Head Coach John Thompson III and players Nate Lubick, Markel Starks and Otto Porter Jr. address the media after Georgetown’s loss to FGCU.
Confession: I don’t hate the Georgetown offense.
I know, it’s crazy. After watching a team full of no-names run the Hoyas out of the gym in March for the fifth time in six years, even the biggest John Thompson III apologists were filled with doubts about his modified Princeton system. So how could I — a basketball fanatic and longtime advocate of the 1-4 high — not join the masses in demanding a change?
The short answer is that the X’s and O’s aren’t the problem. Now for the long answer.
It’s easy to see why people blame Thompson for the early exits. He’s seen players come and go in his eight-year tenure at the helm, but the March results remain the same: A four-point loss to Davidson in the 2 vs. 10 game. 15 points to Ohio in the 3-14. 18 to VCU in the 6-11. Three to NC State in the 3-11. 10 to Florida Gulf Coast, a school that began Division I play last year, in the 2-15 game. At many schools, that sort of resume will earn you a one-way ticket to the unemployment line.
But Thompson is a beloved figure on the Hilltop, both because his father is practically deified and because he’s guided the team to the national top-10 rankings in each of the last seven years. Serious calls for his firing have been few and far between.
The logical conclusion for most fans, then, is to attack the offense. It provides a systemic solution to the problem without fully condemning one of the Hilltop’s most beloved figures. It sounds smart without being too controversial, the perfect solution to toss out at cocktail — OK, who are we kidding here? Keg — parties.
The only problem is, it doesn’t hold up to even a cursory examination.
Look at the final scores of some of Georgetown’s most famous March “chokes.” FGCU dropped 78 on the Hoyas. VCU 74. Ohio (gulp) 97. The common theme isn’t the Hoyas’ inability to score; it’s their inability to stop the other team — a strange pattern, considering that Thompson’s boys rank among the nation’s best defenders year in and year out.
The idea that a talented, disciplined team would simply forget how to play defense every March is preposterous. Is Georgetown simply falling victim to impossibly poor odds, running each year into the Showtime Lakers reincarnate as a mid-major in the opening weekend?
Not quite.
While at least VCU and FGCU were underrated by the tournament committee in 2011 and 2013, respectively, you don’t lose to double-digit seeds five times in six years simply because of bad luck. Even the unexpectedly excellent underdogs eventually fell to teams considered no better than Georgetown during the regular season.
The answer to this conundrum lies in the pace of play. The Hoyas and many of their brethren in the old Big East were notorious for turning each game into a slowed-down, physical battle. These months spent in the trenches are usually viewed as a positive come tourney time, but it may in fact be a handicap — especially when combined with a rigid offensive system like Georgetown’s.
The knock-down, drag-out strategy worked fine in the Big East, where all parties had accepted the rules of engagement and referees turned a blind eye to light fouls — usually meaning “fouls that don’t draw blood.” That’s not the case everywhere, and the national tournament is not played by Big East rules. This makes the tournament more watchable for most of the American public, but it also means that Georgetown can’t just slug out a series of 55-45 wins.
So when a team has a willingness — or, in FGCU’s case, an all-consuming need — to throw alley-oop passes and jack three-pointers five seconds into the shot clock, it throws traditional Big East teams for a loop. Their tournament lives depend on how well they adjust to this dramatic change in style of play.
And so far, the Hoyas haven’t adjusted well.
This is the facet of Georgetown’s perennial disappointment that can be pinned on Thompson. The Hoyas impose their deliberate style on nearly everyone they play, forcing most teams to rely on discipline on offense and patience on defense to win games. That works great against Louisville or Syracuse. But when an underdog catches fire and breaks open a double-digit lead, what does Thompson do?
Until now, the answer has been to stay the course. But Dubya’s old refrain won’t satisfy the legions of angry fans and — more importantly — doesn’t fix the problem.
Thompson needs to adapt his approach based on the opponent’s personnel and the events of the game. This means keeping Markel Starks in the game with two fouls when he’s the only one who can throw it in the ocean. This means running pick-and-rolls with Starks and Otto Porter Jr. when the offense is stagnating. This means reaching further into the bench to assemble a fastbreak-friendly lineup and keep the big guns fresh.
This does not mean scrapping the offense.
Georgetown’s problem isn’t the quick passes, off-ball screens and constant motion that comprise Thompson’s altered Princeton attack. The Hoyas rank among the top teams in the country in assists and field goal percentage every year. You don’t do that — and win 25 games a year — without an effective system, no matter how talented your roster is.
The problem is Thompson’s lack of adaptability. When the offense works, it’s among the most difficult to defend in the world. But when the situation calls for it — when a fearless, hot-shooting mid-major has the Hoyas on their heels and the offense isn’t providing quick enough scoring to make up the deficit — Thompson can’t be afraid to make adjustments.
To his credit, Thompson has adjusted his system each offseason, to the point that it barely resembles the textbook “Princeton offense” that Pete Carril’s teams employed. Still, there is no one-size-fits-all offense in basketball. And while the “read and react” philosophy embedded in Georgetown’s system is designed to naturally adapt to any opposing defense, that hasn’t been enough. The off-season and between-game changes will likely remain irrelevant as long as the Hoyas fail to make in-game adjustments.
What does the future look like? Georgetown would undoubtedly struggle — at least initially — if Thompson scraps the offense, as his recruiting has centered around this system for years. If he doesn’t change anything, he risks continued postseason woes and more outrage from the fanbase.
But if Thompson keeps the halfcourt set intact but improves his team’s adaptability — by adding a few quick-hitting plays and emergency lineups, or by hiring a skilled in-game assistant — Georgetown could preserve its tried-and-true regular-season system and avoid another early Big Dance disappointment.
In this area, at least, the breakup of the Big East may prove to be a blessing in disguise. The new conference will develop its own culture and overall style of play, hopefully one more conducive to freewheeling offenses than the old Big East was. With a more flexible system and experience playing against high-octane attacks, the Hoyas of the future would be much better equipped to deal with the hot-shooting mid-majors that have been their kryptonite for the past six years.
We don’t know what adjustments Thompson will make this offseason, but one thing’s for certain: Once again, he’ll have at least a week longer than most expected to make them. That alone suggests that when the head coach returns to McDonough in the fall, he’ll have clear changes in mind.
PAT CURRAN is a junior in the College and a former sports editor of The Hoya.
