The Athletic: Article on Coaching Candidates
- By lpucci
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Georgetown coaching candidates: Could Rick Pitino or Kevin Keatts replace Patrick Ewing?
By Brian Hamilton
2h ago
27
Georgetown, understandably, has been beholden to its own history. It is a great history. It is a groundbreaking history. It is a history of helping to define men’s college basketball for a very long time. It does not have to forget that history.
It does have to prioritize the future. That necessarily means a reboot, a slate wiped clean and then wiped clean again, with zero sentiment involved. Patrick Ewing should be the last physical link to John Thompson II and the Georgetown men’s hoops coach chair, after his dismissal Thursday. Change is long past due, but it’s due nonetheless.
This is a delicate thing. Might even require some institutional courage. But the freefall in on-court results should make it an easy enough sell for athletic director Lee Reed and the rest of the school’s decision-makers. After all, Big John would want Georgetown to win. And win big. The only way it can achieve that is with a clear-eyed pursuit of something new.
Job evaluation
Georgetown basketball has championship potential. The recent results don’t change that. It is the sport at the core of the school’s athletic identity. The top priority. Georgetown reported north of $14 million in men’s basketball expenses in 2019-20, according to U.S. Department of Education figures. It’s not a spare-no-expense number in the same spending stratosphere of Kentucky … but it’s $2 million more than North Carolina spent in the same period. The want-to is there.The local recruiting turf teems with talent, which mitigates whatever devaluation of the brand has occurred lately; there are plenty of good players who know about Georgetown men’s basketball. And if the program can build some momentum, there’s at least the possibility it can renew its visibility on a national level. Which means, in theory, a coach can pursue whoever he wants. It’s the ideal scenario, yes, and a long way off from where Georgetown is now. But it’s plausible.
GO DEEPER
Patrick Ewing won't say it. Neither will Georgetown. But this feels like the end
The advantages are real. How connected and competent the leadership is – well, that’s something any candidate will have to assess. But if Reed is leading the charge on the hire and has the latitude to do a proper reboot, then alignment should work itself out. Anyone he hires will understand it’s a partnership.
It’s a very, very large hole Georgetown has dug itself. That is no small problem in a Big East that continues to add high-quality coaches. But it has the means to climb out.
Kevin Keatts has had a breakout season at NC State. (Rich Barnes / USA Today)
Call list
(in alphabetical order)Kevin Keatts, NC State head coach. This would be both sides striking at the right time, with Keatts winning his way off the hot seat in Raleigh and Georgetown capitalizing on a coach who just presided over a 12-win improvement season-to-season. The school would have to be ready to go well north of $3 million per year to make it happen.
Matt Langel, Colgate head coach. It would be a fairly aggressive swing and swerve, but not without merit. It’ll be four straight NCAA Tournament appearances for Colgate – in years in which the tournament was actually played – and it’s about as fresh a set of eyes as you can imagine. Plus, Langel has beaten Syracuse two years running. That still has to count for something at Georgetown.
Rick Pitino, Iona head coach. There is no doubt Pitino wants one more crack at a big job. There is no doubt he would consider Georgetown a big job. Whether Georgetown sees it as a fit, on multiple levels, is another thing. But the wins would follow. They always do.
Micah Shrewsberry, Penn State head coach. The Nittany Lions have been a bit mercurial in Shrewsberry’s second year, but they may well reach the NCAA Tournament regardless. He has the player-development mindset that would fit the place well. Would he leave a Big Ten job for Georgetown? You’d think, given the relative ceilings of both programs, he’d leave this Big Ten job for Georgetown.
Rodney Terry, Texas acting head coach. He earned Big 12 Coach of the Year honors, but it’s still not clear that he’ll earn the permanent job. There’s plenty of chatter out there about Chris Del Conte thinking bigger. But a defensive-minded coach who’s obsessed with recruiting? That could play here.
The hire is…
Do it, Georgetown. Shake up the world. Hire Rick Pitino.The Athletic: Feels like the end for Ewing (duh)
- By lpucci
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Georgetown, Patrick Ewing and one more demoralizing loss in an era of them
By Brian Hamilton
Mar 8, 2023
61
NEW YORK — Patrick Ewing’s chair is enormous. Throne-like. There it is, three in from the end of the Georgetown bench, twice as tall as the standard folding chairs flanking it at Madison Square Garden. A big old “G” logo on the seatback. It’s practical because Ewing would look like a parent at a preschool teacher conference in any other spot. It’s also apt, in theory, befitting an occupant who was nobility at his school and in this building. Which is why that big chair looks so lonely on this Wednesday in March.
