credit to Eamonn Brennan:
‘In the struggle’: Georgetown’s season reaches a critical period
By Eamonn Brennan 1h ago
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The question was innocuous enough. On Thursday’s Big East teleconference, Patrick Ewing was asked to identify some of the better defenders in the conference, players who stuck out to him as being particularly able stoppers in 2019-20. Ewing’s answer was innocuous enough, too, except for what it revealed about where the Hoyas are, and Ewing’s focus therein. “It’s really hard to focus on that when you’re in the heat of the battle,” Ewing said. “There’s a lot of guys in the league that are very good defenders. We just played one of those teams last night. But when you’re in the struggle, I guess, or the battle, it’s hard to single out.”
It was a polite way of saying: I don’t have time for this. Ewing is far too focused on his own team — far too deep in the struggle, so to speak — to spend much time thinking about much of anything else.
Understandably so. After Wednesday night’s loss at Xavier, Georgetown has officially reached a critical juncture of its 2019-20 season, one that has had more than its fair share of critical junctures already. The Hoyas are 2-5 in the Big East. That start has turned a team that arrived at league play with a 10-3 mark and six straight wins in its rearview mirror, one that looked revitalized by its shorter and more cohesive post-personnel-exodus seven-man rotation, into one that will surely be relieved not to be playing this weekend. The break gives Georgetown the chance to take a deep breath and reassess before one of its most important games of the season: A home date on Tuesday against No. 13 Butler.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of that game for Georgetown’s NCAA Tournament chances, but then again it was just as hard to do so Wednesday night in Cincinnati. Home wins, even over teams with elite NET ratings (Butler’s is No. 9 as of this writing), are great and all, but road wins over fellow bubble teams are awfully helpful too. Instead, Georgetown got what Xavier coach Travis Steele — who adjusted his team’s starting lineup based on practice stats after XU’s own struggles in previous weeks — called the “smashmouth” version of his team. The result was a devastating defensive performance that limited Georgetown center Omer Yurtseven, averaging 17 and 10 coming in, to six points (on nine shots) and just two rebounds, both season lows.
Thanks to foul trouble foisted upon him by a succession of hard-working Xavier big men, Yurtseven played just 21 minutes. His fellow star, guard Mac McClung, was on the floor for 33 and scored 19, but he needed 19 shots to get there and generally struggled in the teeth of the Musketeers’ physical D. Even in the moments when Georgetown did find open looks, a 4-of-18 performance from 3 doomed it. Senior guard Jagan Mosely arrived in Cincinnati on Wednesday carrying the nation’s highest true shooting percentage, thanks (in large part) to his knack for spacing his way to open corner 3s. The Hoyas got Mosely at least three wide-open looks from the corner in quasi-transition. He missed them all. On the other end, the Hoyas gave up 16 offensive rebounds, allowing Xavier to retrieve a second offensive chance on 34 percent of available opportunities. That statistic — and what it said about Georgetown’s ability to adjust to hard-nosed, physical teams — drew most of Ewing’s ire after the game.
In fact, the specific details of Wednesday night’s defeat were almost beside the point. Deceptive, even. Xavier finished just shy of a point-per-possession; Georgetown scored 57 in 68. This is not how things usually go for the Hoyas. This is, generally speaking, a very good offensive team, one with an efficient post-up big, an aggressive lead-scoring guard in McClung, one that pushes the pace and rebounds its own misses well and stretches the floor in multiple directions.
The problem, of course, is defense.
More often than not, Georgetown games follow the pattern of last week’s back-to-back home contests: an 83-80 win over Creighton, an 84-80 loss to Marquette. In both games, Georgetown scored efficiently and allowed its opponents to do the same, and in one of those games the Hoyas ended a bucket ahead and in the other Markus Howard was on the floor, and that was that.
This is, needless to say, not a reliable formula for success, and one that has proven especially brittle on the road, where the Hoyas are 0-4 in Big East play, and where they’ve been outscored 300-245 in 278 possessions.
Thanks primarily to their work on the road, and their inability to string stops together, the Hoyas are coming up on the halfway mark of their conference season ranked 10th in points allowed per possession, giving up 1.073. They’re just sixth on the offensive end, at 100.2 — decent, and probably better than that number, but in a league with plenty of great offense, hardly a standout outfit. The difference is a minus-.07 efficiency margin. That 2-5 record is no fluke. Not that anyone would claim otherwise.
