HOYAS-Villanova RECAP

[FLHoya]

HOYAS vs. Villanova (2/6/10, 103-90 W)

For one day, we let the Other Three carry us to victory.

With the D.C. area in the grips of a Snowmageddonalypsecutiongasm, it was Villanova buried under the avalanche of three pointers from Jason Clark, on his way to a career high 24 points and a starring role in arguably Georgetown’s best performance of the season, a 103-90 victory.

The usual cast of stars was there for the Hoyas: Austin Freeman (25), Greg Monroe (19), and Chris Wright (7) combined for half of Georgetown’s scoring output.

But it was Clark’s three point shooting coupled with the strong supporting cast of Julian Vaughn (13 points and an unreal star turn at the free throw line) and Hollis Thompson (12 points and a guest role late in the second half as Georgetown’s premier defensive rebounder) that balanced the Hoyas’ offensive attack and tilted the game in their favor.

Fitting that it was Georgetown’s “second line” that contributed so heavily today, on an afternoon when Villanova coach Jay Wright used 10 players for more than 10 minutes. It was a chess match with slam dunks between the two coaches for 40 minutes, albeit one with an absurd number of personal fouls.

Each good move brought an equally adept counter. As Georgetown worked to lock down opportunities for Scottie Reynolds (to the tune of 5 points on 1-5 shooting in the first half), Villanova upped the defensive pressure on the perimeter and burned the Hoyas for 8 fast break points. Still, it became evident soon enough that Georgetown held the stronger pieces: a lights-out shooting performance from Freeman and Clark (6-7 from downtown in the first half) and a stifling halfcourt defense that forced 16 Villanova turnovers in the first half, including 4 player control fouls.

Here, Coach Thompson learned the lessons from his last battle of wits with Jay Wright. In Philadelphia last month, Villanova’s guards had blown past the first line of GU defenders and exploited the interior of Georgetown’s defense for easy drive and dish opportunities. On this afternoon, Hoya guards stayed along their man, funneling him into the waiting help defense of big bodies like Julian Vaughn, who eagerly stopped Nova’s guards dead in their path and absorbed the offensive fouls.

Midway through the first half the Hoyas led by just a point at 19-18…but here, Thompson attacked, and the results were swift: a 31-9 scoring run featuring back to back three pointers by both Clark and Freeman that built a double-digit lead Georgetown wouldn’t relinquish the rest of the game.

Not that Jay Wright would just lay down his King (he had five fouls to burn after all). The dapper don of the Big East coaching ranks has many pieces at his disposal, and Villanova in the second half set about using their depth, athletic guards and a bothersome zone press to increase the number of possessions and provide a way back from a 19-point halftime deficit.

It almost worked.

This may seem an unusual statement, given the previously noted fact that Villanova never cut Georgetown’s lead below single digits.

In truth though, the Hoyas played for stretches on the razor’s edge. Seven straight points from Scottie Reynolds early in the second half signaled Villanova’s intent to not go quietly, and the chess match was back on.

No longer were Wildcat guards recklessly barreling through Georgetown’s frontline on the drive. Instead, they nimbly dribbled around the Hoya big men for reverse layups, or pulled up for mid-range jumpers. Reynolds too found his scoring touch, to the tune of 19 second half points.

Befitting their name, the Wildcats scratched and clawed their way back into the game, beating the Hoyas to a number of loose balls, repeatedly tying up Julian Vaughn, and snatching an occasional turnover from a careless Hoya fast break. They extended their pressure to full court, fouled hard and often, and in general tried to blunt the Hoyas’ offensive momentum with brute force.

But for every move, Georgetown had the appropriate counter. Greg Monroe—who overpowered Villanova’s young front line with his post play in the first meeting between the teams—turned into a 6 foot 11 point guard in their second matchup, again exploiting double teams with skillful passing to the weak side, to the benefit of Austin Freeman and particularly Julian Vaughn. When Villanova amped up their pressure defense, even the absence of Chris Wright who fouled out in the second half, the Hoyas turned to Austin Freeman and Jason Clark to relieve the pressure.

