “How Hollis Got His Groove Back” on Hoyatalk after a single game, but he was playing with an infectious sense of confidence on the court. We often throw around the platitude that once you see a shot go down, it makes you more confident to take more shots. Well, platitudes do work in practice on occasion—such was the case with Hollis, whose initial three paved the way for an impressive pull up J from the top of the key and a nifty set play that almost broke the game open early in the second half (“Wow, that would have been too good to be true,”) JimmyHoya said to me as Hollis missed his third and final attempt.

Jerrelle Benimon: 4 points, 0-3 FG (0-1 3FG), 4-4 FT, 2RB, 3A, 3TO, 1BLK, 2STL

Interestingly, his most reliable scoring option these days is at the free throw line, where in somewhat limited attempts he’s shooting near 75% for the season and has the stoke to suggest that number won’t decline.

As a cog in the offensive machine, he’s fine tuning things by the day. I’d still say he needs to gain more confidence on that end of the court—his running layup isn’t a terrible move, but he isn’t confident enough to really finish it hard at the rim at this level of competition.

That being said, you see him being integrated into new parts of the offense. On a first half play that he ultimately dished to the corner for Jason Clark’s three pointer, Jerrelle was the cut man on a backdoor play that saw Monroe dribbling at him (think the Brandon Bowman reverse dunk play from 2006). He made a pretty heady basketball play to elevate and draw the help defense under the rim before whipping it to the open man on the perimeter.

Surprised he only checked in with two rebounds—though his box out technique created a couple of chances for others.

Officials: We have varying opinions on the most appropriate “tone” for officiating in a Georgetown game—the calculus for which usually involves notions of “flow”, “foul trouble”, and “phantom technicals”. Whatever your opinion, the one thing we should all hope for is that the rules are consistently applied over the course of forty minutes. Yesterday’s game was heavy in touch fouls on the perimeter and in the post, but consistently officiated and containing little drama. A welcome relief for Hoya fans no doubt that neither Ed Corbett (2-0/15-10), Bryan Kersey (2-1/15-3), or Michael Stephens (5-0/17-6) will become a household name on Hoyatalk.

[FLHoya]

NON-GAME OBSERVATIONS

Let’s break this down into categories:

The Pre-Game Experience

Full credit to the folks involved at the Secret Service, Verizon Center, and Georgetown for how they handled what could have been a pain-inducing headache for 20,000 plus fans. We were faced with, as far as I can tell, an unprecedented triple whammy of logistical concerns for a game on 7th and F:

--The weather conditions…it started snowing in DC around 9:30am and continued throughout the day and into the evening. This being the District, the area is either entirely over-prepared or woefully under-prepared for severe weather conditions. If you’ve driven around inside the Beltway since yesterday, you know quite well that this time it was the latter.

--The sellout crowd, to include most notably the largest student crowd of the season. The students were the wildcard, as given the stature of the game a long line was to expected hours before the doors opened at the extra-early hour of 11:00am (for a 1:00pm game).

--The extra security protocols associated with the POTUS appearance.

Taking those three in order:

--The weather wasn’t much of a complicating factor, inasmuch as one of the security protocols advised patrons to avoid driving to the arena if at all possible. It did make for some excellent pictures of the student line winding down 7th Street: twitpic.com/10ib10 though. And it made for a fun rollicking time when everyone spilled out of the VC at 3:15, surprised to find it still snowing directly into your face, no matter which direction you faced.

--As “The Hoya” reported on their Twitter feed Sunday morning, a group (I was told a rather large group) of students camped out overnight next to the entrance of the Verizon Center. In a brilliant move that was somehow not obvious to the previous two iterations of students who did this in 2004 and 2006, they brought a tent: tweetphoto.com/9986472

Students, I was told, showed up in Chinatown throughout the very early morning hours, and business began to really pick up around sunrise/Starbucks opening hours. I heard multiple accounts that all student section wristbands (these are given to the first X number of students to indicate they have access to the 100 level seating) were distributed by 9:30am—that would be 90 minutes before doors opened and a full 3.5 hours before tipoff.

When I arrived in Chinatown at approximately 10:30am, I was greeted by a student line that stretched from the student entrance at 7th and F (next to the Metro station entrance).

A few minutes later, I traveled to the back of the line—it should be noted the line was easily 3-4 persons wide and at times took up the entire sidewalk, until it was consolidated by police—and snapped this photo: twitpic.com/10ic0w Note that (a) the snow is coming down pretty good; (b) you can’t even remotely see the front of the line, as I was standing in front of the entrance to Urban Outfitters.

