Jeff Green knows his teammates well.

“Roy just says funny stuff.”

“Tyler talks a lot.”

“Jon plays the shy role.”

They know him pretty well too.

“Jeff doesn’t say anything,” Tyler Crawford says. “He just balls.”

Since arriving on the Hilltop two years ago, Green, a forward, Crawford and Jonathan Wallace, both guards, and Roy Hibbert, a center, have been inseparable. The four shared a Copley suite their freshman year – which they laughingly remember as “cool, but different” and an experience they do not want to repeat – and Green, Crawford and Wallace continue to share an apartment this year, while Hibbert is in a townhouse with other teammates.

“They are very, very tight,” men’s basketball Head Coach John Thompson III says. “Very seldom will you ever see one of them without another, and I think everyone on this campus can say that they are usually piddling around together.”

The guys take classes together, too – Hibbert and Crawford are both government majors and are currently taking every class together – and, as most students know, meet up in Red Square between classes to chat and people watch.

At night, they all like to watch movies.

“I’m a movie person,” Green says, with the rest of the group concurring.

“We’re pretty much on top of scary movies, all the new movies coming out,” Hibbert adds.

“They’re on top of the scary movies,” Wallace corrects him, making a face that shows how much he really doesn’t like horror films. “I don’t do scary.”

Playing the Shy Role

Wallace, it appears, is the favorite target for teasing among the group.

“They like to try on my clothes a lot,” Wallace says, explaining one of the team’s favorite ways to give him a hard time.

“He wears small clothes. I think he wears like an XL or large,” Green elaborates. “At night, when me and Tyler are bored, we try on Jon’s clothes and just walk around. Like he’ll go to the bathroom and we’ll just start laughing. We’ll make him stay in the bathroom and when he comes out we have on all his clothes, just walking around, glasses, small shirts.”

Wallace is good-natured and handles his friends’ good-natured ribbing well. He is the smallest and most serious of the four juniors, which makes him the easiest to pick on.

But Wallace is also a serious basketball player, and he doesn’t let opposing players push him around the way his teammates do. In his third year as starting guard for Georgetown, Wallace has come to be respected across the Big East for the role he plays for the Hoyas.

“Solid as a rock,” Notre Dame Head Coach Mike Brey said of Wallace at Big East Media Day, one of many coaches to compliment the 6-foot-1 guard (Just being listed at 6-foot-1 is actually a compliment in itself). “I respect him. Runs the team, doesn’t make mistakes, makes open shots, kind of silently kills you.

“There’s something about an experienced guard who’s run a team a couple of years.”

Wallace has been able to silently kill opponents in the past because he was always playing in the shadow of Ashanti Cook (COL ’06). This year, as the elder member of the backcourt, Wallace won’t be able to play so quietly.

“Jon has a tendency to step back and just kind of watch what’s going on and then interject as we go along, and that’s something that we need,” Thompson says. “He’s going to have to be a lot more assertive, a lot more aggressive, and that’s in there. It’s not something he’s had to do, but I don’t necessarily think that it will come that hard.”

Asking Wallace to be assertive isn’t out of his character. He may be quiet on the court or passive when his teammates make fun of him, but he isn’t a pushover and will share his embarrassing insights to defend himself just as quickly as the rest of the guys.

And when asked about who gets the girls, Green is quick to offer up Wallace.

“Jon’s the smoothest, because he plays the shy role,” Green decides.

“Whoa, whoa, I don’t play the shy role. I am shy,” Wallace corrects him.

“Jon plays the shy role,” Green says again.

“No. I’m gonna be honest – I am shy if I don’t know you, but .” Wallace says before being interrupted.

“No. Jon is shy unless he likes you,” Green says, clearly very pleased with his insight. “Yeah, thank you.”

“Dr. Phil,” Crawford adds.

“Right on, brother,” Hibbert chimes in.

The Fresh Prince of the Hilltop

Uncomfortable in the spotlight, Wallace quickly deflects the conversation elsewhere. “Now on to Jeffrey Green,” he interjects awkwardly.

“Like we said, Fresh Prince, smooth,” Crawford says.

“I’m not smooth,” Green says, now on the defensive.

“Yeah, smooth. Smooth like butter,” Wallace says with glee, clearly enjoying having the tables turned.

“No,” Green says again. “Do not put that. I am not smooth.”

“He’ll take a girl by the hand and woo her,” Wallace says, cracking up at his own jokes.

Green may debate his moves with girls, but there is no debating his moves on the basketball court. He has emerged as one of the top forwards in the country and – along with Hibbert – gives the Hoyas one of the most feared frontcourts in the nation. Sitting next to his Big East rookie of the year award during the interview – which he made sure to adjust first thing when he walked into the room – there is no denying that Green is the real deal.

Voted an all-Big East first team unanimous selection and named to the Wooden Award top-50 watch list – both along with Hibbert – Green gets some of the heaviest compliments from opposing coaches and analysts, who know just how good he is and will be.