In the end, the two most skillful moves from Coach Thompson weren’t flashy, but they proved decisive in positioning the Hoyas for an eventual checkmate.

The first came with 6:36 remaining in the first half when, with the Hoyas up 34-20, JTIII brought Greg Monroe to the bench for all but the final possession of the half with two fouls. Here, a 14 point lead presented a luxury: an opportunity to rest the Hoyas’ star player, but more to the point to avoid foul trouble for the single most indispensible member of the roster. Despite Monroe’s absence, the Hoyas extended their lead by five without the big man, and Monroe didn’t pick up another foul in the game,

The second came with 4:45 remaining in the game, when JTIII called a timeout. In the same way that Stan Heath’s late timeout on Wednesday served to quiet a suddenly boisterous crowd and blunt Georgetown’s momentum, Thompson’s timeout on Saturday shoveled a giant pile of snow onto any Nova players heating up.

Going into the timeout, GU led by 11. After two defensive stands and a three-point play from Julian Vaughn, a minute was gone and the margin was back up to 14, severely constraining Nova’s hopes for a rally.

Just another day in the Georgetown-Villanova rivalry—a game that featured unconscious shooting from Hoya guards, Scottie Reynolds’ best effort to duplicate his heroics of the third weekend in January, constant chirping between players and physical play, a calculated technical from Jay Wright, 38 turnovers, 58 fouls, 73 free throw attempts…and 17.6 inches of snow.

In the end, it was the Hoyas day in the snow…

…well, their second day in the snow, lest we forget the Duke victory of the previous weekend. Those performances, together, go a long way towards proving these Hoyas are a quality bunch in 2010, capable of not only hanging with but soundly beating Top 10 caliber teams deep into the season.

But…they aren’t the whole story.

Indeed, maybe the most important story, outside of the fact that the Abominable Snowman could have set up a vacation home on F Street during the game, was how the Villanova win represented yet another strong bounce back game for the Hoyas after a puzzling and difficult loss.

As proud as we are as Hoya fans of our teams inspired performance in front of a roudy crowd of 10,300 during the 4th worst snowstorm in the region’s history…it doesn’t take much of a GU basketball historian to recall Wednesday’s 72-64 loss to South Florida before a listless Verizon Center crowd.

“I think that this group can beat any team in the country if we do what we’re supposed to do,” Coach Thompson said after the Hoyas beat Duke last weekend, “And if we don’t, we can lose to everyone else on our schedule.”

It was right there for everyone to see…and yet to see it was still shocking.

The Hoyas were hit in the mouth by Dominique Jones and Co. This was somehow different than other losses the Hoyas experienced during the Big East season. For one, South Florida still carries that certain stigma. But more to the point—this was a HOME loss, in front of HOME fans. And nobody—players or fans—seemed to have showed up that night.

So here we were Saturday morning, under a foot and a half of snow and wondering what would become of our team and our fans. It was a challenge to be sure.

I’m reminded of the movie I watched at home the night after the USF loss—“The Untouchables”. In particular, I remember Jim Malone’s (Sean Connery) famous question to Eliot Ness about getting Al Capone:

What are you prepared to do?

As a team, coming off their worst loss of the season, an uninspired mess of a game that fell apart in the final ten minutes…with the #2 team in the nation, undefeated in Big East play, already owning a W over you…coming into your building…what are you prepared to do to keep your Top Ten ranking?

As fans, coming off our worst game of the season, an uninspired mess of a game that saw zero energy from the Verizon Center crowd and enough students to maybe fill an 8:50am Macroeconomics lecture hall…with the #2 team in the nation, with its strong local alumni following, already having celebrated a home win over you…coming into your building…with a foot and a half of snow on the ground, no above-ground Metro service, no parking available in the city, and snowdrifts covering your car…what are you prepared to do to give the Hoyas a home court advantage?

What indeed.

[FLHoya]

PLAYER EVALUATIONS

Chris Wright: 7 pts, 2-6 FG (1-4 3FG), 2-2 FT, 3RB, 3A, 1T0, 1STL, 5F

It’s too bad he was limited in minutes and then disqualified with foul trouble, but fortunate his backcourt mates more than made up for his absence. I don’t think this was going to be a high scoring game for Wright anyway—IMO he would have maxed out at 15 points had he played a full game.

