After Georgetown beat Marquette 70-68 in the Hoyas’ second-to-last game of the regular season — a result made possible because senior guard Jonathan Wallace made three straight free throws in the last second of regulation — the reporters in the post-game interview tried to get Head Coach John Thompson III to respond with something unexpected to prompts for an evaluation of the season so far. It had, after all, been a thrilling end to a hard-fought game, and excitement for the postseason was beginning to build.

But the journalists’ attempts were fruitless, as usual. Almost every time a reporter asks Thompson for a macro view of the season, whether it’s at the preseason media day circus or in the thick of the Big East schedule, Thompson returns to the philosophies that underlie his coaching style.

No. 1: One game at a time.

For Thompson, long-term success is counted one win at a time.

“I’ve said many times, ‘We’re still sitting at the table — Kenny Rogers’ ‘The Gambler,’ — we’ll count our money when it’s done,” Thompson said in the media room of Marquette’s Bradley Center.

Now that it’s April, though, a tally can be taken: a 28-6 record, a No. 12 ranking in the ESPN/USA Today postseason poll and back-to-back Big East regular season titles. In fact, Georgetown never lost two games in a row this year.

If the Hoyas’ past season had been a poker game, however, Georgetown would be in the hole. In the NCAA tournament, where everyone is forced to go all in and only one team returns home with the pot, the Hoyas came out empty-handed. And for a team that can realistically aim for a national title, losing before the final table was deflating, especially for the players of the class of 2008, as everyone wanted to see the senior quartet of center Roy Hibbert, guard Jonathan Wallace, swingman Tyler Crawford and forward Patrick Ewing Jr. go out on a high note.

But to only consider the final result of Georgetown’s season would discount the astonishing plays and dramatic victories that have made this a memorable year, even if it didn’t end the way the Hoyas would have liked.

After all, who could forget Hibbert’s game-winning three-pointer against Connecticut on Jan.12? It was a gutsy move, as the Hoyas and the Huskies were tied 69-69 with mere seconds left on the clock, and it was only the second time in his entire career that Hibbert had attempted the shot (and if you’re keeping track, he finished this year 3-for-3 on three-point attempts).

The reaction of longtime Hoya basketball announcer Rich Chvotkin says it all: “Summers trying to drive. Summers holds, passes to Hibbert. Roy looks up for the shot from the top of the circle. Ye-ah! Oh my! Roy Hibbert hit the shot! Oh my! Roy Hibbert! Hit the shot! It’s a three! For Roy Hibbert! The shot is good! By Roy Hibbert! With just 2.7! Seconds to go!” (Chvotkin is a man of many exclamation points.)

Indeed, Georgetown basketball games had no shortage of the “did you just see that?” factor. Just over a week later, in a Jan. 21 matchup with rival Syracuse, junior guard Jessie Sapp knocked down a late three and scored a layup off of a steal by freshman guard Austin Freeman in the last two minutes of the game to tie it up 60-60 and force overtime. The Hoyas went on to win 64-60.

“We know and expect to win close games,” Thompson said after the game. “When we get in tight situations, I don’t think we tense up too much. I think that’s when we focus and execute. … We depend, believe in each other.”

That fortitude helped Georgetown keep cool in hostile environments on the road, like Marquette’s Bradley Center and the West Virginia Coliseum.

In a one-point win against West Virginia, the Hoyas were lucky to get out alive, literally, after a physical game and a controversial final play in front of a loud and passionate crowd.

Following a Sapp three-pointer that gave Georgetown a one-point edge with 6.2 seconds left, Ewing came out of nowhere and blocked what would have been an easy layup for Mountaineer sophomore forward Da’Sean Butler. It was hard to tell, however, if Ewing made the block before the ball began its downward descent.

Said West Virginia Head Coach Bob Huggins, visibly upset, after the game, “It was pretty obvious if you look at it.”

Georgetown got another contentious call to go in its favor in a home win over Villanova on Feb. 11. On the last possession, with the score tied at 53, the referees whistled Wildcat freshman Corey Stokes for bumping Wallace 70 feet from the basket. With one-tenth of a second left, Wallace went to the line and made both free throws, giving Georgetown the 55-53 win.

Although fans in the student section like to joke that “God’s on our side,” all of these close calls eventually started to arouse suspicions. Georgetown had been ranked in the top 10 of the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls for most of the season, but the Hoyas hadn’t passed their biggest test of the non-conference season: a contest at then-No. 2 Memphis that ended in an 85-71 Georgetown loss. Fans and basketball insiders started to wonder: Were the Hoyas talented, or just lucky?