Not bad.

Thankfully I’ve grown up from my student section days, and I passed the interval before doors opening under an awning outside of the Clyde’s entrance to the arena. We were pleasantly surprised to encounter no line and a friendly security staff. At our entrance there were three metal detectors and at least 3-4 security agents per detector. Electronics and bags were inspected (the agent spent a fair amount of time giving my camera the once-over) and fans passed through a metal detector. All in all the process moved swiftly. I didn’t notice any severe backups at the F Street gates, although I noted 20 minutes prior to the game that a long line was forming on 7th Street near the student entrance.

The security had the nice effect of managing the entrance of student and general fans alike in an orderly manner. In past years there had always been concern over students running through the concourse or line-cutting and surging the ticket scanners. Having a boatload of security, an artificially controlled flow of people and an obvious need for a single-file line cut down on that nonsense real quick.

As such, it took about 20-30 minutes for the student section to fill up in the 100 level. In a smart move, the VC staff directed students who had not been distributed wristbands to proceed to any entrance of the arena to head up to the 400 level. That actually filled up much quicker than the 100 level initially.

The In-Game Experience

You’ve likely seen much better pics online than mine: twitpic.com/10ihl2 of the empty Verizon Center in Gray Out conditions (I highly recommend the Hoop Club’s Facebook page). A “small army” of volunteers (who were all subject to additional security screening, I was told) helped distribute thousands of the Gray Out shirts to every seat in the 100 and 200 levels excluding the student sections (this caused the shirts to instantly become a coveted item for students—one of the shirts in my row was stolen 45 minutes before the game by the student dressed in the penguin costume).

I thought this looked a little cool: twitpic.com/10j3wz

Those who attended or watched on television can judge whether the Gray Out should be deemed a success. I certainly noticed a remarkable difference upon viewing my DVR copy of the color scheme in the 100 level…although strangely, it made it difficult even on a HD screen and wearing glasses to tell when fans were sitting vs. standing.

Was it like 2006?

In a word: no.

Perhaps yesterday’s game reinforced how special the 2006 game was, in the way it reinforced how normal the 2010 result felt. January 21, 2006 had all of the trappings of a program defining moment—a victory whose closest comparison could only be found two decades prior. January 30, 2010 had the feel of a Top 10 battle—a significant event, truth be told—one that will be remember fondly by Hoya fans but probably not written about.

Duke fans won’t write home about it. The Ticket Office and Hoop Club’s efforts to ensure a home court advantage paid off as much as anyone could have realistically hope. Throughout the build-up, myself and others emphasized a few key points that would play to GU’s advantage, the most important of which were the additional 5,000-6,000 season tickets held by Hoya fans in 2010 vs. 2006.

I am not good with guesstimation (my efforts on that Temple game notwithstanding), and will leave that to others…but GU did quite well shutting out as many Duke fans as possible. Perhaps the fact that nobody has really mentioned this issue in the day since the game is evidence enough that something went well.

Not for my section—118 Row B has already been forwarded to Steve Alleva for the transgression of selling all four tickets to Duke fans, likely via StubHub (two bf/gf pairs, incidentally). Would it shock you if I informed you that one of those four was in tears at the end of the game?

In the end, it was remarkable in that…so much of it was unremarkable. I actually stopped taking non-game observation notes at halftime because I had so little of note to work with.

The POTUS Visit

I was much closer to Reggie Love than his boss.

POTUS arrived just before the National Anthem through the northeast tunnel adjacent to Section 108 and took his courtside seats. The commotion of photographers and gawkers actually disturbed the beginning of the Anthem, sung by the Georgetown Chimes (always a personal favorite of mine). Vice President Biden appeared to arrive a bit later.

As my vantage point was so far away, I didn’t devote much effort to following the goings on in that corner. I did watch part of the interview at the CBS table and the shift of security/gawking that resulted.

President Obama as you probably read/saw left with about 2 minutes to go. Biden stuck around.

RECURRING YOUTUBE VIDEOS

Yacht Rock Song of the Week:

Hall and Oates: “I Can’t Go For That” (1983):


Michael Jackson Song of the Week

Smooth Criminal (1987)

Never could decide which was my favorite song off the “Bad” album. I like this one because I have no idea what the point of the video was supposed to be.

Montage!

Bloodsport (1988)


Possibly the best Van Damme montage scene ever not involving him getting down in the background of a breakdancing routine?

David Hasselhoff singing “Hooked on A Feeling”



The Legacy

The 2006 Duke-Georgetown game recently ranked second on HoyaSaxa.com’s list of the best games of the 2000s.