While his absence didn’t create the void it could have—and that it did in the previous GU-Nova meeting—it cut short what had become for Wright a controlled and smart performance. Early on it was anything but—Chris was quick on the trigger and seemed bothered by the foul calls against him to the point that it affected his decision making.

But he got over that and as the game went on was playing more under control and seemed to be making the correct decisions—push vs. don’t push, which teammates to involve, etc. That the ESPN announcers focused on how Wright needed to play carefully after returning with four fouls underscored that his fifth foul was quite reckless and not needed. With a short bench, cheap fouls are doubly harmful.

Greg Monroe: 19 points, 4-9 FG (0-1 3FG), 11-14 FT, 8RB, 6A, 5TO, 2BLK, 1STL

This was a much different style of offense than we saw from Greg in Philadelphia. On that day, he regularly exploited his skill mismatch against Villanova’s foul parade front line for a number of baskets in the post. Today, the foul parade marched on, but Monroe did his damage first from the foul line and then, smartly, by allowing the inevitable double and triple teams to come and using the opportunity to create for his teammates (Julian Vaughn has your next Chicken Madness, Greg).

Greg’s swell passing out of double team pressure has been at its most evident in the three big recent Georgetown victories (Pitt, Duke, Villanova). What is interesting is that while he’s doing it in a similar point-forward position to Jeff Green, he’s doing it from the baseline rather than the high post (indeed, Georgetown still uses Julian Vaughn more often in the high post role in Princeton sets).

However he does it, Georgetown reaps the benefits. Monroe’s passing out of double team traffic is as much a late game weapon as, for instance, Duke’s spread offense when they protect leads in the second half.

Austin Freeman: 25 points, 8-12 FG (2-5 3FG), 7-10 FT, 1RB, 3A, 1TO, 1STL

At two points in the game, Austin’s shooting was a difference maker.

In the first half, Freeman scored on two consecutive three pointers—the second an in-rhythm shot on a fast break—to give Georgetown a 25-18 lead and jump start the first significant scoring run of the game, from which the Hoyas never looked back.

In the second half, two difficult field goals—a long pull-up jumper and a baseline floater—stemmed the tide when Scottie Reynolds looked poised to give Villanova the early run they needed to bring the game back within striking distance.

There’s the skillful, and there’s the smart. The smartest plays Austin made during the game in my opinion actually didn’t result in field goal attempts at all. On multiple occasions in the second half, Freeman drove the baseline and drew fouls on whichever Nova center happened to be in the game at the time. With such a high foul total piling up on the Wildcats, it was almost assured that whenever Austin turned the corner he’d at minimum get a trip to the foul line.

A sign that he’s playing at his best is when he recognizes a go-to scoring move and exploits it.

Jason Clark: 24 points, 8-11 FG (6-7 3FG), 2-3 FT, 3RB, 2A, 5TO, 1BLK, 2STL

The game of his career thus far, summed up in the death stare ESPN lingered on has he backed away from his sixth three pointer. Some days you’re just dialed in.

What was crucial though was that his contributions weren’t just limited to the three pointers. He played a major role in limiting Scottie Reynolds in the first half. He and Austin Freeman picked up the slack in the backcourt with Chris Wright’s foul trouble keeping him off the court. And with 4:30 remaining in the game, he made the best athletic play of the afternoon, swatting away a layup attempt from behind with Villanova trying to close within 9 points. It should be noted they never did get below the single digit hump.

He did one little thing very well that caught my attention on the TV broadcast—he gave hard, believable shot fakes every time he got the ball at the three point line.

I wish I could have put down a prop bet on him having a career day. Between the comment that he was going to give everyone a hug who made it to the game, to the footage of him greeting the crowd before the game—you had to know something was up.

Julian Vaughn: 13 points, 3-5 FG, 7-7 FT, 3RB, 3A, 4TO, 2BLK

Speaking of the game of your career…who in the world kidnapped Julian Vaughn and took those foul shots?

