The Hoyas’ victory against Louisville last night may become their most important victory of the season. A win on the road, toppling the No. 4 team in the country, now gives Georgetown four quality victories in twelve games; the others include a win against then-No. 12 Alabama on the road and a pair of victories over Memphis. Those wins will be crucial when NCAA seeding comes around, but the Hoyas aren’t concerned about that just yet.

“We are one game into league play. We aren’t worrying about validation right now,” Head Coach John Thompson III said after the game. “We just want to try to accumulate wins.”

Nevertheless, it’s a great start to conference play for a young team, who gainedvaluable experience and built confidence in another difficult road environment. Thompson III is now 7-1 in Big East openers, and seniors Jason Clark and Henry Sims are 42-5 in November and December, including a 9-3 mark against Top-20 teams.

However, Big East play signals the start of a slow grind, more than two months of brutal play in a conference that currently boasts the No. 1 team in the nation and four more in the top 13. The Blue and Gray still have a lot of work to do, starting with protecting their late-game leads better.

The Hoyas have been shaky down the stretch before, blowing a nine-point lead with less than three minutes remaining against Alabama. This time, after building an 11-point lead with four minutes to play, Georgetown allowed junior guard Peyton Siva to lead a game-tying 11-0 Louisville charge that took just over two minutes.

“We made a couple of bad decisions with the shots we took. I am probably feeling like those are turnovers. You play Louisville and they turn you over,” Thompson III said. “That is what they are very good at. They are good at helping each other and on ball defending. You always have to be strong with the ball and you have to always be thinking with an offensive perspective. You have to think about your teammates. You can’t stand around and watch the ball.”

Thankfully, the Hoyas didn’t let the Cardinals complete the miracle comeback. After Sims missed a layup, freshman Otto Porter made two game-saving plays. The lanky forward tipped in Sims’ miss to put the Hoyas back on top before grabbing the defensive rebound on Louisville sophomore guard Russell Smith’s miss with 1:25 remaining. Sims was fouled and hit both free throws to give the Hoyas a four-point cushion.

“Otto Porter is really a good freshman. He had 14 rebounds in the game and he took over the game rebounding-wise,” Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino said.

Porter was the all-around star of the game, but sophomore point guard Markel Starks and freshman guard Jabril Trawick helped Porter and the Hoyas survive mediocre games from Sims, Clark and junior forward Hollis Thompson. The three upperclassmen, who collectively average 43 points per game, combined for just 24 against Louisville’s swarming defense. Instead, the younger trio of Starks, Porter and Trawick combined to score 43 points themselves. Starks led the way with 20 points on 7-of-8 shooting.

“[Starks] hit some big shots for us tonight when we needed shots to be made,” Thompson III said. “Collectively, I don’t think you can look at anybody on this team as a measure of points. He made some big plays and his defensive got better in the second half. The same thing I said about the freshmen, these guys are players. Age, class, maturation goes out the window. We are out there just playing ball.”

Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino observed in a press conference before Wednesday’s game that this might be the best shooting Georgetown team he has seen in a while, and the Hoyas made him look smart come game time.

“They will annihilate you with shooting,” Pitino said.

Georgetown shot 7-of-11 from long range, including Starks’ perfect 4-of-4 in the second half. The Georgetown Prep graduate came into the game shooting a respectable 41 percent from beyond the arc, but after his perfect long-distance display Wednesday sits nearly 47 percent from three-point land, the second-best mark on the team behind Thompson.

The long-range barrage was a nice recovery from a few early mistakes by Starks, who left Louisville senior Kyle Kuric wide-open from long distance twice in the first ninety seconds of the game. The sophomore tightened up his defense, though, and the Cardinals shot just 6-of-22 from long-range after that.

Trawick was huge for the Blue and Gray in the first half, hitting a three-pointer at 9:25 to cap a 9-2 run that brought the visitors within two and kept the game from getting out of hand. The freshman then scored a basket with the foul at the 4:41 mark, tying the game after the Hoyas had turned the ball over four times in the preceding two minutes.

Trawick didn’t score in the second half, but still managed to contribute to the cause. He pulled down an offensive board and dished out an assist to keep the Hoyas within one possession before later fouling Kuric on a breakaway to prevent a crowd-igniting dunk.

Thompson’s dunk following Clark’s miss on the fastbreak was part of another efficient night from the junior, who was 2-of-2 from long range and grabbed five rebounds. Thompson may not have matched his usual point total, but was nonetheless crucial. Clark had one of his worst outings of the season, missing a couple of fast-break opportunities and getting rejected several times underneath the basket. He also missed the front end of a one-and-one that would have made the last 30 seconds much easier to bear. If he had hit the shot, the Hoyas would have had at least a seven-point lead, but the Cardinals’ three-pointer to make it a one-possession game with twenty seconds left and it was left to Porter to ice the game from the charity stripe.

Give credit to Louisville junior guard Peyton Siva, who had an outstanding game but made a few bad decisions down the stretch, most notably forcing a layup with 30 seconds left instead of looking to feed a teammate for an open shot. Siva still finished with 15 points, six assists and five steals, though, and consistently penetrated the lane to either score or dish back out for a three-pointer.

The Hoyas must do a better job against star players like Siva in the future, particularly with Pittsburgh’s Ashton Gibbs, West Virginia’s Kevin Jones and Connecticut’s Jeremy Lamb still on the schedule.