SYRACUSE, N.Y. ? When the final buzzer sounded, the Hoyas walked off the Carrier Dome court with their seventh loss in their last eight games. But for an eight minute stretch at the end of regulation, they looked like the team that started the season 10-1 and cracked the Top 10 in the national rankings.

Georgetown sophomore guard Chris Wright said that the Hoyas did not make any major strategic adjustments during their remarkable 16-point comeback. They simply played basketball.

“I don’t think we did anything different,” Wright said after the game. “We were just playing more off our instincts.”

Perhaps those basketball instincts are what Georgetown has been missing most over the course of the last month. Head Coach John Thompson III and all of the players have doubtless spent a great deal of time thinking about why the team has been struggling. If the end of this game was any indication, it may be time for the Hoyas to stop analyzing and start playing a more aggressive, playground-style ball.

Syracuse Head Coach Jim Boeheim said that Georgetown turned into an entirely different team during the last eight minutes of the game.

“Georgetown just really attacked us,” Boeheim said. “They were much more passive during the first 30, 35 minutes of the game.”

Passive basketball was not getting the job done for the Hoyas. They looked hesitant on the offensive end, as they often passed the ball around the perimeter again and again before putting up a contested shot or turning the ball over. After Syracuse junior guard Eric Devendorf hit a three with 8:14 left on the clock, the Orange led 66-50.

At that point, the Hoyas knew that they had to score a lot of points in a hurry. They did not have time to pass the ball around and wait for the perfect backdoor cut. So if Wright, Freeman or Summers saw an open lane, they took the ball hard to the hoop, and if a player was open from beyond the arc, he fired without hesitation.

Thompson said that he was pleased with Georgetown’s looseness late in the game.

“Obviously this is a difficult stretch, but I think we played today,” Thompson said. “We weren’t tentative. We lost to a very good team at home, we didn’t win, but our guys played in a way to put us in a position to win.”

Although it was in many ways a deflating loss for the Hoyas, Thompson emphasized that the game was a step in the right direction for his team. He wants the Hoyas to continue to play with the energy and scrappiness they displayed during the game’s final minutes of regulation.

Despite the Hoyas’ recent struggles, the fact remains that they have talented athletes on their team. Wright can be explosive off the dribble, Summers can score from all over the court and Monroe can be dominant around the basket. Relying on the team’s athleticism and basketball instincts may be way for Georgetown to turn its season around.

“Yeah we improved but improvement has to be with a win,” Wright said. “We gotta win is the bottom line.”

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