The point is well taken that Vaughn doesn’t need to be a scorer to best help this basketball team. He can have a great impact by providing defense, rebounding, and energy in his minutes on the court. And he’s doing that—he’s the team’s best offensive rebounder by a mile, and he threw in two well-taken charges in the first half to go with two blocks.

The bonus comes when he and Monroe play off each other, which seems to be the most reliable way for Vaughn to get points these days. As soon as the double team comes on Monroe, all Vaughn has to do in make a good cut or park himself under the basket and the opportunity will be there. No secret why all of his field goals were on dunks or free throws. He finishes with authority.

Needs to improve his strength and handle in traffic though—he’s a ready target for steals when he gets into the lane or into a double team situation. Too easy to slap the ball away or tie him up.

Hollis Thompson: 12 points, 2-4 FG (1-2 3FG), 7-10 FT, 5RB, 3A, 3TO

The “arrival” as Hoyatalk appears eager to call it of Hollis Thompson was in my view a product of his hustle as opposed to better shooting.

True, his stroke has improved over the last couple weeks, and his resulting increase in confidence would seem to indicate the Hoyas have at least half a scoring option with Hollis on the court at any time.

Where he did most of his damage against Villanova was on the free throw line in the second half. And that was because he put his athleticism to use on the defensive glass. Several times late in the game it was Thompson who was pulling down the important rebounds in traffic and drawing cheap fouls on Villanova as they tried to pry the ball away. That’s a tremendous sign if we get that kind of hustle and contribution outside of the normal shooting/scoring channels from a bench player.

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

Two developments working against each other, one probably positive, one probably not.

On the plus side, Jerrelle appears to be a much more competent defender on the perimeter in February than he was in each previous month. This is the kind of incremental improvement you’re looking for in a freshman bench player without much pre-existing hype. Time was I cringed as the Benimonster flailed around the court in a 2-3 zone trying to catch up to the ball movement. By now, he’s at least a reasonable option to hold the line when he switches onto a guard at the perimeter—you’ll find several examples in this game with Reynolds. So as a perimeter defender, signs are looking up.

On the minus side, he seems to have lost touch with the aggressive rebounding and hustle plays that defined his early appearances. It’s not merely that he isn’t hitting higher rebounding numbers—indeed some of that is no doubt related to his defending more often on the perimeter. Rather, he’s not bringing the intensity to the defensive glass that he did in December and January. Too often he’s either getting out-rebounded, or seems far too passive on the interior. Needs to mix it up more, IMO.

You’ll take the solid free throw shooting—3 of 4 from the line per game is just fine. Would love better field goal shooting—he’s being dared to take the outside shot. If you don’t have that in your game, fine, but take a couple dribbles and either pull up or at least make the defense commit one way or the other.

Officials: Jim Haney and Brian O’Connell are the 13th and 14th different Big East officials to work a GU-Nova regular season game in the “Scottie Reynolds Era” (Michael Stephens previously was on the court in Philly for the February 2009 game). While the offensive efficiency has improved—the four contests prior to this season all finished in the mid-50s—Georgetown-Nova games remain foul-filled tractor pulls, and today’s game despite all of the offensive fireworks set a new standard for ugly. The 59 fouls whistled (that’s one every 41 seconds) beat the previous record holder of 52 set in January at the Wachovia Center. Unsurprisingly, the free throw total also set the standard—the 73 combined attempts beating the January 2010 mark (57) by a wide margin. It simply doesn’t matter which officials are on the court—when Villanova and Georgetown cross paths, it’s a train wreck.

[FLHoya]

NON-GAME OBSERVATIONS

Let’s start on Wednesday.

As much of a head-scratcher as the home loss to South Florida was, any talk of what went wrong on the court for the Hoyas at the mid-week was dwarfed on Hoyatalk by multiple threads wondering what wasn’t going on in the stands.

We had a student attendance problem on our hands.

This was obvious to anyone arriving at the Verizon Center, and was always going to be a talking point regardless of the outcome of the game. I’d say close to a dozen people at various points brought up in conversation with me at the Verizon Center how few students (and, to be fair, fans overall) attended Wednesday’s game.