“Take away last night,” Ewing said Thursday, “and for the most part, we can score with anyone in the country. Our Achilles heel is that we’re not very good defensively right now, in my opinion. We have to continue to get better. If you look at the teams that win, yeah, you also have to be able to score, but if you can’t get stops, or two, three, four, five stops in a row, it’s going to be tough to win.”
This is all relatively straightforward stuff, but as the Big East season flies by and January’s end begins, it is where Georgetown nonetheless finds itself. The Hoyas have been through a lot already, from the tactical disagreements and dissatisfactions that led to the transfer of would-be star point guard James Akinjo, to the off-court allegations that presaged the loss of three more players (Josh LeBlanc, Myron Gardner and Galen Alexander). Ewing entered the season believing he would be able to play 11 capable pieces and have enough roster depth and matchup flexibility to both improve situationally, game by game, and holistically too. There was a reason Georgetown entered the year with clear and totally viable NCAA Tournament expectations.
Instead, Georgetown has just seven players. Instead, the improvements this team needs to see — better defense and better performances on the road, period — will have to come from within. Increasingly, it will have to come soon, lest those tournament hopes begin to truly slip.
The Hoyas have 11 regular-season games remaining. If they win seven, they would finish 9-9 in Big East play. The league carries the type of strength to give a .500 team a reasonable expectation of making the tournament; seven wins for Georgetown the rest of the way would include at least a couple of victories over heavy hitters in Quadrant 1 of the NCAA Tournament selection committee’s team sheets. But seven wins is a lot — especially for a team with just two. Five more wins might carry a similar impact, depending on the quality of the victories. (Butler? Seton Hall? Villanova? Butler away?) That is what KenPom.com projects Georgetown to finish: 7-11 in the Big East, 17-14 overall. Is that a tournament team? Maybe … but probably not.
So, yes, it’s already that time. Does Georgetown have to beat Butler on Tuesday? Did it have to beat Xavier on Wednesday? These are questions already worth asking. It’s only Jan. 24, and the Hoyas don’t play for five more days, but Ewing will already be asking himself these questions, and plenty more. Of course, he doesn’t have time to think about other teams. He’s got plenty to think about with his own.
‘In the struggle’: Georgetown’s season reaches a critical period
By Eamonn Brennan 1h ago
The question was innocuous enough. On Thursday’s Big East teleconference, Patrick Ewing was asked to identify some of the better defenders in the conference, players who stuck out to him as being particularly able stoppers in 2019-20. Ewing’s answer was innocuous enough, too, except for what it revealed about where the Hoyas are, and Ewing’s focus therein. “It’s really hard to focus on that when you’re in the heat of the battle,” Ewing said. “There’s a lot of guys in the league that are very good defenders. We just played one of those teams last night. But when you’re in the struggle, I guess, or the battle, it’s hard to single out.”
It was a polite way of saying: I don’t have time for this. Ewing is far too focused on his own team — far too deep in the struggle, so to speak — to spend much time thinking about much of anything else.
Understandably so. After Wednesday night’s loss at Xavier, Georgetown has officially reached a critical juncture of its 2019-20 season, one that has had more than its fair share of critical junctures already. The Hoyas are 2-5 in the Big East. That start has turned a team that arrived at league play with a 10-3 mark and six straight wins in its rearview mirror, one that looked revitalized by its shorter and more cohesive post-personnel-exodus seven-man rotation, into one that will surely be relieved not to be playing this weekend. The break gives Georgetown the chance to take a deep breath and reassess before one of its most important games of the season: A home date on Tuesday against No. 13 Butler.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of that game for Georgetown’s NCAA Tournament chances, but then again it was just as hard to do so Wednesday night in Cincinnati. Home wins, even over teams with elite NET ratings (Butler’s is No. 9 as of this writing), are great and all, but road wins over fellow bubble teams are awfully helpful too. Instead, Georgetown got what Xavier coach Travis Steele — who adjusted his team’s starting lineup based on practice stats after XU’s own struggles in previous weeks — called the “smashmouth” version of his team. The result was a devastating defensive performance that limited Georgetown center Omer Yurtseven, averaging 17 and 10 coming in, to six points (on nine shots) and just two rebounds, both season lows.
