Joe Moore (CAS ’25) has a secret. The classics major and Tombs bartender is the leader of a revolution within the Georgetown University men’s basketball student section.
Throughout the halcyon years of Georgetown basketball, the student section formed a key component of the Hoyas’ success and the culture that surrounded them. But after the better part of two decades of mediocrity, much of that support had evaporated. Sensing this, and seeing a team on the rise in the second year of Head Coach Ed Cooley’s tenure, Moore and a group of his friends banded together to form Hoya Gray, a quasi-official group of fans — primarily seniors — who organized multiple events throughout the season.
The group is instantly recognizable to regular attendees of Georgetown home games, sitting in the first few rows clad in high-visibility construction vests and hard hats. According to Moore, the vests represent the team’s rebuilding era.
The vests appeared at practically every home game this year and at road games against Marquette University and Providence College. Hoya Gray’s visibility also extended beyond attendance. The group was crucial in organizing two $1 beer nights and fully-funded student trips to the Big East tournament in New York City.
They did not start to call themselves Hoya Gray, though, until Georgetown’s game against the University of Connecticut (UConn) Huskies on Jan. 11. At that point, the Hoyas were undefeated in conference play and, hosting the two-time reigning national champions, drew their largest crowd in ten years, with 17,168 fans filling Capital One Arena to the rafters.
Even when the Hoyas’ attendance — long among the lowest in the Big East — rose, Moore noticed a palpable, student-driven culture seemed to still be missing. He observed some students sitting in the front rows of the section at the UConn game put their jackets down and left their seats vacant until after the game started.
Around halfway through the first half, the student section launched into a profane chant directed at UConn Head Coach Dan Hurley.
Moore said this was his final straw, resolving to chart a more constructive path for the student section.
“I don’t like swearing in general,” Moore told The Hoya. “That game led to a lot of discussion online about what’s going on in the fanbase.”
Ayush Karthick (MSB, SFS ’25), who was sitting next to Moore, said he too felt disaffected by the disconnection between the students and the team.
“Engagement was a lot lower than it should have been,” Karthick told The Hoya. “Let’s get people down here that are actually at the game.”
From there, the idea of Hoya Gray was born, with the name a play on Hoya Blue, the official student fan group, and the university’s two primary colors.
That day, the group created the @HoyaGray account on X, formerly known as Twitter. Many of the group’s activities are on X, which plays host to an incredibly active community of college basketball fans, many of them behind anonymous accounts.
Hoya Gray, while described by members as less a true organization and more a scattered group of friends, first garnered recognition from online fans.
“The online presence is important,” Moore said. “My theory that I’ve developed over the past few months is that the players are online way more than we think and they 100% know what’s going on.”
Some of the first posts on X about Hoya Gray were direct shots across to Hoya Blue. One such post, from two days after the UConn game, called Hoya Blue “apathetic” and disconnected.
Alex Verbesey (CAS ’26), co-vice president of Hoya Blue, said that while the posts were akin to a declaration of “civil war”, the official group was not interested in any in-kind response.
“Whatever’s going to get more students to come to the games, so be it,” Verbesey told The Hoya. “We’re all just trying to support Georgetown athletics, so if they thought that’s the best way to get their friends to come, then who cares?”
Madeline Ehlenbach (SFS ’26), who was elected president of Hoya Blue in March, said the group is looking to generate more interest in men’s basketball as the team improves while balancing their commitment to support every varsity team.
“This year, there were a lot of people who had never been to a Georgetown basketball game before that came to their first game and had a really great time because of the environment we built and the culture that is developing,” Ehlenbach told The Hoya. “For next year, I would like to see the student section full every time.”
Ehlenbach added that Hoya Blue wants to encourage attendance not only at games like those against UConn, but for nonconference and lower-profile matchups too. She said she views Hoya Gray as an ally in this goal and as evidence of a new, stronger culture forming around the team.
“Knowing that there are people who we hadn’t necessarily seen at games, who hadn’t come to our meetings who were super excited and super passionate and wanted to get student attendance up was really exciting for us,” Ehlenbach said. “I think it shows a lot of promise. There’s a common goal there.”
