Image Contributor
Senior guard Jessie Sapp
Give at least some of the credit for this watershed victory, the Hoyas’ first in six tries, to team manager Chris Golski (COL ’09).
As Jessie Sapp tells it, Golski approached Sapp after Monday’s practice eager to run the senior guard through a few extra shooting drills.
Sapp agreed, the two stayed in McDonough Gymnasium for an extra hour, and Sapp searched for that rhythm that had eluded him for the past dozen or so games.
Whatever Sapp did, it worked. For the first time in 14 games, since Dec. 8 against Savannah State, Sapp scored in double figures, tallying 11 points on 4-of-5 shooting (2-of-2 on threes) in Georgetown’s 57-47 win over Rutgers. Sapp scored his first three early in the first half when the Hoyas trailed 8-4 and his second to open the second half and push the Georgetown lead into double digits.
“The thing that stands out with me,” Georgetown Head Coach John Thompson III said after the game. “Jessie stayed after practice [Monday] for about an hour with Chris Golski, our manager, shooting, just getting shots and he made shots today. That is something we can control, he can control, but he put it to work and he made shots today.”
“We need Sapp, when he gets open shots, to go in. . We need this guy over my left shoulder to be Jessie Sapp.”
Sapp’s smile, a grin that is hard to wipe off the jocular Harlem native’s face but one that had not been seen much of late, was unmistakable. So too was the relief in Thompson’s postgame mood.
“Losing is awful. It’s awful,” he said. “And so you know we took a baby step today. We got a win. There’s a lot we still have to improve on, a lot we have to get better at.”
With the win, Georgetown (13-8, 4-6 Big East) inches back toward .500 in league play, while Rutgers falls to 10-13 (1-9). The Scarlet Knights were led by freshman guard Mike Rosario, who scored 20 points, but struggled with his shot for much of the game, finishing 7-of-17.
The Hoyas trailed 14-12 with 9:40 left in the first half before going on an 11-2 run over the next 6:11 to take a 23-16 advantage. During that span, Rutgers turned the ball over six times and took just two shots.
For the half, the Scarlet Knights turned the ball over 12 times, seven of which were credited to the Hoyas as steals, and scored only 18 points. Georgetown, meanwhile, had just five turnovers against seven assists and got good looks at the basket. The team struggled to score the ball (27 points), but Thompson was happy that the Hoyas’ offensive struggles did not affect the defensive intensity.
“Especially in the first half, I really liked what I saw in the first half because we shot poorly . and in the past when we’ve missed shots we’ve not been as attentive to every other aspect of the game and when we’ve missed shots, we’ve gotten an angst and lost focus and the understanding that we grind out victories,” Thompson said.
The Hoyas started the second half with a much more cohesive offense attack, jumping out to a 14-point lead in the first 1:05, an 18-point advantage with 4:02 elapsed and a 20-point edge just over two minutes after that.
Georgetown let Rutgers hang around with eight turnovers in the final 12 minutes, but the offensively challenged Scarlet Knights could not muster enough firepower to really make a game of it.
“We didn’t play very well,” Rutgers Head Coach Fred Hill said. “They played better than us in every phase in the game, and they just beat us.”
While Sapp’s progress toward a return to form was the biggest story after the game, freshman center Greg Monroe was the Hoyas’ best player of the night.
onroe tallied 10 points, seven rebounds, six assists and four steals. A facilitator on offense and an aggressive presence on defense, Monroe bounced back after a couple of tough games.
Asked after the game if he may be hitting the proverbial freshman wall, Monroe said, “I don’t even know what that is.”
Sophomore guard Austin Freeman added seven points, as did classmate Nikita Mescheriakov, who fouled out in 20 minutes of action but continued to show a refreshingly high level of energy.
While beating the low-ranked Rutgers hardly rekindles Georgetown’s Big East title hopes, it does put the Hoyas back in good spirits, and maybe back on a path toward the postseason. Thompson, though, is just happy to have his 13th win of the season.
“You can’t think about the big picture,” Thompson said. “You can’t dwell on two, three, four [or] five losses. You have to throw your energy into, `Can we get better and can we prepare for Rutgers’ and that’s whether you’re on a winning streak or a losing streak. You have to put all your energy, and all your attention, all the details, to `Let’s win this next game.’
“Because if you start looking at the picture, positively or negatively, you’ll drive yourself crazy.”
“