Will the 2010 Duke-Georgetown game rank as a better or more important game than the one next Saturday?

As I alluded to in Part I, the unmistakable impression you got from Georgetown fans after the game was that the Hoyas have reached a point in their rebirth as a basketball program where they should expect to beat a team like Duke.

Can we expect to be a viable contender for the Big East title? That question comes up for debate in exactly six days...

Can we keep the momentum going? That question comes up in half the time.

[jerseyhoya34]

Great recap, FL. Seems to coalesce many of the discussions in an organized way.

118B is a disgrace. Fans in 118A and 118C can write a good treatise about opposing fans based on the jokers who've been in 118B. I didn't mind the WVU fans last year or the year before, which says something. IIRC, even Depaul fans have ended up in 118B.

[HoyaChris]

Jan 31, 2010 23:31:31 GMT -5 FLHoya said:

NON-GAME OBSERVATIONS

Let’s break this down into categories:
Not for my section—118 Row B has already been forwarded to Steve Alleva for the transgression of selling all four tickets to Duke fans, likely via StubHub (two bf/gf pairs, incidentally). Would it shock you if I informed you that one of those four was in tears at the end of the game?

I would assume that the one who was crying was male?

[lichoya68]

FL YOU ARE AMAZING... GREAT RECAP... one error tho how can you say that coach K. stubbornly stuck to his guns... and didnt take a cue from cuse coach jimmy b.?? HE FREAKING USED THE ZONE FOR ABOUT 42 SECONDS... come on he aint THAT stubborn ...GO HOYAS BEAT USF ... LEAGUE GAME COMING.... AND AFTER LAST NITE ITS NO LONGER A TRAP ...ITS A FREAKING War.. FL that was some summary!!!!! congrats again. and good anglish and punctuatoin adn spelling toooooo very amazing

[lichoya68]

ok ok maybe it was 26 seconds ok!!

[PhillyHoya]

Feb 1, 2010 7:03:27 GMT -5 HoyaChris said:

Jan 31, 2010 23:31:31 GMT -5 FLHoya said:

NON-GAME OBSERVATIONS

Let’s break this down into categories:
Not for my section—118 Row B has already been forwarded to Steve Alleva for the transgression of selling all four tickets to Duke fans, likely via StubHub (two bf/gf pairs, incidentally). Would it shock you if I informed you that one of those four was in tears at the end of the game?

I would assume that the one who was crying was male?

Sadly no but he was being quite the woman complaining towards the end.

[lurkerhoya]

Excellent recap. It certainly felt different not waiting under the basket to run to center court, but in a good way.

[SirSaxa]

Good work as always FLHoya.
And thanks for including a sense of the day in the "pre-game experience" graphs.

Isn't it grand seeing the team coalesce before our eyes.
JT3's goal each year, is to be the most improved team during the season! He's succeeding again

[JimmyHoya]

Jan 31, 2010 23:39:18 GMT -5 @jerseyhoya34 said:

Great recap, FL. Seems to coalesce many of the discussions in an organized way.

118B is a disgrace. Fans in 118A and 118C can write a good treatise about opposing fans based on the jokers who've been in 118B. I didn't mind the WVU fans last year or the year before, which says something. IIRC, even Depaul fans have ended up in 118B.

I would say no more than a 1/3 of the time are those seats even filled by Hoya fans, with big games hosting opposing fans and the cupcakes hosting only neighboring fans' coats. It's a disgrace. There has been a single Hoya fan who has been seen in those seats on a somewhat regular basis this year (read: 3 times max), but it's unclear what seat(s) he was in and if he owned them. I hope the money is coming back to the school in donations!

The dookies this time behaved themselves beyond the aforementioned sniffling.

In any event, yet another great recap.

[jgalt]

There were not 20k there, maybe sold but not there.

The security may have been ok in the arena or at other entrances, but they stood around and watched as the student entrance quickly turned into the door of a wal-mart at 2:30 am on the day after thanks giving. As i was crushed against the glass of a bus stop right outside the door and as a Verizon security guard helpfully watched from a distance i could here the glass (1/2 inch thick no less) beginning to crack. It is a shock that no one was trampled.

Also, what a terrible time for Chipotle to decide to renovate! There wasnt enough room in the McDs to stand, i can only imagine how it would have been in the chipotle had it been open (yes, even at 8 in the morning)

[CTHoya08]

I was in 401 and could see plenty of unfilled seats in my section and those around me. They were mostly full, but certainly not close to the 100% I'm reading about everywhere.