The week began as war of the words.
Florida sophomore Joakim Noah bashed on Georgetown – his “dream school” – for never recruiting him.
“Hopefully it bites them in the butt,” he told reporters on Monday.
When he was younger, Noah used to visit the Hilltop every summer, attending camps led by former Head Coach John Thompson Jr. He became good friends with current junior redshirt Pat Ewing Jr., who transferred to Georgetown from Indiana last April.
“I was a big Hoya fan,” Noah said, “but I’m not a Hoya fan anymore.”
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Hoyas had the opportunity to lash back, but they held their tongues.
Roy Hibbert acknowledged he had heard Noah’s comments and said they helped to elevate his intensity, but they only made him more eager to face Florida’s star player on the floor.
“We do things differently,” Hibbert said. “We do things the Georgetown way.”
The strongest comments came from fifth-year swingman Darrel Owens, who declared,
“If any team is going to beat us, they’re going to have to pry it out of our fingers.”
How the week ends, and who stands victorious and in wait of an Elite Eight appearance as the clock strikes midnight tonight, will be determined in the on-court battle.
Georgetown has never played at the Minneapolis Metrodome, the site of the team’s first Sweet 16 game in five years. For Florida, who made a run at the national championship in 2000 before losing to Michigan State in the final game, tonight’s game ends a five-year streak of bowing out on the opening weekend.
The Gators are 2-2 in previous regional semifinal matchups. The Hoyas boast a 7-2 record, with their only losses in the Sweet 16 coming in 1995 to UNC and 2001 to Maryland.
Tonight’s contest, which tips off at approximately 9:40 p.m., will match 7-foot-2, 280-pound Hibbert with 6-foot-11, 230-pound Noah.
Hibbert is the up-and-coming, steadily improving big man who national reporters have dared to mention in the same breath as Ewing, Mourning and Mutombo, though Head Coach John Thompson III will quickly refute such claims.
“Roy knew walking in the door that he’s not close to where they were,” Thompson said last weekend. “But one day he will be.”
Noah, meanwhile, has emerged this season as a spirited team leader, stepping up to fill the void created by the departure of three starters from last year who accounted for 60 percent of his team’s scoring. He paces the Gators with a team-high 13.9 points per game and is second in rebounds with 6.7 per game.
Both programs are young, with Florida starting four sophomores to Georgetown’s three. Sophomores Corey Brewer and Al Horford bolster the Gators’ offense, and sophomore Taurean Green starts at point guard.
But Head Coach Billy Donovan, now in his 10th season, said that it’s too late in the season for inexperience to be a factor.
“The basketball part of it – playing unselfishly – and the experience is not going to be the issue,” Donovan said. “We have played too many games for that. Joakim Noah is not a sophomore anymore and neither is Taurean [Green] and Al [Horford]. . They have too many games under their belts right now.”
Defensively, the Hoyas don’t have the luxury of allowing one of the Gators to score all the points while they focus on limiting shots by the other players on the floor. Florida doesn’t boast any players like Duke’s J.J. Redick or Rutgers’ Quincy Douby, who account for a huge percentage of their teams’ scoring.
“They’re a lot like us in that they have four or five guys that score between eight and 15 or 16 points a game,” Head Coach John Thompson III said. “On any given night, they have different people that, if you are inattentive to them, they can hurt you. A lot of attention goes to their frontcourt, as it should. But you can fall into that trap and then they have perimeter people that can hurt you.”
Florida easily beats Georgetown in depth, with nine players who average at least nine minutes per game.
If anything, the Hoyas have lost depth in recent games, relying primarily on Hibbert, Ashanti Cook, Jeff Green and Darrel Owens. Those four combined to score every point in the team’s second round win over Ohio State.
Given how well Hibbert did last weekend against the Buckeyes, Florida will likely try to shut the sophomore down early in the game, which will force Cook, Green and Owens to take full advantage of open looks on the perimeter.
Sinking long balls in the first half will be critical if Georgetown wants to give Hibbert any chance to open up the middle later on.
“The way Roy’s been playing, I’m loving it,” Green said on Tuesday. “The more he plays well the better our team will be. If he keeps playing well, I’m gonna keep throwing it down to the big fella. If they start doubling him, we’ve got to prepared to knock down our shots, and that’s what we’ve been doing the past two games.”
Both the Hoyas and the Gators put up impressive performances last weekend. Florida won its first two games over Southern Alabama and Wisconsin-Milwaukee by a combined total of 48 points. Georgetown, meanwhile, had one of its best all-around efforts of the season in its 70-52 win over the Big Ten regular season champion.
Florida and Georgetown have met just three times before with the Hoyas holding a 2-1 lead in the series. The Gators won the last meeting in November 1999, a 72-62 decision at the Maui Invitational in Hawaii.
Though Florida won the only game played between these two programs at a neutral site – the other meetings were split between Washington, D.C., and Gainsville, Fla. – Georgetown was victorious in the teams’ only postseason meeting, a 71-69 win in the first round of the 1998 National Invitation Tournament.
After reaching the second round twice while coaching at Princeton, Sunday’s win provides Thompson with his first trip to the Sweet 16.
But to get to take the Hoyas to the Elite Eight for the eighth time in school history, the 40-year-old head coach knows his team will need more than words.
“Once the ball goes up, it’s how we act, how we play that’s important,” Thompson said. “Hopefully, whatever that phrase is [Owens said], he’ll play like that.”
