Brennan: Patrick Ewing, Georgetown have hit rock bottom, creating questions about his future
By Eamonn Brennan 3h ago
On Dec. 11, the last time Georgetown fans were happy, pregame formalities at Capital One Arena began with a tribute. Before the matter of a rivalry game with the old Syracuse enemy could be commenced, the Georgetown University athletics program was dedicating its basketball court to, who else, John Thompson Jr. His descendants and family members stood at half court, accepted some trinket, took a few photos, and were lovingly cheered off the floor. It was a nice little gesture to have them there — and the court dedication was, obviously, the right thing for Georgetown to do.
Of course the basketball court would be named after Thompson, the legendary coach who raised the program up from nothing, the societal hero who confronted institutional racism and pushed progress at every turn, the founding father in whose shadow all things Georgetown basketball must now forever exist. And what better time to unveil that dedication than just before a game against the Orange?
Except this wasn’t the actual unveiling. Indeed, the court dedication wasn’t remotely new. As Patrick Ewing noted in his postgame press conference — when reporters asked him about the pregame court ceremony, and what it meant, and what Thompson meant to him, in a way that conveyed that most people thought this was a totally new thing — the floor was actually named after Thompson at the very start of the 2020-21 season, a few months after Thompson’s passing in August of 2020. It had already been called John Thompson Jr. Court for an entire season.
It was a small thing. Most people there probably didn’t think too much about it. But it was of a piece with the rest of the day, when a tapped-out Syracuse, mediocre and adrift in the ACC, now fully in the decaying stages of the thousand-year Jim Boeheim reign, came to D.C. to face a Hoyas men’s hoops program running on little more than fumes. Fans got to enjoy a rivalry win, got to come downtown and get drunk and have fun and go through the giddy, spiteful motions, but no one was under any illusions about the quality of the basketball, or the trajectory of either team. Both were bad. Neither was going anywhere fast. The game itself was a pale imitation of what it once was, what it once represented. It was a hollow nostalgia ritual, nothing more.
And it made at least one neutral observer wonder: When will Georgetown basketball finally look to the future?
Two months later, perhaps the time is already now.
On Wednesday night, Georgetown officially hit rock bottom. The moment of deepest abyssal madness came in the second half at Wintrust Arena in Chicago, playing a DePaul team missing leading scorer and rebounder Javon Freeman-Liberty and senior wing Javon Johnson — a DePaul team that dressed just seven scholarship players for the game, a DePaul team that began its own Big East season 1-9. After Georgetown led by double digits in the first half, and after a 10-0 run early in the second half gave the Hoyas a 45-39 lead, the Blue Demons went on a 26-0 stretch. Yes, you read correctly: 26-0. From just under the 14:00 mark of the second half, to under five minutes left to play, Georgetown was beaten 36-4. When the run was over, DePaul led 75-49. DePaul’s David Jones had 22 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists — the first triple-double recorded in the history of DePaul men’s basketball.
The final score, 82-74, was deceptive; Georgetown made a few 3s late when the game was long since over. The 12th consecutive loss was the most disastrous performance of a disastrous season: The Hoyas left Chicago 6-16 overall, 0-11 in the Big East, ranked 204th in KenPom.com’s adjusted efficiency rankings. Georgetown is the worst defensive team in the Big East by a massive margin; the Hoyas allow 1.14 points per trip in league play, while the second-worst defensive team (DePaul) allows 1.06. Georgetown is the third-worst offensive team in the league. It has the conference’s worst effective field goal percentage, again by a sizable margin. Georgetown is shooting 39.8 percent from 2 against conference opponents. The worst 2-point shooting team in all of Division I, has shot 41.3 percent overall this season — if Georgetown’s Big East form represented their whole season, it would be the worst 2-point shooting team in the country. By, like, a lot.
After the game was over, Ewing, who is now 68-75 overall but 26-55 in Big East games, offered little in the way of concrete answers for his team’s struggles. “We just didn’t give the effort when the effort was needed to pull out a tough win,” Ewing said. “We need everybody to do their part if we are going to get out of this funk.” Sure. Then again, what is he supposed to say? Georgetown is very bad. He knows it. The world knows it. There’s not a whole lot else to add.
Still, the general change in tone is a far cry from last March, when Ewing was joyfully swaggering his way through four brilliant days at the Big East tournament. Madison Square Garden was “his house,” he said after his team upset Villanova; he even complained about being “accosted” by MSG security asking him to display his credential as he moved about the building. “Everybody in this building should know who the hell I am,” Ewing told reporters, not unreasonably. People loved it. Patrick Ewing was back! It helped that his team — suddenly possessed of their coach’s hard-edged fervor after a 9-12 regular season — played a lights-out defensive tournament, upsetting the favored Wildcats and holding Marquette, Seton Hall and Creighton to 155 points in 200 possessions. In Ewing’s fourth season, Georgetown had qualified for the NCAA Tournament. If you squinted hard, you could argue that this was progress.
It wasn’t, not really. The Hoyas bowed out of the tournament after one game (a 96-73 loss to Colorado). A few weeks later, star center Qudus Wahab entered the transfer portal and decamped to Maryland. Wahab had been great in the Big East. He was playing big minutes. He was learning, ostensibly, under one of the great big men of all time. And still he was lured away from the Hoyas by the promise of more success elsewhere.
That decision might have been the beginning of the end. In any case, it reinforced a persistent, crucial failing that has undermined Ewing’s tenure at every turn: the inability to retain talent. Ewing has recruited pretty well, all things considered; it’s just that many of his most talented players have too quickly left the program. In his second season, 2018-19, Ewing started three promising freshmen: James Akinjo, Mac McClung and Josh LeBlanc. The following year, that trio led a talented young team — with a rotation Ewing wanted to go as many as 10 or 11 deep — into Madison Square Garden in November, where the Hoyas throttled Texas and went toe-to-toe with Duke. A few weeks later, Akinjo had transferred to Arizona. He is now the starting point guard for the defending national champion Baylor Bears. LeBlanc and others were dismissed from the program for behavioral reasons around the same time. At the end of the season, after Ewing publicly suggested McClung would stay, McClung transferred to Texas Tech, where he led a very good Red Raiders team in scoring.
Roster turnover is hardly unusual in college hoops these days, but Ewing’s retention woes date to before players could transfer once and be immediately eligible, and in any case retention — and replacement through the portal — is now a part of every coach’s remit. Gone are the days of recruiting a player once and assuming he will stay until he graduates or goes pro. When Ewing has recruited quality players, they have routinely been picked off by savvier, currently higher-profile programs.
(There should be real concern about that happening again with this team — Aminu Mohammed, Georgetown’s top recruit in the 2021 incoming class, is having a difficult year scoring the ball, and looks immensely frustrated about it. But his rebounding ability at his size makes him borderline unique in college basketball. He has the tools to become a very good player, and one who offers things at his position that very few players do. Will Georgetown harness that potential? Or will it be realized elsewhere?)
