njhoya78
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
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Post by njhoya78 on Mar 19, 2014 10:08:34 GMT -5
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Jack
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Post by Jack on Mar 19, 2014 10:52:46 GMT -5
That was great, thanks for pointing it out. Kit Mueller and the other Princeton players are very gracious in their memories. I was at that game, age 11, wearing my lucky Charles Smith blue face paint goatee, and I felt like I was going to throw up in the final minutes. What isn't mentioned (other than to note his mere 4 points) is that the Big East POY effectively disappeared there, too. I recall him being sick, but maybe that is just a memory that "he must be sick" to be so ineffective.
The point that Georgetown never really recovered in losing to Duke in 1989 is made at the end, and the Princeton players seemed to believe that Georgetown had the best team in the country prior to that game (as did I, though I am not sure how much you trust the 11 year old redhead with a blue goatee). Soon after that game they couldn't stop Christian Laettner, and from then on Duke overtook Georgetown as the preeminent east coast private college in the basketball world. Maybe that day was inevitable, but you do wonder what might have been had Georgetown made it to the Final 4 - I am certain they could have beaten Seton Hall and Michigan that year.
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DanMcQ
Moderator 
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Post by DanMcQ on Mar 19, 2014 10:55:45 GMT -5
I suffered through that amazing roller coaster ride at the Civic Center.
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Elvado
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
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Post by Elvado on Mar 19, 2014 11:07:19 GMT -5
What GU never recovered from was Phil Henderson's cram in Alonzo's face.
Two programs changed forever that day on that slam.
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GPHoya
Bulldog (over 250 posts)
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Post by GPHoya on Mar 19, 2014 14:20:25 GMT -5
I was there with Jack and his mother and grandparents feeling personally responsible to all of them for putting them through this torture. My heart races just rereading the account and watching the block by Mourning (it was defintely a block).
The week before I had watched us roll through the Big East Tournament with more domination than we displayed in any of our other seven tourney wins (I have been fortunate to have seen them all). We had discovered what Dikembe could do with Alonzo and Bobby Winston had supplied some needed glue. After Princeton, our win over Laphonso Ellis's ND team was shaky and Charles Smith spiked a high fever the next weekend when we squeeked by Chris Corchiani's excellent NC State team on Good Friday. I couldn't wait for midnight to have the drink I had refrained from for the sake of superstition and ritual more than faith.
By the time Easter Sunday rolled around against Duke, doubt had replaced domination and the world changed as the competitive fire went out in JT's belly and the great decade of the 80's ended for Georgetown basketball.
Curse that Princeton offense.
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Post by FrazierFanatic on Mar 19, 2014 14:28:40 GMT -5
Raise your hand if you think Mueller's admission that there was no foul will be the end of BUM and others screeching about Mourning getting away with fouling on the final shot.
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Post by JohnnyJones on Mar 19, 2014 14:34:19 GMT -5
I was there with Jack and his mother and grandparents feeling personally responsible to all of them for putting them through this torture. My heart races just rereading the account and watching the block by Mourning (it was defintely a block). The week before I had watched us roll through the Big East Tournament with more domination than we displayed in any of our other seven tourney wins (I have been fortunate to have seen them all). We had discovered what Dikembe could do with Alonzo and Bobby Winston had supplied some needed glue. After Princeton, our win over Laphonso Ellis's ND team was shaky and Charles Smith spiked a high fever the next weekend when we squeeked by Chris Corchiani's excellent NC State team on Good Friday. I couldn't wait for midnight to have the drink I had refrained from for the sake of superstition and ritual more than faith. By the time Easter Sunday rolled around against Duke, doubt had replaced domination and the world changed as the competitive fire went out in JT's belly and the great decade of the 80's ended for Georgetown basketball. Curse that Princeton offense. I watched that game as a freshman on the big screen they had set up in McDonough - something I thought about last night while watching the game from Section 115 with my 9 year old son. For anyone who wants to watch really, really good Georgetown basketball - pull up the tapes of all 3 '89 BET games as GPHoya notes. And don't let the final score of the finals against SU fool you - we dominated them just like we had dominated BC (and Dana Barros) and Pitt the two days before. One of the most memorable weekends (if not the most memorable) of my Georgetown years. |
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Elvado
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Post by Elvado on Mar 19, 2014 14:48:57 GMT -5
Including the last seconds of the Syracuse game where your namesake hit the underside of the rim with a slam attempt...
