On Saturday, hours after the final horn sounded on Georgetown’s 73-61 defeat of Seton Hall, the Hoyas’ women’s basketball team beat a ranked opponent for the first time in four years. Even better, it was its rival, Syracuse – in the top 25 for the first time in program history – that Georgetown dethroned. That same day, junior Andrew Bumbalough won the mile at the Giegengack Invitational at Yale, in the process qualifying for the NCAA championship with a time below the vaunted four-minute mark. Even the much maligned swimming and diving team won on Saturday. It was a good day for Georgetown athletics. Yet I’m willing to bet that most of you knew only that Roy Hibbert went for 16 and nine, Jon Wallace struggled against the press and Bobby Gonzalez is the worst-dressed coach in the NCAA. Men’s basketball reigns supreme, and everything else is pushed off to the periphery. The dichotomy between basketball and `everything else’ is most blatant in the winter, when basketball is going on and all the other sports competing are relatively minor. But it is also obvious in the fall and winter, when Georgetown sports talk focuses mostly on days until Midnight Madness and whether or not so-and-so will enter the draft, respectively. The lacrosse teams, especially the men, draw decent crowds, and sailing has overwhelming success, but the attention those programs receive pales in comparison to the praise we lavish upon John Thompson III’s Hoyas. Some might argue that the current state of affairs is wrong – that it is unfair to the vast majority of Georgetown’s student athletes who work very hard and receive very little recognition. It is an interesting topic of debate. When I was editor of the THE HOYA’s sports section, there was a constant tension between covering basketball . and covering everything else. There was always a question lurking in the back of my head as I combed through tennis, track and softball articles: Am I the only person that is going to read this? Occasionally, individuals associated with various Georgetown teams – everyone from coaches, to players, to supporters – would reach out to the newspaper to try and get more coverage for their team. Sometimes they offered constructive suggestions; on other occasions, they expressed outright anger. And I have to admit: Through it all, I always wondered how many members of the Georgetown community actually care about these more minor sports. Did I offend more people by not running stories about the less-followed teams or by spilling (wasting?) precious ink that could have been describing Jeff Green on these groups? If a crew story gets cut to 300 words and no one is around to read it, does it make a sound? The answer: probably not. The overwhelming sense that I get from Georgetown students is that outside of men’s basketball, they just don’t care. And why should they? Our football team, throughout every undergraduates’ time on the Hilltop, has been embarrassing. Crew is not a spectator sport. Our soccer teams draw some support, but we’ve never seemed to be a real threat to make a run deep into the NCAA tournament. Why should Georgetown students give up their Sundays watching football on TV to trek to Kehoe to watch a .500 soccer team? Women’s basketball as a sport probably gets unfairly maligned by both men and women, but Georgetown hasn’t made it past the first round of the Big East tournament since 2000-01, so the aesthetic qualities of the sport are irrelevant; we just aren’t any good. Swimming loses athletes at an alarming pace, and again, swimming isn’t really a spectator sport. No one likes to watch teams lose, and while Georgetown athletes keep working hard and the administration, I’m genuinely confident, is working hard as well to improve each and every one of these teams, there is just an overwhelming sense of defeat that surrounds all of these other teams. Plus, many of these sports are not as exciting as Big East basketball. So why watch someone play an unwatchable sport . poorly? The two interesting cases are lacrosse and sailing. Those teams are genuinely good. Lacrosse draws decent crowds, but usually fails to generate conversation around campus. Georgetown might need to break through to the Final Four – an achievement it hasn’t racked up since 1999 – to really turn a corner with fans. And the program – and the sport – may need to receive more national attention for it to really take off. That way, incoming freshmen would already know that Georgetown lacrosse is legitimate. As for sailing, while a wildly successful team, the sport is not conducive to drawing fans. y final question is this: Are we obligated to support our classmates? Even as they lose, as they take their lumps, as they struggle in between the lines, as they struggle in chemistry class because they shed their blood, sweat and tears out on the field or court, should we be out there cheering them on simply because they are our peers? When I frame it that way, I’m inclined to say yes. It really makes us sound like jerks for not being there for them. Alternately, one might argue that if these teams start to get fan support, the players will summon more motivation, play better and win more often. Is this a logical argument? Perhaps. But do I ultimately think it the case? No. Division I athletes should be able to get motivated on their own. Slightly more logical is this: If fans come out to games, the game day environment will improve, thus attracting more talented players to attend Georgetown and then with better players, we’ll win more. That argument might actually hold some water. By all indications, players like playing in front of a fired up crowd. Some might not require a loud student section, but I’ve never heard of it dissuading a recruit. Yet I dismiss that as well, because I’m not quite sure Georgetown’s undergrads should be expected to pick up coaches’ recruiting slack. If a coach needs more fan support to attract athletes (to Georgetown, no less), he probably is not a great coach to begin with. Really, at the end of the day, these teams are going to have to get better to garner more attention. It is going to take sustained success – notice that the women’s soccer team’s improbable run to the NCAA tournament captured few Hilltop hearts and minds – as well as a convenient venue and some degree of national attention before fans will be attracted to support a team other than men’s basketball. I don’t know what the athletic department must do to foment that – someone far wiser than I will need to provide those answers. But if anyone expects Georgetown students to start going to women’s basketball games, the team is going to have to get mighty good first. Now you can go back to reading about Roy, Jon and those guys because we all know that’s all you care about. And rightly so. Bailey Heaps is a junior in the College and the Web editor at THE HOYA. He can be reached at heapsthehoya.com. SPREADING THE FLOOR appears every other Tuesday in HOYA SPORTS.