To a college student, five years is ages. To a college student in Georgetown’s Class of 2005 – which missed the Hoyas’ last NCAA tournament appearance by a matter of months and never saw another – five years is even longer.

RaMell Ross (COL ’05), a freshman guard/forward on Georgetown’s Sweet 16 team, was still around last year only because he missed his sophomore season due to injury. To today’s Hoyas, the rest of the 2001 roster is history.

Yet Kevin Braswell (COL ’02), Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje (COL ’01), Mike Sweetney and Craig Esherick remain the faces of the last March Madness that Georgetown has known. The year was one of exceeded expectations and buzzer-beating drama, not to mention the national attention Hoya fans have been hoping for ever since.

Despite a No. 19 ranking in Sports Illustrated’s preseason poll, a disappointing sequence of losses had ended Georgetown’s 1999-2000 season in the second round of the NIT. It was no surprise that the Hoyas were out of the coaches’ top-25 rankings a year later.

But Georgetown supporters were proclaiming a revival. Senior centers Boumtje-Boumtje and Lee Scruggs (COL ’01) were reaching the climax of solid college careers. Sophomore guard Braswell had been named to the all-Big East first team. And Mike Sweetney, a freshman forward from Oxon Hill, Md., was widely regarded among the nation’s top-50 incoming freshmen.

The season started well enough, with an 85-75 victory over Bethune Cookman in the home opener at McDonough, and then three wins at the HPU Classic in Honolulu. Yet the winning – and the blank loss column – continued. 90-48 over Nicholls State. 70-63 at Louisville. 123-90 versus Howard. 90-66 in West Virginia.

By the time the Hoyas stepped onto the court with No. 11 Seton Hall, Georgetown’s first ranked opponent, on Jan. 6, Georgetown’s record was 12-0, and its national rank had climbed to 19th.

Seton Hall was 10-3, and its leading scorer, sophomore guard Darius Lane, was averaging 20.8 points per game. Led by Scruggs’ 13 points, the Hoyas had six players score in double figures, sharing the offensive load in a 78-66 win. The defense, meanwhile, held Lane to five points, all arriving in the insignificant final 30 seconds of play.

By the time Georgetown’s winning streak came to an end on Jan. 20, the Hoyas had amassed a 16-0 record and a No. 9 ranking. Not bad for a defending second-round loser in the National Invitation Tournament.

Yet over the next month, against teams more challenging than Bethune Cookman but still ranked lower than Georgetown, the Hoyas languished. Even worse, their losses to Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, No. 12 Syracuse, Providence, Villanova and St. John’s – the Hoyas’ only six losses in 26 games – translated to an uninspiring 7-6 Big East record.

“It’s hard to think about it right now,” Braswell told THE HOYA after the loss to Villanova on Feb. 12. “It’s hard to take that we blew another game.”

The newspaper wrote that the “reality check . left No. 18 Georgetown wondering how a season that started off so well could go so wrong.”

Such sentiments were understandable, as the Hoyas lost 59-56. 59-56, after overcoming a 14-point first-half deficit and eventually taking the lead in the second half.

Things changed two weeks later. In a game that observers knew could make or break No. 21 Georgetown’s season – and a day after University President-elect John J. DeGioia made his first public appearance – the Hoyas were playing host to No. 17 Syracuse, victors over Georgetown by a margin of 70-63 in their previous 2001 matchup.

Georgetown began by scoring the game’s first seven points and, with the help of Achilles-injured guard Demetrius Hunter’s 21-point game, entered the break with a 36-33 lead. omentum would vacillate between Georgetown and Syracuse for the rest of the contest, but the Hoyas took advantage of a six-point lead late in the game.

After five minutes of tough defense, repeated rebounds and intelligent use of the shot clock, Georgetown was the owner of a 72-61 victory, followed by much on-court embracing and the first time in Hoya history that fans flooded the floor of MCI Center.

“I can’t remember a game that I thought was as big as this in terms of the national picture,” Head Coach Esherick said.

Added Hunter, “The most important thing is we got that feeling back, that winning feeling.”

That feeling carried the Hoyas to victory over Rutgers and No. 18 Notre Dame, good enough for a 10-6 record and a second-place tie to close Big East regular season play.

Their final Big East game, a 58-40 loss to Seton Hall in the first round of the Big East Championships, would have been more embarrassing if not for the classic contest that followed in the NCAA tournament.

It was Georgetown-Arkansas in Boise, Idaho: the 10th seed versus the seventh; inside height against a celebrated press. Near the end of the first half – and with the teams’ famous strategies playing less of a role than expected – the buzzer malfunctioned, delaying play for 10 minutes and forcing officials to remove the horn and red light atop the basket.

Arkansas, up 31-30 at the break, held the lead through most of the game, then conceded it in the final two minutes when Braswell scored on a dramatic drive.

“If I would have missed that shot, I would have been in big trouble by Esherick,” Braswell said, laughing, after the game. “I made a great play.”

“And he’s modest, too,” Esherick added.

Arkansas responded with a field goal with 35.8 seconds remaining, setting up one final chance for Georgetown to keep the game out of overtime.

Guard Nat Burton (COL’01) had the ball. With Braswell covered, he drove to the hoop and his shot rolled in just before the horn sounded. As the Hoyas’ radio voice Dr. Rich Chvotkin called it: “Eight seconds, Burton waits, Burton waits, Burton drives – it’s good! It’s good! It’s good! It’s good! It’s good! It’s good! It’s good! y God, it’s good! My God, it’s so good!”

Not in the eyes of Arkansas, whose officials claimed the shot clock had expired – without the horn and red light, it was difficult to tell. But after a two-minute review, the referees disagreed, and Georgetown was into the second round.

“I wasn’t nervous. I was yelling, `The game’s over, the game’s over,’ and Coach told me to shut up,” Braswell said, in typical form.

So it was on to 15th seed Hampton, who had just completed a shocker of a one-point victory over second-seeded Iowa State. Georgetown won handily, 76-57, setting up a Sweet 16 showdown with aryland.

Here, against a No. 3 seed, the Hoyas’ ride ended. Georgetown was strong throughout the first half, but the efficacy of Maryland’s zone defense took some wind out of the Hoyas’ sails as halftime approached.

“We lost all of our momentum,” Esherick said after the game. “And their full-court pressure when they started running at Kevin [Braswell], it really bothered us. It forced us back on our heels.”

Georgetown narrowed the score to 67-62 with 3:17 to play, but aryland pulled away. The final score, 76-66, brought the Hoyas’ 2000-01 season to a close – and left Georgetown with its best NCAA tournament run since 1996.

“For Georgetown’s men’s basketball team, the lasting images from the 2000-01 season will not come from the season-ending loss to Maryland on Thursday night,” HOYA SPORTS columnist Mike Hume (COL ’03) wrote the next day. “Instead they will consist of the Georgetown bench piling on senior Nathaniel Burton [and] the swarm of students mobbing the floorboards of MCI Center . These are the images of the reborn basketball program.”

The program wouldn’t be as reborn as Hume thought, as the 2001-02 season saw the disillusioned Hoya squad decline a bid to the NIT. Esherick would be fired; John Thompson III would take his place.

Yet the Hoyas’ much-anticipated return to postseason prominence, albeit with a completely different roster and completely different fans, appears close to finally being realized. It may be five years later, but as far as Georgetown is concerned, “that winning feeling” can’t hide away for long.