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Post by FrazierFanatic on Mar 19, 2014 14:53:28 GMT -5
Including the last seconds of the Syracuse game where your namesake hit the underside of the rim with a slam attempt... Sounds like he would fit right in with the 2013-2014 squad. |
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hoyarooter
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
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Post by hoyarooter on Mar 19, 2014 19:33:02 GMT -5
That was great, thanks for pointing it out. Kit Mueller and the other Princeton players are very gracious in their memories. I was at that game, age 11, wearing my lucky Charles Smith blue face paint goatee, and I felt like I was going to throw up in the final minutes. What isn't mentioned (other than to note his mere 4 points) is that the Big East POY effectively disappeared there, too. I recall him being sick, but maybe that is just a memory that "he must be sick" to be so ineffective. The point that Georgetown never really recovered in losing to Duke in 1989 is made at the end, and the Princeton players seemed to believe that Georgetown had the best team in the country prior to that game (as did I, though I am not sure how much you trust the 11 year old redhead with a blue goatee). Soon after that game they couldn't stop Christian Laettner, and from then on Duke overtook Georgetown as the preeminent east coast private college in the basketball world. Maybe that day was inevitable, but you do wonder what might have been had Georgetown made it to the Final 4 - I am certain they could have beaten Seton Hall and Michigan that year. Jack, I was a 38 year old "boy" watching that game on TV, and I too felt like throwing up, at least a dozen times. That was a season where there was no truly dominant team. But when we ran roughshod through the Big East Tournament, I thought we had peaked at the right time, and figured to have a better chance than most to win the national title. But we never seemed to have our mojo during the NCAA tournament - every game was a struggle, for a variety of reasons. It was therefore no great shock to me that we lost to Duke. |
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Post by JohnnyJones on Mar 19, 2014 20:29:20 GMT -5
Including the last seconds of the Syracuse game where your namesake hit the underside of the rim with a slam attempt... You have an incredible memory. We have joked for 25 years how that failure to put such a finishing touch on that game killed our momentum in the days that followed. |
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hoyaloya
Century (over 100 posts)
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Post by hoyaloya on Mar 20, 2014 1:09:04 GMT -5
What the article does not mention is what has puzzled me for 25 years - Dikembe never got in the game! As GP Hoya noted, Dikembe had come on strong at the end of the year. Yet Big John did not play him against Princeton whose tallest player was 6'7". I recollect some reporter asking Mutombo about it and Dikembe jokingly replying something like "I guess Coach was afraid some of those little guys would get hurt running into my knees." Mutombo got little playing time in the remaining 3 games against ND and NC St and Duke. I never understood why.
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njhoya78
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Post by njhoya78 on Mar 20, 2014 9:44:29 GMT -5
That was the only game in which Mutombo did not play that season.
Interesting stat. . .and a measure of a drop-off in the front court. In the 1988-1989 season, the Hoyas had 309 blocked shots in 34 games; Mourning led with 169 and Mutombo had 75. This season's Hoyas, through 32 games, have a total of 140 blocks. That's right. . .Mourning by himself had more blocks than the entire squad does this season.
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HoyaChris
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Post by HoyaChris on Mar 20, 2014 10:44:11 GMT -5
That was the only game in which Mutombo did not play that season. Interesting stat. . .and a measure of a drop-off in the front court. In the 1988-1989 season, the Hoyas had 309 blocked shots in 34 games; Mourning led with 169 and Mutombo had 75. This season's Hoyas, through 32 games, have a total of 140 blocks. That's right. . .Mourning by himself had more blocks than the entire squad does this season. This stat is more of a tribute to Alonzo who set an NCAA freshman record in the 1988-9 season. Surprisingly, this years Hoyas rank 42nd in the percentage of opponents' shots blocked. |
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hoyainspirit
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
When life puts that voodoo on me, music is my gris-gris.
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Post by hoyainspirit on Mar 20, 2014 12:10:03 GMT -5
To his credit, Hopkins has done a nice job blocking shots this year.
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