This should be the last sad night for Ewing and his Hoyas, assuming anyone cares. One final indignity by way of an 80-48 loss to Villanova at the Big East tournament, assuming people at the school are out of sentiment. Georgetown deserves a new Georgetown. The league whose soul Georgetown helped create definitely would love a new Georgetown. Nothing about what happened in one game was going to change that. But this result, in this venue, wraps it.
Time to cut a cord 50 years long.
“No thoughts about my future,” Ewing said late Wednesday before a fit of deep coughs interrupted him. “The two seasons have been rough. I’m disappointed in the outcome of the last two years. My future is in the hands of our president, our athletic director and the board of trustees.”
Considering what John Thompson II built, and what it meant, maybe a quarter-century of latitude from Craig Esherick to John Thompson III to Ewing is fair enough. But it is enough. The man’s presence won’t ever go away but his ghost can’t dictate what happens from here. The next person to run this program can’t be beholden to anything but Big John’s principles. That person has to be new in every other way.
This school has to — has to — let someone else create a Georgetown basketball identity.
It has to do things differently, and everyone knows it. The days of insulation and entitlement must end. Reboot it all. Georgetown has to start acting like a functional, modern college basketball program. Like the kind of program it aspires to be. Allow the entire breadth of the athletic department’s staff to help. Use athletic director Lee Reed — who is well-respected in the league, whatever Georgetown faithful think of him — as an actual resource. Open all the doors. Let the air in. It’s what elite programs do.
Every arrow fired in the general direction of Georgetown basketball has been earned. Well earned. No program, let alone one with this much potential, goes this bad without bad management and at least a minimal dose of toxic culture.
Thirteen wins, total, in two years. Two Big East wins, total, in that span. The worst seasons since a time before Big John came around.
If the punchline fits, wear it.
There’s also a sting to this, though, isn’t there? The way a lidocaine shot burns before everything goes numb. The best possible thing for Georgetown, not to mention the best possible thing for the Big East, is the immediate and unceremonious departure of an icon for both. A final verdict driven home in Madison Square Garden, the grounds on which he grew the legend. A towering figure, crumbling down, on this floor of all floors.
It’s a cheerless picture.
But it’s all necessary, and everyone knew it as the clock passed 10 p.m. here Wednesday.
Two hours earlier, Ewing followed his team to the floor for an evening with some promise. Smiling fans lining the tunnel had their smartphone cameras at the ready. A pack of professional photogs tracked Ewing through the obligatory pregame handshakes with first-year Nova coach Kyle Neptune and the rest of Villanova’s staff. As Georgetown’s coach waited for his team to finish warmups and return to the bench, holding out his right fist to dap each and every one of them, he even had a smile on his face.
Ewing paced up and down the sideline. He reminded his players to set good screens. He told sophomore Bradley Ezewiro, at one point, to “Wake up!” Mostly, though, he was stoic. Unreadable. One foul call late in the first half stirred him, but even when the Hoyas botched execution on the last shot of the first half, the head coach was a blank slate.
Twas ever thus, all night, even as Villanova’s lead crept closer and closer to 30, even as guys like Brendan Hausen — he of the three points per game scoring average — sliced through the defense and finished at the rim for the Wildcats, even when it got bad enough that Neptune sent sophomore Collin O’Toole to the scorer’s table to check-in. O’Toole was a non-roster practice player last season. On Wednesday, he played three minutes of a Big East tournament game against Georgetown.
Patrick Ewing won two Big East games in the last two seasons combined. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
At the end, Ewing stood on the sideline, motionless and inscrutable, while Villanova held the ball until the final horn. A man waiting for time to run out.
“Hey, look,” Ewing said a few minutes later, when asked if he wanted to return as coach in 2023-24. “I am proud of being a Georgetown Hoya. This institution has been great to me over many years. I’d be honored to come back as coach here. That’s it.”
He stood up and wound through the Madison Square Garden halls until he reached the locker room, disappearing inside while the Georgetown traveling party lingered outside. Reed, who’s been in the athletic director’s chair since 2010, was among them. He did not offer anything in the way of timelines or thought processes. “We just got through a tough game tonight, and all my thoughts right now are with those young men in that locker room,” Reed said.
Ten minutes after that, the Georgetown Hoyas filed out, one by one.
Toward the end of the line, Ewing emerged through the door wearing a ski cap, a winter coat and a backpack. In the short walk between the locker room and a freight elevator ride down, he gave out hugs, a couple of fist-bumps and pointed at Big East officials who shouted their well-wishes and goodbyes.
He boarded the elevator for one more ride in a building that made him famous, an arena he arguably helped make more famous than it already was, and checked his phone. At 10:42 p.m., the door shut, and Patrick Ewing was nowhere to be seen.
mr magoo is gone
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