Georgetown’s junior standouts put an end to rampant speculation Wednesday, making clear their intentions for next season. Jeff Green, the reigning Big East player of the year, will remain in the NBA Draft and move towards selecting an agent, while 7-foot-2 Roy Hibbert will return to the Hilltop for his senior season. Speaking from McDonough Gymnasium in front of nearly 100 writers, cameramen, and athletic department staff members, including big John Thompson Jr. and football Head Coach Kevin Kelly, both Green and Hibbert pointed to discussions with family, as well as conversations with NBA personnel, as the primary factors in their decisions. Those discussions, however, led each to a different decision. Hibbert said that NBA projections put him somewhere between eighth and 16th, but that a desire to “finish up at Georgetown” was more important than whatever the NBA folks were telling him. “Roy has worked extremely hard to become a very good basketball player who happens to be a center,” Head Coach John Thompson III said. Green, for his part, said that he hasn’t hired an agent and that “nothing is set in stone,” but from what he and Thompson III said, it sounds like a return is highly unlikely. “It’s not set in stone until he’s hired an agent, but we’re proceeding with that,” Thompson said. Green emphasized that the decision was a difficult one, but ultimately it was time for him to make the jump. “Just sitting down with my family and coach, I feel like we came to a decision that I should stay in this draft, and it would be the best thing for me after the season that the team had and that I had,” Green said, adding, “It’s time to grow up fast.” Thompson said he feels that each made the right decision – because both Green and Hibbert are confident in their decisions. He added that with Green staying in the draft, he hopes Georgetown can hang up another jersey in McDonough, referencing the Hoyas’ tradition of hanging a jersey for all of their drafted players. Last month, Green said that he was 70 percent sure he would return to the Hilltop, though media members and fans alike remained skeptical that the NCAA tournament east region’s most outstanding player would forgo an opportunity to be a lottery pick in June. ost draft projections peg Green somewhere between fifth – which is probably a longshot, though Celtics GM Danny Ainge has publicly lauded Green’s NBA readiness on at least two occasions – and 14th. Hibbert, on the other hand, placed the odds of a return at 50 percent last month, but evidently has been persuaded to finish his Georgetown career. If Hibbert improves as much during this offseason as he did during the last one, he will likely finish his Hoyas’ career along side Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, and Dikembe Mutombo as one of the great four-year centers in school history. With most of college basketball’s 2006-07 award winners graduating or jumping to the NBA, Hibbert should immediately move to the forefront of preseason Big East and even national player of the year discussions.

“I have some unfinished business here,” Hibbert said.