NEW YORK – There are only two players remaining from the Hoyas’ 2008 run to the Big East tournament championship, but the similarities between the two teams have been unmistakable at Madison Square Garden.

The 2010 version has now knocked off three teams that beat them during the regular season in convincing fashion, harkening back to the dominance of the 2007-2008 Hoyas when Austin Freeman and Chris Wright were freshmen role players.

Not only has Georgetown won three straight games, it has run opponents off the floor by an average of 16.7 points per game. A coolly efficient offense has shot 52.3 percent over three days.

“We’re doing a very good job now of being aggressive but at the same time making the right decisions and making the right reads,” Head Coach John Thompson III explains.

In 2008, Georgetown walloped Villanova by 19 and then dismantled West Virginia – which claimed to have been robbed of a win earlier in the year by a Patrick Ewing Jr. block/goaltend – by 17 en route to the title game.

These Hoyas have the cocksure swagger of Ewing and his teammates, as evidenced by the three post players confident enough to step behind the three-point line and loft jumpers in a semifinal win over Marquette. Center Greg Monroe and forward Julian Vaughn each found the bottom of the net, showing a soft touch for two guys that do most of their work in the paint.

When they were in the lane, Monroe and Vaughn were imposing forces. Each swatted two shots, including Monroe’s spectacular block of Maurice Acker to erase a breakaway late in the first half.

Only an eight-seed, the Hoyas are striking fear into the hearts of opponents like the back-to-back league champions did in 2008.

“Georgetown was outstanding,” Marquette Head Coach Buzz Williams said after the Hoyas clobbered his fifth-seeded Golden Eagles. “They absolutely annihilated us.”

With New York’s most colorful basketball fan Spike Lee sporting a Georgetown sweatshirt, the Hoyas beat their fourth-straight Big East opponent for the first time since, you guessed it, 2008.

Leading the Hoya charge is again a star center.

In 2008 it was all-American Roy Hibbert scoring time and again in the post. Now it is the versatile Monroe, falling three assists short of a triple-double for the second straight game.

On three consecutive possessions in the second half Friday night, Monroe scored in the paint, hit a three and then ran the fast-break off a defensive rebound, setting up Freeman for an and-one lay up. The sequence opened up an 18-point lead and the rout was on.

Finally, and perhaps most telling, the Georgetown players appear to enjoy winning more than they have in the past two seasons. The Big Three of Monroe, Freeman and Wright – normally reserved in post-game press conferences – were holding court in front of a horde of reporters after their win over Marquette.

Responding to a question about the Hoyas’ suspected Achilles Heel of fatigue among the starters, Thompson turned to Wright.

“We’re in shape, we’re ready to play [and] we want to win,” the coach said as his point guard flexed his bicep. “Fatigue is not an issue. Chris, do it again.”

Wright lifted his arm once more and hit his bicep, confident that his team will have the energy and strength for their fourth game in four days on Saturday night.

Well aware of the fact that their three wins have come over teams that beat them in the regular season, the Big Three gave a resounding and unison “yes” when asked if they had a bit of a chip on their shoulders.

Monroe, normally soft-spoken and businesslike in interviews, deadpanned, “For the record, that was a yes.”

In the title game against West Virginia, the Hoyas will have another chance for revenge and an opportunity to top their 2008 counterparts. As the No. 1 seed, the Hibbert-led Hoyas fell to seventh-seeded Pittsburgh in the title game.

The third-seeded Mountaineers, who beat a Freeman-less Hoya squad less than two weeks ago, escaped last-second scares from Cincinnati and Notre Dame to reach the finals.

Playing in their third Big East title game in four years, the swagger and success of the 2008 are back in action.

Said Thompson, “There’s nothing better than Saturday night in New York City.”