But the biggest compliment Green has received may have come from his own coach.

“In terms of players that I’ve coached – and I’ve coached some pretty smart players – I think [Jeff] is the smartest player I’ve ever coached,” Thompson says.

“In terms of understanding the game of basketball, just having a natural feel for what’s going on and the aptitude in terms of picking up what we’re doing, why we’re doing, how we’re doing, what he should be doing as well as what the other four people on the court and eight people on the bench, he has a true sense of placement of where everyone should be and how they should be.”

Little Big Man

As the interview has gone on, Hibbert has somehow managed to make himself the smallest guy in the room, if such a thing is possible. After a talkative spell at the outset, Hibbert has gotten quiet, hiding behind a pillow that he clutches to his chest. It has become out of the ordinary for Hibbert to be a small presence anywhere these days with all the media attention heaped on top of his already large 7-foot-2 frame.

Like Green, Hibbert has received enormous amounts of praise this preseason. After coming to Georgetown as barely a top-100 recruit, Hibbert is now a projected NBA lottery pick if he chooses to forgo his senior season. Hibbert says that he wants to stay all four years and graduate, but all of it seems such a long way from just two years ago.

Entering his freshman season, Hibbert was considered a “project,” a tall kid with little to offer but his height. Now, after a solid sophomore campaign that was capped off by breakout performances in the NCAA tournament, Hibbert is little like his freshman self in almost every way.

“He’s growing up before our eyes,” Thompson says. “He’s someone who came in as a young freshman and is a 19-year-old junior, which is young. And so he’s growing up and we’ve seen his development and his growth on the court and we’ve seen his development and his maturity off the court also. He also, in a different way of expressing himself, has the same drive that Tyler has.”

Last but Not Least

Of the four boys, Crawford is the enigma, the question still left unanswered. He has seen the least playing time, which is part of the reason he remains an unknown commodity, but even his personality is a mixed bag. Often hilarious, sometimes serious, Crawford can seemingly be anything to his teammates.

“Out of all of us, Jeff and Tyler are the people persons,” Wallace says. “They can talk to anybody about anything, any time, any place. Me and Roy are sometimes a little more reserved,” adding, “sometimes, sometimes,” over Crawford’s objections.

“We can all laugh and joke now,” Crawford says, bringing the conversation back to more serious topics, “but when we get on the court everything is real. All the smiles – I mean, we joke from time to time – but beside that we are all about business and trying to get better.”

While Crawford’s wisecracks draw laughs from his teammates, it is his remarkable focus and desire that draw praise from Thompson and the rest of the Hoyas.

“I’ve said this for two years,” Thompson says. “Tyler’s been the heart and soul of this team, just with his focus, his intensity, his drive.”

And Crawford is the unanimous selection for hardest worker in the class.

“He eats, sleeps, and stays in the gym for like a thousand hours,” Wallace says.

“Then he goes before practice and says, `I’m tired,’ practices hard, goes to the room, looks at his bed and five minutes later he has all this energy, won’t go to sleep until five in the morning and gets up at eight,” Green says.

“He has so much energy. We don’t know where it comes from,” Wallace adds.

“I don’t know either,” Crawford says.

“But he can fall asleep anywhere,” Green counters. “We can be in some random person’s room, he’ll sit on the bed, and once he lays back, he’s snoring.”

“They’re not random people’s rooms, they’re people Jeff and Jon know,” Crawford corrects Green. “I just go along as the third wheel. I have to be the security guard.”

This too brings about laughter.

“I’m a happy dude,” he says.

Which Way to the Top?

As skilled as they are on the hardwood, its this bond, this ability to make each other laugh, this trust, that sets these juniors apart. They are all talented alone, but they are much more effective as a unit, and everyone seems to recognize it.

“As I’ve said, the junior class is special. We walked in together,” Thompson says. “They have been, in many regards, the leaders of this team for a while now. I think that this year they may be more open and more willing to show their leadership, but – I’ve said this – we’re going to go as that group goes.”

“Out of all of us, from the point that we came in, we knew that we had a lot of owning up to do, like a lot of responsibility was put on us early, but I think we push each other,” Wallace says. “I think that’s one thing on the court everybody knows each other’s mentality and how we want to be as a team. We were the core guys that were brought in when Coach Thompson first got here so we know what has to be done.”

Working together, pushing each other, this group can go far.

Well, as long as Wallace isn’t put in charge of directions.

“I was walking around with Roy, the second, third day of school freshman year,” Wallace says, “and we go to a party. I don’t know where we were. I’m from the country. This is a big city – I don’t know where I am. So we go to this party and Roy leaves. I turn around and look for Roy and some girl says to me, `Roy left a long time ago.’ I was just lost somewhere, in some house. I still don’t know where we were. Where were we Roy?”

“N Street, man,” Hibbert replies.

“N Street,” Wallace muses. “N Street. I don’t even know where N Street is right now.”

– Hoya staff writer Bailey Heaps contributed to this report.

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