Reflecting after the season, and after working with Hoya Blue’s board, some Hoya Gray members were contrite about their initial hostility as well. Hoya Gray member Will Phillips (CAS ’25) said the group realized cooperation produces the best results.
“We all have a part to do,” Phillips told The Hoya. “It’s better when everyone is unified going into games.”
Students and Basketball Team Representatives Collaborate
The university was watching too. The coaching staff, seeking to build a stronger student support base, were fans of Hoya Gray’s theatrics.
One of Hoya Gray’s biggest supporters is Sharon Brummell, chief of staff for the men’s basketball team, who affectionately refers to the group as “my boys.”
The relationship between the basketball program and the fanbase had become dysfunctional during the Ewing years. The legacy of Hoya paranoia — the team’s reputation of hostility towards journalists and secrecy in the 1980s and 1990s — certainly lived on and sealed the team off from Georgetown students.
The program did not know the names of Hoya Blue’s board members until last month. While Hoya Blue did have front-row passes to the student section and distributed cheer sheets before every game, they were unable to coordinate larger-scale activities with the administration.
Ehlenbach said she is building direct contacts between Hoya Blue, Brummell and others in the athletics department.
“I’m still trying to develop those relationships. In the past, we’ve had a very good relationship,” Ehlenbach said. “I’m really excited for the opportunity to work with her and other organizations.”
As the team struggled on the court and remained secretive and inaccessible on campus, student interest in going to see games over 20 minutes away in downtown Washington, D.C., winnowed over the years until student attendance, excluding the pep band and cheer squads, for some nonconference games reached the single digits.
Brummell said that legacy still lingers around the team to an extent, despite their efforts to rid themselves of it.
“I’m so sick of Hoya paranoia,” Brummell told The Hoya. “I hope there’s no more Hoya paranoia.”
Brummell said Cooley has made a conscious effort to decouple from that era of Georgetown basketball and to bring the students back into the fold. To that end, he tasked Brummell with working to increase student support.
Brummell first met Hoya Gray when they were some of the few students in the crowd during a midweek nonconference game this year. Then, at the end of winter break, three Hoya Gray members added a stopover to their flights back to Georgetown in Milwaukee to see the Hoyas’ Jan. 7 game at Marquette.
Sensing their enthusiasm, Brummell invited them and some of the team’s other most loyal student supporters to a breakfast with herself and Cooley. At that breakfast, she asked them, “What do we need to get fans in the seats?”
Moore’s response was automatic: $1 beer night.
$1 beer night was an idea that had been percolating for years in the same online spaces where Hoya Gray is active. One such Hoya fan account, aptly named @DollarBrewskis, had been an especially vocal advocate. Other Big East schools had also successfully implemented the promotion to drive attendance and boost the atmosphere.
Cooley was familiar with the promotion from his days as the head coach of the Providence Friars and supported replicating it at Georgetown, but the event faced large logistical challenges.
The Hoyas rent Capital One Arena from its owner, Monumental Sports Group, which retains control over the in-game concessions. The arena regularly charges over $20 for alcoholic beverages at Georgetown games, and the team could not cover that price difference at scale.
Another figure was keenly watching the student section. Mark Guerrera (CAS ’91) — a lawyer and the president of Hoya Hoop Club, the team’s booster club — held the key to unlocking $1 beer night.
Guerrera said he used his connections to make $1 beer night happen.
“A good friend of mine works for Capital Eagle, who is the distributor for Anheuser-Busch throughout D.C.,” Guerrera told The Hoya. “I got in touch with him, and we worked with the arena to make it happen.”
“It’s frankly something I’ve wanted for the past ten years, so when I heard there was a student initiative to have it this year and that Coach Cooley and Sharon were supporting it, I was all on board,” Guerrera added.
Originally, the plan was to hold $1 beer night in a bar in neighboring Gallery Place, but Guerrera believed the event would only be successful in the arena itself. He and Capital Eagle negotiated with Monumental Sports to use the Michelob Ultra Lounge on the arena’s suite level for the event.
The first $1 beer night came to fruition Jan. 31 for the Hoyas’ win over Butler University. The team treated it as a proof of concept, restricting the event to seniors only and with a two drink maximum.
