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Freshman center Greg Monroe

Georgetown has played a lot of meaningful Big East games over the past couple of years.

There was the contest against Pittsburgh two years ago when both the Panthers and Hoyas entered the game 11-2 in conference play. Georgetown won and took the Big East crown a week later.

Last year, Georgetown went into the final tilt of the regular season against Louisville tied with the Cardinals at 14-3 in the league. Again, the Hoyas won to secure their second-straight title.

Tomorrow, Georgetown travels to Cincinnati to play a Bearcat team with an identical conference record to the Hoyas – a measly 3-4. Tomorrow’s game, which will break a tie for ninth place in the league, is not nearly as important as the aforementioned games were in terms of the standings. It is, however, still vital to the team’s success this year.

Georgetown, coming off of its first three-game losing streak in nearly three calendar years, needs to stop the bleeding. With a road date at No. 8 Marquette – the current leader in the Big East – looming on Saturday, a loss at Cincinnati could quickly turn the Hoyas’ bump in the road into a five-game skid.

After losing to Seton Hall on Sunday, a team that had not won a league game in its first six tries, Head Coach John Thompson III said, “We’re in a hole, we’re in a rut, we’re in a bad situation right now. We gotta figure out collectively, everyone in that locker room, how to get out of it.”

In order to get back on track, the Hoyas need to start hitting three-pointers. In the three-game losing streak, Georgetown is 10-of-53 from beyond the arc for an atrocious 18.9 percent. In those three games, the Hoyas’ main threats from deep have gone ice cold. Junior forward DaJuan Summers is 4-of-17, senior guard Jessie Sapp is 3-for-8, and sophomore guards Austin Freeman and Chris Wright are 1-of-8 and 0-for-7, respectively.

The poor shooting has been a topic of discussion following the last two games. After losing to West Virginia on Thursday, Thompson said that the team’s misfires on the offensive end led to poor defense on the other end of the floor. Against Seton Hall, the Hoyas missed their final 10 attempts from beyond the arc, yet continued to shoot the threes down the stretch despite the fact that freshman center Greg Monroe had been effective inside.

“You’ve heard me say it before: We have good shooters, guys who can make shots,” Thompson said after losing to the Pirates. “The last two minutes there – and I don’t know exactly how many – I think all we took was threes and that was not the plan.”

The Hoyas, who have shown that they will continue to shoot from beyond the arc, need to find the bottom of the net if they hope to climb out from the low point of the season.

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