Or, maybe, was God actually involved?

Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino seemed to think it was a little bit of all three. After the Cardinals lost the final game of the regular season to the Hoyas 55-52, Pitino said, “Obviously, good teams get luck, but on a goaltending call, on a push out-of-bounds, on a Hibbert three, God bless them, they’re closer to heaven than we are.”

That victory over Louisville, which Georgetown won thanks to a three-pointer from sophomore forward DaJuan Summers with 40.2 seconds left, clinched the Big East regular season championship for the Hoyas. Even though Georgetown would lose to Pittsburgh in the Big East Tournament final, the Hoyas can still point to that regular season trophy as evidence of a feat that even legendary former head coach John Thompson Jr.’s teams never achieved: back-to-back Big East titles.

Going into the NCAA Tournament, the Hoyas earned a No. 2 seeding, but the luck of the draw was not on their side. Georgetown was dealt a possible second-round matchup with Davidson, the little team that could. That game is where another one of Thompson’s mantras comes into play.

No. 2: Don’t overlook any team.

Even after an apparently easy 66-47 win over UMBC in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Thompson admonished the press for suggesting that the Hoyas had been looking past the 15th-seeded Retrievers, saying, “We are not trying to work on stuff. We are trying to play each possession well and we are trying to see if we can move on and get a victory. That team is too well-coached; they are too experienced; they are too talented to say, okay, let’s start working on stuff.”

Seeing seven-seed Gonzaga fall just a couple of hours earlier to 10-seed Davidson on a 30-point second half from then-fairly-unknown sophomore guard Stephen Curry drove home Thompson’s point.

“Watching Davidson makes me feel worried,” Thompson said that Friday afternoon. “That’s a terrific team that’s playing very well right now. You don’t accomplish what they accomplished in their regular season and in their tournament and not be a very good team with very good players.”

When the Georgetown-Davidson game got underway on Easter Sunday, though, it was hard to see what Thompson was so nervous about, at first. The Hoyas got out to a 38-27 lead by intermission and shut down Curry, who converted a meager 2-of-8 attempts during the first half and did not even score until 10 and a half minutes into the game.

But Curry lived up to his reputation in the second half, firing off 25 points. Meanwhile, the Hoya offense froze, and Hibbert spent much of the second half on the bench in foul trouble. Referees may have given Georgetown an inadvertent advantage in some regular-season games, but the zebras that day were calling fouls on the slightest contact.

Even so, it was hard to believe that Georgetown was going to lose to Davidson until the final buzzer sounded. Because of all those close games, it seemed like there was always a chance that something miraculous would suddenly happen to give the Hoyas the lift they needed. But during the last 25 seconds, Curry made 5-of-6 free throws, freshman guard Chris Wright turned over the ball and Sapp missed a final attempt for a three-pointer. Hibbert wasn’t even on the floor.

The locker room after the game was a somber place. Summers was crouched over in a chair with his head in his hands. The players who were being interviewed hardly spoke above a whisper. Everybody had the seniors on their minds.

“It’s a hurtful feeling for these seniors to leave like this,” sophomore forward Vernon Macklin said.

“It sucks,” Crawford, one of the seniors, said when he asked how it felt. “I don’t get to put on this Georgetown uniform anymore.”

No. 3: We will get better.

Despite the disappointment of this season’s ending, however, Georgetown will be back next year. It’s not just the fact that Georgetown is bringing in one of the top freshman classes in the nation next year — including Scout.com and Rivals.com No. 1 prospect Greg Monroe, a forward from the New Orleans suburbs, and four-star recruits Henry Sims, Jason Clark and Chris Braswell — although that helps. It all has to do with the final, and most important, saying that Thompson prides himself on.

“I always feel this way: We want to be better tomorrow than we were today,” Thompson said after Georgetown lost to Pittsburgh during the regular season.

If you had a nickel for every time Thompson said “we will improve” over the course of his four years here, you wouldn’t have to worry about paying off student loans. And with the success that Thompson has under his belt so far — a 100-36 record, three NCAA Tournament appearances, a Sweet 16 in 2006 and a Final Four in 2007 — you would be crazy not to believe him.

Thompson just knows. You don’t have to tell Thompson that Georgetown needs to, say, work on its rebounding. He is five steps ahead of you on that one. So when he is asked to comment on Georgetown’s weaknesses, he might get a little defensive. But this promise — this statement — that Georgetown will always get better reveals everything that Thompson’s program stands for.

And that’s all that needs to be said.