One member of Hoya Blue’s Executive Board put it bluntly, pointing at the crowd and declaring we could finally put to rest the notion that student attendance is in any way tied to the Hoyas’ performance on the court.

But how did that become “the notion” in the first place?

I for one don’t think the primary driver of student attendance is the basketball team’s performance.

Does it help when the team is coming off a Final Four season, or in the midst of a 2-year undefeated home streak? Sure.

But good team = good attendance doesn’t hold up as an equation when there are so many variables, including an off campus arena, a self-serve transportation requirement to attend games, and a season ticket policy that prioritizes sales volume but doesn’t do anything to reward actual attendance.

We may disagree on the extent to which these variables should matter, but the fact of the matter is they do, in varying degrees, for the college students you want to see in those courtside seats.

Which is why the primary driver of student attendance are the students themselves.

Six years ago I wrote an article about this for HoyaSaxa.com. The thesis (part of it anyway) is that the campus consists of various categories of students who are more or less likely to ever attend a basketball game.

If you applied the numbers I came up with, there would be around 400-600 “die hard” basketball fans on campus and about 600-1000 further who would likely go to most games as long as they didn’t have other more pressing obligations.

Sounds like we had a “die hard” crowd at the South Florida game, doesn’t it?

The point is—the issue raised about student attendance on Wednesday is nothing new. It’s been around at least as long as Georgetown has been playing at the MCI/Verizon Center (which at least got rid of the overwhelming Landover variable).

So what are we prepared to do about it?

Well, the other part of my thesis was that Hoya Blue’s job should be to step in and through their promotions, activities, and advertisements to the campus, try to bump as many people as possible up a category of fandom. This is to say—Hoya Blue was one variable that hadn’t been present in a while, and actually could, I felt, have an impact on student attendance.

To that end, I was pleased to see multiple emails from the club to the student body heading into the weekend not only encouraging students to go to the games, but also providing them directions to the closest underground Metro stops or the Verizon Center itself.

I think students like a good time, and a challenge. This was a good challenge for students who wanted to see a good basketball game, and a good challenge to Hoya Blue—who hasn’t exactly been the model of consistency this year, to put it one way—to get as many rowdy people as possible into a snowed-in downtown arena for a marquee Top 10 matchup.

And they met the challenge.

So how about those old people…….?

My day began in one of the northern Virginia zones not served by underground Metro (shuttling between Pentagon and Crystal City does not count). Like many folks on Hoyatalk, my household paid close attention to the weather forecasts, listened to the hyperbolic warnings of local officials about not leaving your house except in emergencies, and strategized what was undoubtedly going to be a difficult way to not listen to those people and get to the game.

The trick in our case was to make it to an underground Metro station from South Arlington. We ruled out walking, as it is approximately 3 miles to Rosslyn from our apartment up Route 110. Fortunately, we have the advantage of underground parking at our building and a 4WD vehicle, so driving was an option, albeit a dangerous one, we were told.

Late in the week, I thought of the Ballston Mall’s multi-story public parking garage as an option. It’s near a Metro stop (in fact connected to it via above-ground walkways) and would likely be open during a snowstorm. It was just a matter of assuring the roads were passable on I-66.

For that, I have Big Brother to thank. Fed up with the alarmist doom and gloom being spewed by TV anchors, I did my own investigating thanks to the magic of the WTOP Traffic Center (www.wtop.com/?nid=370) and its bevy of traffic cameras positioned along the DC Metro Area’s highways and byways. Watching from the cameras from I-66 near Ballston, I noted that: (1) yes, a few 4WD vehicles were out; (2) the road conditions were not ideal, but the snow appeared hard packed enough to make traction better than we faced going to McDonough in December; and (3) you could reasonably travel 20-30 MPH in low gear.

