When asked last Friday if his team was close to turning the corner, Georgetown coach Patrick Ewing replied, “We can’t make the same mistakes we’ve been making, but we’re still just right there. We need our best players to play better; we need to play with more energy and more effort. And if we do that, the wins will come.”
Easy to say, until you realize entering February that your team is winless on the road in conference play. And then you lose your top scorer on an already thin team (due to four players departing in December) to a foot injury? Trailing by 17 in the second half at ninth place St. John’s, the Hoyas turned their first small corner by rallying to beat the Red Storm 73-72. Georgetown is 3-6 halfway through Big East play, but there will be chances for this team to climb back into the race for the program’s first NCAA Tournament berth since 2015.
And while it won’t be getting any easier (two of their next three games are against ranked foes), they have a league road win. And confidence that they’re on the right track. We’ll find out throughout the month if there’s a train coming in their direction on that track.
Wow of the Week: George Washington (10-12, 4-5 Atlantic 10) may have lost at Richmond Saturday, but the Colonials won the week thanks to their 107-104 quadruple-overtime win over Davidson last Wednesday. Maceo Jack’s 35 points gave GW one heck of a win; and in the first year of head coach Jamion Christian this is exactly the type of victory one builds a program upon.
Player Spotlight: Anthony Cowan Jr. scored 19 of his career-high 31 points in Maryland’s 82-72 win over Iowa; an effort that helped the senior earn Big Ten Player of the Week honors. He’s started all 120 games in his career thus far and is now climbing among the all-time greats: His 1,716 points just pushed the guard past Walt Williams for 12th most in program history while his 528 assists displaces John Lucas from the top five. He’s bypassing All-ACC and All-American players, and most importantly for the Baltimore native, he’s winning.
League Look: The Big East has three teams ranked in the Top 20. Each lost last Saturday to unranked teams — at home. While No. 10 Villanova and No. 12 Seton Hall remain in the top two spots of the standings, No. 19 Butler’s recent slide (four losses in six games) has the Bulldogs tied for fifth in the conference (they own the tiebreaker with Providence). With surging Creighton (the No. 21 Bluejays have won four in a row) and Marquette also in position to play their way into the NCAA Tournament, one can see the tough task ahead of Georgetown in simply cracking the upper half. One can’t wait for UConn to join the conference next year.
Ballot Battles: Last week I was listed as having the third-most “extreme ballot” by collegepolltracker.com (they factor in how varied each voter’s ballot is from the consensus). This week? Tied for the second-lowest rated (yes, the fans can vote on our voting). But on the bright side, there were no such issues from Houston fans after the Cougars lost to Cincinnati. The biggest variance on my ballot this week was having No. 9 Maryland 15th — Coach Mark Turgeon mentioned Monday that even he was surprised at how far his team had shot up both polls. I did have five schools ranked that didn’t receive enough points to be in the Top 25: Northern Iowa, Rhode Island, Tulsa, Stephen F. Austin, and Bowling Green. With the exception of URI who has to deal with a top ten team in Dayton, each is atop their respective conference at this time.
This Week’s Starting Five:
Tuesday — No. 9 Maryland vs. Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights may have dipped out of the Top 25, but the Scarlet Knights have won more than 15 games for the first time since the 2005-06 season. They bring a defense that ranks second in the Big Ten and boast a guard named Ron Harper Jr. who is doing for Rutgers what his father did for Miami (Ohio) in the 1980s.
Wednesday — American at Navy. The two schools are tied with Army for fourth place in the Patriot League, and the Midshipmen are the classic bad offense, good defense team: they rank last in the league in scoring, field goal percentage as well as three-point shooting while leading the league in scoring defense, defending the three and rebounding margin. Come for the stats, stay for the guard play: AU’s Sa’eed Nelson (17.1 points per game) and USNA’s Cam Davis (17.0) are third and fourth in the conference in scoring.
Also Wednesday — Georgetown vs. No. 12 Seton Hall. The first test for the suddenly rejuvenated Hoyas is a hurting Pirates team in more ways than one: Hall lost for the first time since December 14 last Saturday to Xavier, and point guard Quincy McKnight is day to day with a knee injury suffered in that game. But they still have the Big East’s second-leading scorer in Myles Powell. And who knows if Mac McClung will be back from the foot injury that kept the Hoyas high-scoring guard out of Sunday’s game at St. John’s?
Friday — VCU vs. Davidson. The Rams are 0-3 against Atlantic 10-leading Dayton and second place Rhode Island, but have beaten everybody else since league play began by double-digits. The Wildcats are just as hot, having surged up the standings with four double-digit wins in its last five games, the lone exception being last week’s marathon loss at George Washington. But it’s not just VCU’s pressure defense (A-10 best in steals and turnover margin) they’ll have to worry about: Nah’Shon Hyland leads the conference in three-point shooting (44.1% from outside the arc).
Saturday — Virginia at No. 5 Louisville. The Cavaliers are on the fringe of NCAA contention thanks to an elite defense (the 50.7 points per game allowed the lowest in Division I) and a subpar offense (the 56.3 points per game ranks 350th out of 353 schools). The Cardinals will either be red-hot thanks to an eight game winning streak or red-hot after a loss to Wake Forest. Either way, this is UVa’s chance for a signature win and a corresponding move up the ACC standings while inching closer to a berth in the Big Dance.