Thanks to foul trouble foisted upon him by a succession of hard-working Xavier big men, Yurtseven played just 21 minutes. His fellow star, guard Mac McClung, was on the floor for 33 and scored 19, but he needed 19 shots to get there and generally struggled in the teeth of the Musketeers’ physical D. Even in the moments when Georgetown did find open looks, a 4-of-18 performance from 3 doomed it. Senior guard Jagan Mosely arrived in Cincinnati on Wednesday carrying the nation’s highest true shooting percentage, thanks (in large part) to his knack for spacing his way to open corner 3s. The Hoyas got Mosely at least three wide-open looks from the corner in quasi-transition. He missed them all. On the other end, the Hoyas gave up 16 offensive rebounds, allowing Xavier to retrieve a second offensive chance on 34 percent of available opportunities. That statistic — and what it said about Georgetown’s ability to adjust to hard-nosed, physical teams — drew most of Ewing’s ire after the game.
In fact, the specific details of Wednesday night’s defeat were almost beside the point. Deceptive, even. Xavier finished just shy of a point-per-possession; Georgetown scored 57 in 68. This is not how things usually go for the Hoyas. This is, generally speaking, a very good offensive team, one with an efficient post-up big, an aggressive lead-scoring guard in McClung, one that pushes the pace and rebounds its own misses well and stretches the floor in multiple directions.
The problem, of course, is defense.
More often than not, Georgetown games follow the pattern of last week’s back-to-back home contests: an 83-80 win over Creighton, an 84-80 loss to Marquette. In both games, Georgetown scored efficiently and allowed its opponents to do the same, and in one of those games the Hoyas ended a bucket ahead and in the other Markus Howard was on the floor, and that was that.
This is, needless to say, not a reliable formula for success, and one that has proven especially brittle on the road, where the Hoyas are 0-4 in Big East play, and where they’ve been outscored 300-245 in 278 possessions.
Thanks primarily to their work on the road, and their inability to string stops together, the Hoyas are coming up on the halfway mark of their conference season ranked 10th in points allowed per possession, giving up 1.073. They’re just sixth on the offensive end, at 100.2 — decent, and probably better than that number, but in a league with plenty of great offense, hardly a standout outfit. The difference is a minus-.07 efficiency margin. That 2-5 record is no fluke. Not that anyone would claim otherwise.
“Take away last night,” Ewing said Thursday, “and for the most part, we can score with anyone in the country. Our Achilles heel is that we’re not very good defensively right now, in my opinion. We have to continue to get better. If you look at the teams that win, yeah, you also have to be able to score, but if you can’t get stops, or two, three, four, five stops in a row, it’s going to be tough to win.”
This is all relatively straightforward stuff, but as the Big East season flies by and January’s end begins, it is where Georgetown nonetheless finds itself. The Hoyas have been through a lot already, from the tactical disagreements and dissatisfactions that led to the transfer of would-be star point guard James Akinjo, to the off-court allegations that presaged the loss of three more players (Josh LeBlanc, Myron Gardner and Galen Alexander). Ewing entered the season believing he would be able to play 11 capable pieces and have enough roster depth and matchup flexibility to both improve situationally, game by game, and holistically too. There was a reason Georgetown entered the year with clear and totally viable NCAA Tournament expectations.
Instead, Georgetown has just seven players. Instead, the improvements this team needs to see — better defense and better performances on the road, period — will have to come from within. Increasingly, it will have to come soon, lest those tournament hopes begin to truly slip.
The Hoyas have 11 regular-season games remaining. If they win seven, they would finish 9-9 in Big East play. The league carries the type of strength to give a .500 team a reasonable expectation of making the tournament; seven wins for Georgetown the rest of the way would include at least a couple of victories over heavy hitters in Quadrant 1 of the NCAA Tournament selection committee’s team sheets. But seven wins is a lot — especially for a team with just two. Five more wins might carry a similar impact, depending on the quality of the victories. (Butler? Seton Hall? Villanova? Butler away?) That is what KenPom.com projects Georgetown to finish: 7-11 in the Big East, 17-14 overall. Is that a tournament team? Maybe … but probably not.
So, yes, it’s already that time. Does Georgetown have to beat Butler on Tuesday? Did it have to beat Xavier on Wednesday? These are questions already worth asking. It’s only Jan. 24, and the Hoyas don’t play for five more days, but Ewing will already be asking himself these questions, and plenty more. Of course, he doesn’t have time to think about other teams. He’s got plenty to think about with his own.