For the first time in their lives, Brandon Bowman and Darrel Owens had a reason to sit down and watch the NCAA tournament selection show.
Bowman and Owens joined their teammates, Head Coach John Thompson III, and several hundred students in Hoya Court on Sunday night to see the program.
“The last three years, it’s been disappointing,” Bowman said. “I tried to stay away from it. It’s hard to watch college basketball after you lose. . It really hurts.”
Though certain that their team would receive an NCAA tournament bid, the Hoyas had to wait until the very end of the hour-long show to learn their fate: a first-round matchup with Northern Iowa on Friday in Dayton, Ohio.
“As the selection show went on, I was wondering whether they forgot about us,” Thompson said. “But once you see Northern Iowa pop up, I look at the assistants and say `You know anything about them?’ Now it’s time to go back to work.”
Earning their first invitation to the NCAAs since 2001, Sunday night was vindication for Bowman, Owens and Ashanti Cook. The three leading members of the senior class have remained with the team for one of the most turbulent four-year stretches in Georgetown basketball history, from the dismissal of Craig Esherick to the hiring of the son of legendary former Head Coach John Thompson Jr.
“It’s been a long time,” Owens said. “Going out as a senior, it almost brought a tear to my eye . One day when I talk to my kids, I can always say that I played with Coach Thompson. I played on a team that changed the program.”
A 21-9 campaign and a trip to the semifinals of the Big East tournament earned the Hoyas a seventh seed in the Minneapolis region. Joining Georgetown in that region are top-seed Villanova, ACC tournament finalist Boston College and SEC champion Florida, along with Big 10 champion Ohio State – Georgetown’s likely opponent in the second round.
“We already played three No. 1 seeds in the tournament,” Owens said, referring to Villanova, Connecticut and Duke. “Those are three of the toughest teams probably in the tournament. We know what it takes to win and we know what it takes to face tough teams during the regular season.”
Thompson added: “For any team to make it through Big East play and have the opportunity to play in the postseason .You are battle tested. You’ve had a lot of joy and a lot of heartbreak.”
In addition to some of the team’s difficult opponents, Cook said his team would benefit from its unlikely exit at the Big East tournament, a 58-57 loss to Syracuse on Friday.
“You try to learn from that, how to close out games,” he said. “That’s key at this time in arch, being able to close out teams when you have them down.”
Playing in the Missouri Valley Conference, the Northern Iowa Panthers (23-9) played a few difficult opponents themselves, getting non-conference victories over then-No. 13 Iowa, then-No. 24 Bucknell and at LSU.
Thompson said he had spent a few minutes looking at tape of the Panthers immediately after the selection show, but that he would spend several hours Sunday night studying up on his team’s first-round opponent.
Northern Iowa is led by senior guard Ben Jacobson, who averages 14.2 points per game. The Panthers are a strong shooting team, with junior forward Grant Stout (12.1 ppg) 55.7 and sophomore forward Eric Coleman (11.7 ppg) each averaging better than 55 percent from the floor.
Georgetown will have to rely on its Big East-leading defense to win its first game of the 2006 tournament, its 23rd NCAA appearance. Thompson was 2-4 in four NCAA appearances at Princeton.
Hoya Blue is still trying to determine how many student tickets will be available for Friday’s game, according to President Kurt Muhlbauer (COL ’07). He said his organization will organize a road trip and travel and lodging accommodations are being arranged.
“We don’t want anyone to miss out on this opportunity,” Muhlbauer wrote in an e-mail. “We’ll be working our hardest to get as many students as possible to Dayton and making it as easy as possible for them.”
Times for all of the 32 first-round games will be announced onday.
