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This is not a history rewrite. I had a long conversation with Calvin Hill (Grant's father) on a Dallas Cowboys flight and we discussed his recruiting in detail. Calvin downplayed the Mary Fenlon story and said that in the end, Grant's decision came down to the comparison between JTJr. and Coach K. To paraphrase, Big John was right across the river and never showed up for a South Lakes home game, while Coach K always seemed to be at the games despite being several hundred miles away.

One can only imagine how amazing our late 1980s and early 1990s teams would have been if JTIII's father had put in one tenth of the effort of his son on the recruiting trail.

The 7.7 per game is from last year. This year he averaged 13.2. He seems to have had some injury issues and has not played since April 1st although his team is in the playoffs.

He is 23 and would be going into his third college season.

Watching all of the video clips, the thing that has me the most excited is Otto's ability to hit the 12-15 foot turnaround from the top of the lane, or in other words, the shot you need to have to destroy the Syracuse zone.

In my view Austin ranks somewhere between 14 and 21 on the list of greatest Hoyas of the Thompson Era - i.e. the period from 1972-3 to today). Based on accomplishment and contribution to team performance, I would have him clearly behind Patrick, Reggie, Sleepy, Zo, A.I., Jeff, John Duren, Craig Shelton, Derrick Jackson, Roy, David Wingate, and Charles Smith and Mike Sweetney in a group with Dikembe, Greg, Othella, Michael Jackson, Merlin Wilson, Victor Page and Mark Tillmon.

Hey, they shot 78% in the first half. They have to cool down in the second.


We've already beaten Providence three times. Making the Final Four will be easy.

The Hoyas have played VCU just once before. We did not win.

Before Hoya fans were traumatized by the mere thought of playing lower seeded teams in the NCAA (thank you Davidson and Ohio U), there was a time when we were traumatized by playing schools from southern Virginia in the postseason. Four times in a five year period from 1977 to 1981, the Hoyas lost post-season games to schools we had never heard of - to ODU and VCU in ECAC South NCAA play in games in 1977 and 1978, to Virginia Tech in the 1977 NIT (OK we had heard of Virginia Tech) and to James Madison in the 1981 NCAAs. By far the most traumatizing of these games was the loss to Virginia Commonwealth.

The Hoya team that met Virginia Commonwealth in the ECAC South play-in game was - up to that point - the best team in Georgetown basketball history. It featured three of the top ten players to have (still) ever played for Georgetown in senior guard Derrick Jackson who would leave the school as the team's leading career scorer and the superlative sophomore pair of John Duren and Craig Shelton. The Hoyas had been ranked in the AP top 20 for most of the back half of the season subsequent to beating Holy Cross and Alabama in the Holiday Festival at MSG.

The ECAC (East Coast Athletic Conference) was a not really a conference but a collection of independent East Coast teams that predated the formation of -among others - the Big East. The teams were split into - I think - three divisions and the South included teams such as Villanova, West Virginia, George Washington, Navy and ourselves. At the end of the season some sort of selection committee would choose four schools to play-in to the newly expanded NCAA Tournament. Georgetown won this play-in in 1975, beating West Virginia on the famous Derrick Jackson shot at the buzzer and archrival GW in 1976 while an injury-riddled 1977 Hoya team lost to ODU at McDonough.

1978 was my senior year and our confidence was high as we headed several hours early to get good seats at GW's new on campus arena. We spent most of the extended pre-game speculating as to how many years it would be before we got a new arena - confident guess at the time about five years - and it was maybe only ten minutes before game time that we noticed that Derrick Jackson was not on the floor. Our emotions spiralled down from confusion to concern to panic because Derrick had been the constant in our Georgetown watching lives, leading the team in scoring for the prior three and a half seasons. As it turns out, DJ was stricken with an ulcer attack and would never play another game for Georgetown. The team too seemed out of sorts, got down early and was never really in the game losing by a final score of 88-75.

Now as it turns out, VCU was much more talented than we could possibly have known in the pre-internet age. The team included future NBA star Gerald Henderson and future NBA player Edmund Sherod. But the killer for us was a freshman small forward named Danny Kottak who scored about 27 points playing on an injured ankle. I am still haunted by the memory of basket after basket going in off glass from 20 feet.

Georgetown too validated its talent level, recovering from the shock of losing Derrick to win two NIT road games without Derrick and lose in the NIT semifinal in the Garden on a half court heave back when the NCAA tournament was smaller and the NIT meant something.

I feel like Friday's VCU game has Kharmic significance. My memories of the first VCU game are particularly acute. One of our group was a prolific and talented photographer who spent the pre-game taking pictures of our favorite subject, ourselves, as we waited for the game in the stands. I found one of these pictures by chance a week or so ago before the bracket came out. Another friend, with whom I have shared almost every big Hoya moment of the past 35 years, bought a group of old Georgetown Today magazines on Ebay and discovered a chance picture of me taken during the NIT run. Most scarily, I spoke with John Duren before the Syracuse game and the topic was his recollection of the first VCU game and how strange it had seemed to be playing without DJ.

This is more than coincidence. On Friday night I will be at the game sitting next to the friend who took the pictures that night and the friend who found the old magazine. Friday night will hopefully bring a Georgetown team buoyed by the return of a critical player rather than the sudden loss of one. 33 years ago the universe broke my heart and Friday it gets to pay me back.

It is not generally box owners selling their tickets. Rather, those boxes are owned by companies who are primarily purchasing for the Caps and the Wizards. Often those boxes are empty for Hoya games. Usually those boxes are targeted by Syracuse alums who work at those firms and then filled up with their friends.

In some small way, you have to respect a firm that would reserve a box for the janitor.

Obviously one of the worst played Hoya games in a long, long time.

The game is almost irrelevant compared to Chris's hand.

I'm going to sit down and take a long look at the standings, but there is a reasonable chance that we are looking at playing on Tuesday if we can't win one of the next two.