All year long, everyone on the Georgetown bench has had a tendency to stand up mid-game. From Head Coach John Thompson III all the way down to junior forward Bryon Jansen, the Hoyas don’t seem to be able to sit still.

So when sophomore forward DaJuan Summers hit a three-pointer with 39 seconds to go to give Georgetown the lead and then freshman guard Austin Freeman grabbed the game’s final rebound and threw the ball into the air as the buzzer sounded, it wasn’t a surprise that the Georgetown bench was already on their feet. With a 55-52 victory over Lousiville Saturday at a packed Verizon Center, the Hoyas had clinched a Big East regular season title for the second year in a row – the first time Georgetown has won back-to-back titles.

And the Hoyas definitely celebrated. Senior center Roy Hibbert walked over to the fan section, leading a cheer of “We Are Georgetown,” while Freeman and junior guard Jessie Sapp jumped into the crowd to give high fives and hugs.

“It was a great feeling, to be able to win back-to-back, the way that we did it, the type of season we had this year. We had so many ups and downs, but we stuck together,” Hibbert said.

Thompson was not above celebrating, either, saying that he was going to sneak back into Verizon Center to cut down the nets after Saturday night’s Washington Wizards game. Thompson remarked that the regular season title is “something that’s truly special . It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

Georgetown’s last game of the regular season seemed to be a microcosm of it’s whole season. The game was close, low-scoring and marked by a balanced team attack on all sides. It gave little opportunity for sighs of relief for the Hoya faithful.

The first half was a slow, grinding twenty minutes of basketball, and scoring was hard to come by for both teams. At one point, the game went 5:15 without either team scoring. Louisville held Hibbert to just one field goal – which came four seconds from halftime – while Georgetown shut down senior center David Padgett, holding him to just two points in the first half as well.

The Hoyas held the Cardinals to just 19 points the first half, a surprisingly small number for a team that is averaging about 72 points per game on the year, and went into the break up 24-19.

The last match-up between the two teams, a 59-51 Louisville win on Feb. 9, saw a wardrobe change for Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino at halftime. Pitino stayed in the same suit on Saturday, which Thompson later remarked made him feel better. This time, it was Hibbert with the change of clothes, ditching his trademark undershirt.

The change seemed to work for Hibbert, who converted a layup on the first possession of the half. Whatever the cause, the tempo picked up in the second half. Both Hibbert and Padgett got more touches, leading their respective team’s charges in the second half. Freeman also got hot around the 16 minute mark, hitting back-to-back threes en route to leading all scorers with 15 points on the day.

Padgett (12 points) and junior forward Terrence Williams (14 points) led Lousiville offensively in the second half, as it clawed back from an 11-point deficit and tied the game with seven minutes to go. Once again, Georgetown was facing an important game that was going down to the wire.

The Hoyas, now 6-0 in games decided by three points or fewer, stayed calm down the stretch. “We were just playing, to tell you the truth,” Thompson said. “You get good players and allow them to make decisions.”

In the end, it was a pass from senior guard Jonathan Wallace to Summers that secured the game for the Hoyas, as Summers drilled a three-pointer that put the Hoyas up 55-52 with 39 seconds left in the game. The shot was Summers’s only attempt in the second half.

“This was an old school, Big East game,” Thompson said. “This is who we are; that is why you can’t judge us by looking at stats.”

Pitino saw the game as a grinding battle as well. “Nothing easy. No easy shots, a lot of aggressive play by both teams,” he said. “They’ve been lucky, but they won tonight because they were better. . They played like true champions tonight.”

Georgetown enters the Big East Tournament in Madison Square Garden as the No. 1 seed. The Hoyas first game is at noon on Thursday against the winner of the game between the eighth and ninth seeds.

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