The Georgetown Hoyas have done it again. For the fourth year in a row, the Georgetown University men’s basketball team’s season ended in the first round of the Big East tournament. For the third time in the season, the Hoyas (17-15, 8-12 Big East) fell victim to the DePaul University Blue Demons (14-18, 4-16 Big East), this time in a 71-67 loss March 12 at Madison Square Garden.
Despite Georgetown being seeded No. 7, the No. 10 seed Blue Demons served as a special type of kryptonite for the Hoyas this season. In their first matchup against DePaul this season Jan. 17, the underdog Blue Demons secured a comfortable 73-68 victory over an injury-plagued Georgetown team missing junior guard Jayden Epps and first-year center Thomas Sorber. In their March 8 rematch, their final game of the regular season, DePaul once again captured an 83-77 upset off a disappointing defensive performance from the Hoyas.
Georgetown also lacked a key player in their first-round matchup in first-year forward Caleb Williams, who was out for the second straight game. Williams’ absence comes in addition to the continued absence of first-year standout and all-Big East freshman team selection Thomas Sorber, who underwent season-ending surgery Feb. 25 after injuring his foot against the Butler University Bulldogs on Feb. 15.
The Blue Demons won the tipoff, but the Hoyas got on board first with a long-range jumper from graduate guard Micah Peavy. DePaul guard Layden Blocker and Epps then traded 3-pointers, before 5 points from DePaul guard C.J. Gunn, free throws from Epps and another Peavy jumper brought the score to a 10-8 Georgetown advantage.
The following six minutes were all downhill for the Hoyas as the Blue Demons embarked on a 19-2 run. DePaul’s Gunn and guard Layden Blocker kicked things off with back-to-back 3-pointers, while Georgetown missed six straight field goals. Peavy temporarily stopped the bleeding as he slammed home an emphatic dunk, but DePaul kept rolling, scoring on seemingly every trip up. The Hoyas failed to find the net, and their defense began to get frustrated and commit fouls.
The DePaul offense steamrolled the Hoyas to a 27-12 advantage before sophomore guard Curtis Williams Jr. finally jolted the Hoyas back to life with a made layup at the 8:41 mark. After two more made free throws from the Blue Demons, the Hoyas amazingly responded with a 12-2 run of their own, buoyed by five points from sophomore forward Drew Fielder. As the Hoyas cut their deficit to 29-26, the tables turned, with Georgetown suddenly the team draining buckets and the DePaul squad missing them.
The teams continued to trade buckets throughout the rest of the half, with the Hoyas drawing ever closer to the Blue Demons until a Williams Jr. three put the Hoyas ahead, 38-37, with under a minute left in the half. Georgetown managed to hold onto the slim lead, ending a half with a 40-38 advantage.
The Hoyas came out blazing in the second half, opening up a 7-point advantage to the Blue Demons off a 3-pointer from sophomore guard Malik Mack and back-to-back dunks from Fielder. But that would be the most daylight Georgetown would see between them and DePaul, as the Blue Demons began to mount their comeback with successive 3-pointers and a dunk from forward N.J. Benson. DePaul tied it up at 51-51 with a 3-pointer from guard Isaiah Rivera before taking the lead off another dunk from Benson.
Both teams then fell into a scoring drought, with only one basket in open play over almost two minutes as the two teams traded missed shots and turnovers. A dunk from Peavy and 5-point blitz from Benson got the scoring going again, and opened up a 9-point lead for the Blue Demons with six minutes remaining.
With time running out for the Hoyas to mount a comeback, Peavy once again slammed home another dunk, and Georgetown closed the deficit to 3 points with three minutes remaining, despite Fielder fouling out at the 4:51 mark. The Blue Demons opened their lead back up to 6 with a minute left off a 3-pointer and a gravity-defying tip shot, but the Hoyas again fought back, closing the gap to 70-67 off a 3-point play from Peavy with 50 seconds left.
In a burst of hope for Georgetown, DePaul missed a 3-point attempt on the next play, before fouling Epps on the other end of the court. But faced with a 1-and-1 free throw attempt with 11 seconds left, he airballed it, and DePaul ran out the clock to a 71-67 win.
In the final game of his collegiate career, Peavy yet again carried the Hoyas with his 15th 20-plus point game this season, recording 26 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 steals. The all-Big East first team player will now look to convert his excellent season into a potential NBA career.
Three other Hoyas reached double figures, including Williams Jr. and Epps, who had 11 and 10 points each, respectively. Fielder registered solid contributions on both sides of the ball before fouling out, tallying a double-double with 11 points and 11 rebounds, 8 of them defensively. On DePaul’s side of the ball, Benson exploded for 18 points in 19 minutes off the bench in his first game after being out for over a month due to a hand injury.
DePaul rode a strong shooting advantage over Georgetown to win, posting 51% from the field and 37.5% from beyond the arc compared to figures of 41.4% and 25%, respectively, for the Hoyas. While Georgetown held the advantage in both turnovers, with 8 compared to DePaul’s 15, and second chance points, with an 8-3 advantage, the figures were not enough for the Hoyas to overcome the Blue Demons’ hustle and efficient offense.
Head Coach Ed Cooley said many of the Hoyas’ struggles in the game mirrored the trajectory of their other games against the Blue Demons this season, with the team lacking emotional and physical discipline.
“This is the third game we played them. Three games in a row, it all played out the same exact way,” Cooley said in a postgame press conference. “There’s no excuses of what players we didn’t have. The players we had out there, I thought our emotional discipline, our physical discipline, was null and void in all three of the games we played against them.”
“You have to have some emotional intelligence. You have to have some physical toughness,” he added.
Cooley said that despite the loss, he was proud of the improvement the team made throughout his tenure so far as head coach, especially given the outsize number of injuries the Hoyas faced this season to key players.
“Building an organization is a process,” Cooley said. “I’m really proud of where we’ve come. We’ve had more injuries this year that we’ve gone through as an organization than any of my 19 years as a head coach. I thought we dealt with it the best we can. When you lose someone who in my opinion, my humble opinion, should have at bare minimum been rookie of the year.”
With the 2024-25 season over, Cooley and the Hoyas will await the news of Sorber’s decision for next year and look to retool and recharge their roster, hoping to continue the upward trend of the Cooley era in the 2025-26 season.