Andreas Jeninga/The Hoya Georgetown sophomore center Roy Hibbert puts up a hook shot as teammate senior forward Brandon Bowman and three members of the DePaul team look on. By ichael Kurdyla Hoya Staff Writer Friday, February 3, 2006

ROSEMONT, Ill. – DePaul sophomore guard Cliff Clinkscales, making just his fifth start of the season, scored a short jumper to put his team on the board first, 2-0.

Then Hoya sophomore guard Jon Wallace sank one three-pointer. And another. Wallace and his teammates went on to hit six of their first nine shots, tearing away to an 18-2 lead en route to a 64-44 win over the Blue Demons Tuesday night.

It was the Hoyas’ second-straight convincing victory over a mediocre Big East opponent, following a 76-57 slugging of Cincinnati last Saturday.

DePaul (8-11, 1-7) did not start its leading scorer, junior guard Sammy Meija, who suffered an ankle sprain in a loss to arquette on Jan. 25. Averaging nearly 16 points per outing, Meija did not practice with the team this week.

Even when the 6-foot-6 junior entered the game midway through the Hoyas’ 18-0 run, he showed none of his usual ferocity and was held scoreless in 16 minutes of first-half play. He did tally five points after halftime.

“He was laboring,” first-year DePaul Head Coach Jerry Wainwright said of Meija. “We’ll have to see where he’s at in practice this week.”

Sophomore center Wesley Green was also limited by a broken bone in his foot. Green was held scoreless in six attempts from the floor.

Sophomore center Roy Hibbert paced 17th-ranked Georgetown (15-4, 6-2) with 17 points, marking the seventh time this season the 7-foot-2 sophomore has led his team in scoring.

“Roy played well, particularly in the first half,” Head Coach John Thompson III said. “His confidence is up. He played well early in the year, then he had like a 10-day stretch where he forgot he was good. Now he’s starting to remember he’s good again.

“We were fortunate he got going,” Thompson added. “He did a very good job today of establishing position and making shots.”

The Demons, using their 10th different starting lineup of the year, struggled to find an answer to Hibbert.

“We had so many guys miss practice, I wanted to start some bigger players,” Wainwright said. “I wanted to give [6-foot-7 junior forward] Marcus Heard an opportunity.”

Heard started just his second game of the season, replacing sophomore forward Karron Clarke. He had two points in 14 minutes, while Clarke scored nine points in 23 minutes off the bench.

For Georgetown, sophomore forward Jeff Green contributed 15 points and senior Brandon Bowman added 10 of his own, giving Georgetown at least three players in double digits for the fourth-straight game.

After opening up a double-digit lead, the Hoyas played strong defense and never let the Demons make a game of it. DePaul could get no closer than 13 before intermission, hitting two foul shots and then converting a Marc Egerson turnover into a dunk by Clarke.

But Bowman had the last word in the first half, nailing a three-pointer from the left corner with one second left to take a 34-18 lead into the locker room.

Georgetown outrebounded DePaul, 38-25. The Demons only managed to pull down seven boards on the offensive end of the floor.

Despite their heavy advantage on the scoreboard, the Hoyas did not play cleanly for stretches of the game.

Responding to a question about coaching the whole game as if he were nursing a two-point lead, Thompson said, “It felt like that the whole game. It felt like they were getting ready to make a run.”

He added, “We got a little more careless than we’ve been – particularly in the first half with turnovers. But at the end of the day, I thought we played well. To come on the road in this league is important, is key, is hard.”

The victory before 9,258 mostly subdued fans at Allstate Arena gave the Hoyas their fifth consecutive win. The Demons, meanwhile, suffered their sixth straight loss, sending them into a second-to-last place tie in the Big East with Notre Dame (10-9, 1-7).

“We keep coming out with slow starts,” said DePaul sophomore guard Draelon Burns, who tallied a team-high 12 points. “If we keep having to dig ourselves out of a hole, it gets harder to move on.”

Georgetown faces its first ranked opponent since upsetting No. 2 Duke on Jan. 21 when No. 9 Pittsburgh (17-2, 6-2 Big East) comes to town on Sunday. The Panthers were handed their second loss of the season by No.1 Connecticut, an 80-76 defeat, the same day the Hoyas took down the Demons.

Sunday’s tip-off at MCI Center is slated for noon.