So off we went, first down the post-apocalyptic Route 110: twitpic.com/11p24r to the winter wonderland of Rosslyn (much tougher sledding off major routes—it was a bear) for an unsuccessful search for open garages. Then, down a lonely 4 mile stretch of I-66: twitpic.com/11p2rz (we neither passed a car nor were passed in the eastbound direction) to the Ballston exit twitpic.com/11p3kh . A little more rough sledding through North Arlington and we made it to the mall garage, which happily had left its gates open and wasn’t charging parking fees…undoubtedly because despite being nominally “open” the only place I confirmed had doors open in the mall that afternoon was the Chick-fil-A.

What a sight that greeted us at the Ballston Metro Station: twitpic.com/11p3kh : a full car of patrons, easily half of whom appeared to be headed downtown for the Georgetown game. Multiple conversations started among the fans and commuters about the game, and it reminded one of the packed Metro cars that often accompany a big Hoyas game.

The momentum only built as we rolled down the Orange line—more Hoya fans board in Court House, and then in Rosslyn where we were met by a full station including probably a few hundred Georgetown students who had walked across the Key Bridge in blizzard conditions. This was certainly more than we could have expected on a day like this.

And it only got better, as we ran into an arriving Red line train bound for Chinatown (always a bonus to nail a connection in a Metro station) and joined in a round of HOYA SAXA cheers that extended into the Chinatown Metro Station and up the snowy escalators.

This is what we found on our arrival: twitpic.com/11pdgd a winter wonderland in the middle of downtown Washington DC.

And, more to the point, not many fans: twitpic.com/11pfl4 with about 20 minutes to go before noon.

The ones that were there though—this was a hearty bunch. In fact, I think my favorite part of Saturday’s game was hearing the stories from Hoya fans about what they did in order to make the game. Neighbors of mine that stayed over with a friend in North Arlington Friday night. Students that found friends downtown with couches and floors to sleep on. Hoop Club members that abandoned their suburban Maryland homes (and likely snowed in streets) in favor of downtown hotels. Undergrads that had walked the full three miles from Georgetown to Chinatown in one-inch-an-hour snow and foot-plus accumulations through unplowed streets and snowed-over intersections.

What you had on Saturday was the rarest of crowds—not only did everyone WANT to be there, but they had gone through the greatest of lengths to get there.

And they kept coming, as I kept revising my attendance estimate on Twitter, from 3,500 to 7,000 to 9,000 to somewhere in the five digit range. We finished the day around 10,300 in the 4th worst snowstorm in the history of the District of Columbia.

It was a wild, spirited day inside the Verizon Center—from the steadily arriving crowd, to the over-boisterous reactions to the fan contests, to the concession lines that, owing to short staff, wound in almost a continuous loop around the concourse, to the general-admission style seating that gave many fans the best seat upgrade they’ll get all year.

Maybe the best game they’ll get all year too. How often to do you see the Hoyas hit 100 points in a Big East game? twitpic.com/11qfl7

I’ll recommend you to the Hoop Club’s Facebook album from the game: www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=156441&id=108495557266&l=905e517a06 where I will eventually post my pictures from Saturday, including the caravan that walked straight down the center of F Street after the game.

RECURRING YOUTUBE VIDEOS

Yacht Rock Song of the Week

Bertie Higgins, “Key Largo” (1982)


Michael Jackson Song of the Week

“Man in the Mirror” (1987)


(Random note: When I flew cross-country on business a few weeks ago, one of the in-flight movies was “This Is It”…what the heck?)

Montage!

The South Park “Asspen” Montage song:

Seems fitting.

David Hasselhoff singing “Hooked on a Feeling”



Next game up for me: Valentine’s Day Sunday in Piscataway as the Hoyas take on Rutgers. All that stands in between us is a road trip to Providence and…TWO SNOWSTORMS IN THE FORECAST??

As Rich Chvotkin would say…

[HoyaChris]

Great game/player analysis as always.

I think that the referees played a bigger part in the game than indicated in that they didn't automatically award defensive fouls to the Hoyas as the Nova guards barged into the lane in the first half. If John Cahill had been the ref, both Greg and Julian would have fouled out 10 minutes into the game.

Thank god for Metro and the Verizon center, as this could never have happened in Landover. The fans were amazing.

[SirSaxa]

Thanks FL... and for all the great photos too!

[SirSaxa]

bump