The Hilltop follows Georgetown men’s basketball like a religion. But this year, while our collective eye was trained on Chris Wright’s wrist, the Georgetown women’s basketball team quietly put together a banner year.

The Blue and Gray entered the 2010-2011 season with higher expectations than ever before, fresh off a shocking 26-7 campaign the year before and their first NCAA tournament berth since 1993.

Several Lady Hoyas began the year with their work cut out for them: Sophomore guard and reigning Big East rookie of the year Sugar Rodgers sought to prove that her stellar freshman season was no fluke; junior forward Tia Magee was out to show she had fully recovered from an ACL tear; guard Monica McNutt, the lone senior, faced her last chance at a deep postseason run.

Georgetown opened the season with a bang. The scrappy band of undersized posts and streaky shooters knocked off the likes of No. 21 Maryland and No. 4 Tennessee early on, smothering them with Head Coach Terri Williams-Flournoy’s high-pressure defense and running them ragged with fast break offense.

But the Big East’s reputation as a basketball minefield is no myth, and the Lady Hoyas alternated huge conference wins with inexplicable losses.

“One of the disappointments would be our play in the Big East,” Williams-Flournoy said. “Being tied for seventh wasn’t as good as we would have expected it to be, especially after last year.”

Rock bottom came at the end of conference play, when Georgetown dropped its season finale to lowly South Florida.

After a second-round conference tournament exit, the Lady Hoyas entered the Big Dance as a No. 5 seed and one of eight Big East teams in the field. They demolished 12th-seeded Princeton in the opening round at Comcast Center in College Park, Md., to earn a date with fourth-seeded Maryland on the Terrapins’ home floor.

But the much-anticipated game quickly turned into an anticlimactic blowout as Rodgers led Georgetown in a 79-57 romp.

“Everybody probably thinks that the Tennessee game was the biggest high point,” Williams-Flournoy said. “Nah, beating Maryland twice was the biggest high point. Tennessee was just the icing on the cake.”

Having advanced to the Sweet 16 for the second time in program history, Georgetown prepared to play David to Connecticut’s Goliath at the Liacouras Center in Philadelphia. The Lady Hoyas had been competitive with the top-seeded Huskies at McDonough Arena during the regular season, but no experts gave the upstarts a chance against the most dominant team in the history of the women’s game.

For 30 minutes in the City of Brotherly Love, the roles were reversed, and Georgetown led for much of the game. McNutt, not Maya Moore, looked like the senior All-American. Williams-Flournoy, not Geno Auriemma, looked like the coaching legend. Georgetown, not Connecticut, looked like the seven-time national champion.

Unfortunately for the Lady Hoyas, “almost” counts only in horseshoes and hand grenades. The Huskies pounced during a Georgetown second-half scoring drought and denied the Lady Hoyas what would have been their first-ever Elite Eight bid.

The team’s postseason run put the spotlight on several players often left in Rodgers’s shadow. McNutt provided leadership and clutch scoring, and Magee — who spent the offseason recovering from an ACL tear — displayed impressive quickness.

“I thought Tia Magee did a great job of making a comeback after tearing her ACL,” Williams-Flournoy said. “You definitely have to commend her for coming back. The effort she put into getting back on the floor for us was unbelievable.”

The Lady Hoyas are poised to continue their winning ways next season with the return of four of five starters and the promise of a strong recruiting class, headlined by 2011 Washington Post player of the year Taylor Brown. Williams-Flournoy is among the most accomplished young coaches in the country, as shown by her recent selection as assistant coach of the USA Basketball World University Games team.

Georgetown will face some new and daunting challenges, though.

“One of the things we’ll have to have is someone to step up and take on the leadership role with Monica McNutt graduating, one of the biggest leaders on our team,” Williams-Flournoy said. “I think Tia Magee’s going to have a very good senior year, [junior guard] Alexa Roche is going to have to step up. … And [junior guard] Rubylee Wright… did a good job this year, [but] she’ll have to do an even better job next year.”

For now, the Georgetown women can admire their work. McNutt should be commended for guiding an inexperienced team to the NCAA tournament’s third round. Magee successfully came back from a devastating injury. Rodgers proved that she — and by extension, her team — is much more than a one-hit wonder.

“We definitely exceeded our expectations,” Williams-Flournoy said.

All in all, the Lady Hoyas put together a great season. But for this group, the sky’s the limit.