As students poured into the arena over an hour before tip-off, Brummel stood watching. She said later she thought to herself, “This is unbelievable.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Brummell said. “Then we talked about doing it again, even bigger.”
The second time around, the event broadened to all students above the age of 21 for Georgetown’s Feb. 19 game against Providence.
Because Hoya Blue is an official student organization, they are prohibited from directly organizing events with alcohol. After Hoya Hoop Club confirmed the event, Hoya Blue promoted the events through social media channels and flyers around campus.
The second $1 beer night could not have come at a more important time for Cooley or the program. The Friars had beaten the Hoyas in their first four matchups since Cooley left Providence to join Georgetown in 2023. Two days before the game, Cooley’s mother, Jane Cooley, passed away.
Georgetown beat Providence in a nearly wire-to-wire blowout, with the student section electric throughout. Even Friars Head Coach Kim English tipped his cap to Hoya Gray when they unfurled a banner with “The Tweet,” a since-deleted post from before his time at Providence where English wrote, “I would have crawled backwards from Baltimore to be a Hoya.”
The student section avoided profanity but remained passionate this time around, with chants including “Crawl backwards,” “Tony Skinn” — the coach who succeeded English in his prior job at George Mason University — and “We love Cooley.”
Brummell said the student support during the game against Providence came at the perfect moment.
“It was amazing,” Brummell said. “It was the right time, it was the right occasion and it was like God was working because it needed to happen when it did.”
After the success of the two $1 beer nights, the work of Hoya Gray caught the attention of many Georgetown graduates online. A group of them, led by anonymous X account @HoyaOptimist, launched a fundraising campaign to send Hoya Gray to the Big East tournament.
Hoya Gray raised $3,751 via GoFundMe and offered to pay for any interested students’ tickets, transportation and lodging at the tournament. More than 50 students took them up on the offer.
The largest demographic, according to Moore, was seniors in their second semester, but students from all years went to the March 12 game against the DePaul University Blue Demons.
Hoya Gray members expected most attendees to be their close personal friends but were pleasantly surprised that a much broader group joined the trip, including some members of Hoya Blue.
Of the money they raised, over $1,000 remains. The group hopes to use it next year to support more student section activities in collaboration with Hoya Blue and the administration.
There is still plenty of work left to reestablish Georgetown as a top fanbase in the Big East, Brummell and Guerrera acknowledged. The Hoyas had the second-lowest average attendance among Big East teams in conference play this year. While the UConn and Providence games were high points, they were few and far between this season.
Now, Brummell said, she and the team are in contact with Hoya Blue’s leadership for next school year and are working together to develop plans for next season.
One such idea was coordinating with Hoya Blue to organize student transportation to a game at the University of Maryland (UMD), the historic rival against whom the Hoyas will play a four-year series beginning in 2025. UMD’s campus is less than an hour from the Hilltop, but Georgetown and the Terrapins have only played five games against each other since 1980.
Brummell confirmed to The Hoya that, while next season’s schedule has not been finalized, the team would host multiple $1 beer nights. She also plans to work closely with Hoya Blue and other interested students to develop more ways to connect the team with the student body.
As for Hoya Gray, Brummell said she hopes there will be no repeat of a division of the student section but that the group of seniors, many of whom have jobs in the area after graduation, will remain involved in and active members of the fanbase.
Brummell said Hoya Gray could become a revival of the Stonewalls, the young graduate fan group that Georgetown lost in the midst of the Ewing era, and that this year was a special season for senior Hoyas to enjoy Georgetown basketball.
“They’ll be at the games. If I have to get them tickets, I’ll get them tickets,” Brummell said. “Their first three years, it’s not been a good experience as far as basketball’s concerned. This year, they were happy.”
At the end of the season, messages of gratitude poured in from Hoya Gray members to Brummell. One read, “Thank you so much for making our senior year the best year we’ve had.”
CORRECTION: This article was updated April 11 to correct Joe Moore’s position at The Tombs and the management of the @HoyaGray account on X. Moore is a bartender at The Tombs, not a waiter. The @HoyaGray account is collaboratively managed, not by a specific member.
