(From left) Freshman guard L.J. Peak, junior guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera, senior center Joshua Smith, freshman forward Isaac Copeland and freshman forward Paul White will all look to lead the Hoyas at home against Radford.
After the Georgetown men’s basketball team (5-3) lost the closely contested game to No. 10 Kansas (7-1), 75-70, on Wednesday evening, the Blue and Gray will look to improve their record when they face Radford (5-3) tomorrow.
The matchup between the Hoyas and the Highlanders is Georgetown’s third game in a four-game home stretch.
“It kind of feels good to have games close [together] just to say, ‘Hey, the Kansas game is in the past, lets move on to Radford,’” senior center Joshua Smith said.
Radford, coming off a win over Virginia Tech, is a veteran team with only three freshmen on its roster.
“They’re a team where they have a group back from last year they’ve won a lot of games. They’ve played together for a long time,” Head Coach John Thompson III said. “When you play a team like Kansas everybody is all fired up. This is a team we need to be fired up and excited about playing also.”
Smith said that its Big South Conference opponent “lives and dies by their guards,” but that the Hoyas will also be dialed in on 6-foot-4-inch senior forward Javonte Green.
“A guy like [Green], you’ve got to make sure you keep him off the boards. He averages 10 [rebounds] a games, he’s active, he’s physical. We have to make sure that every time he’s on the floor and a shot goes up, we’re boxing him out,” Smith said.
The game will come two days after Georgetown wore “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts during its warm-ups before the Kansas game. Smith, senior forward Mikael Hopkins and Thompson spoke about the team’s decision to wear the shirts and the reactions that followed.
“[The reaction] has been probably as expected. There’s been a lot of positive feedback, some negative feedback. So to that end if it helps continue the discussion and possibly spark change then that’s a good thing,” Thompson said.
Smith told reporter Bob Bancroft that he was “very proud” of the team’s demonstration and Hopkins said the team received positive feedback.
“Since we were the first college team to do it, we got a lot of attention for it. We got an email sent to us [by a fan] saying that they were proud of us,” Hopkins said.
Thompson said his team did not stage the protest to influence other college teams to take similar action and that the team’s decision to wear the T-shirts was “very personal” for each player.
“Josh and [junior guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera] said that they were doing it in support of the families as the main reason. There are other guys in the locker room that are frustrated with the system, where you can see someone that looks like you get killed and there’s not an indictment — not a trial where you see and learn all the facts,” Thompson said.
“You don’t have to be a black male that has a relative that’s been killed to have a powerful voice,” Thompson added.
John Thompson Jr., who was the head coach of the Hoyas in the 1980s and is Thompson’s father, made waves when he spoke up during the postgame press conference Wednesday. He responded to a reporter’s question about his own social activism, saying, “It’s a f—— school, man. That’s your responsibility, to deal with things like that.”
The younger Thompson said that his father was supportive of the protest.
The Hoyas will play Radford at noon on Saturday at Verizon Center.
