MEN’S BASKETBALL Hoyas Trounce Pirates Seton Hall Loses Composure, Shoes By Sean Gormley Hoya Staff Writer

Charles Nailen/The Hoya Freshman guard Drew Hall had no trouble getting past the Pirates’ Andre Barrett.

It was a coming out party for Georgetown at MCI Center against Seton Hall on Wednesday night.

First it was Gerald Riley playing his best game as a Hoya, then it was freshman Harvey Thomas showing why he was such a highly-rated recruit. And of course there was the team as a whole, dominating the Pirates and cruising to an 84-58 win in front of 7,589 Hoya fans that had plenty to cheer about.

“The turning point was the defense on [guards Andre] Barrett and [Darius] Lane,” Head Coach Craig Esherick said. “It made it difficult for them to score.”

Leading the defensive effort was sophomore swingman Gerald Riley, who kept Lane in check, holding the senior Second Team All-Big East guard scoreless while dropping in 16 points of his own on 6-for-8 shooting.

“Gerald’s game is growing,” Esherick said. “Defensively he has surprised me.”

Despite Riley’s breakout game, Georgetown (11-5, 2-2 Big East) went to its traditional bread and butter for scoring early: the big men inside. Playboy All-American forward Mike Sweetney and junior center Wesley Wilson scored Georgetown’s first 10 points of the game and finished with 14 and 10 points, respectively, dominating inside against the smaller Seton Hall frontcourt of Seton Hall (9-8, 2-3 Big East).

Despite Georgetown’s inside advantage, the Hoyas led just 22-20 more than 10 minutes into the game, but that was as close as the Pirates would come the rest of the way. A 10-2 run highlighted by six points from Riley widened the lead to 32-22, and the Hoyas took a nine point lead into the half – virtually identical to the lead Georgetown had in its previous two games, games in which the second half was the difference between an overtime loss (Rutgers) and a blowout win (Boston College).

The first 34 seconds after the break showed how this game was going to go. A ferocious Sweetney dunk and Riley layup on a fast break stretched the Hoyas’ lead to 40-27, and the rout was on.

Georgetown simply outclassed Seton Hall for the next 10 minutes to take a 69-39 lead with 9:40 remaining and cruised from there to a 26-point victory.

The transition into a blowout was capped by a play in which senior point guard Kevin Braswell schooled Seton Hall guard Ty Shine so badly that Shine bit on one of Braswell’s fakes and became so tangled in himself that he fell down, losing his shoe in the process. Just as Shine’s dignity left the building, so did the Hall’s chances, as the Pirates faced an insurmountable 30-point lead with just 10 minutes left in the game.

The blowout win was not the result of Georgetown’s success in any one aspect on the floor but rather the Hoyas’ ability to dominate the Pirates in every single aspect of the game. Georgetown outrebounded Seton Hall by 13, held them to 36.8 percent field goal shooting and limited the Pirates to an astounding 1 for 17 from behind the arc while the Hoyas converted more than 50 percent of their field goals and three-pointers.

Most significantly, the Hoyas let the game come to them at both ends of the court, not overextending on defense (after a few lapses in the opening minutes) while exercising patience at the offensive end to get good looks at the basket.

Even forward Harvey Thomas was able to get into the flow of the offense, something he has struggled to do largely because of his late start to the season and his limited minutes of action. Thomas scored a career-high 12 points, which included a high-flying alley-oop dunk off a feed from Braswell and three possessions in a row in which he attempted three-pointers, sinking one and getting fouled on the other two.

“I thought Harvey played his best game [as a Hoya],” Esherick said about his athletic freshman forward.

Coming off back-to-back 25-plus point wins in Big East play, Georgetown will play host to Pittsburgh tomorrow at noon, but Esherick still thinks the best is yet to come: “We have to sustain our play. I hope we can play better. I think we can play better.”

The Panthers (15-3, 3-2 Big East) fell out of the Top 25 after losing back-to-back games to Notre Dame and Seton Hall but will present a significant challenge for the Hoyas – Pittsburgh was the team that knocked off Georgetown one year ago after the Hoyas went 16-0 to start the season.