Now in his fourth year as head coach of the men’s basketball team, it’s apparent that John Thompson III and the Georgetown Hoyas have performed quite a feat. After several years of almosts and maybes, Georgetown’s basketball team is once again counted among the great programs in the country. The sense of pride and community that JTIII and the basketball team have given to Georgetown will be remembered for many years.And yet, one thing stands in the way of Georgetown Basketball’s proper return to glory – a spot of tarnish on the program’s gleaming history. Maybe it was an inadvertent mistake, and it may be unpopular to bring up, but it’s about time that Georgetown apologizes to former Head Coach Craig Esherick (B ’78, L ’82) for the way we treated him.An alumnus of the business school and Law Center, Esherick was one of Coach John Thompson Jr.’s first recruits and a four-year contributor for the Hoyas from 1974 to 1978. During his first season on the squad, the Hoyas returned to the NCAA tournament for the first time in 32 years – an effort that his team repeated the following season. Esherick attended the Georgetown Law Center and later joined Thompson’s coaching staff, which led Georgetown to its only national championship in 1984.Coach Esherick took over as the Georgetown men’s basketball coach in the middle of the 1998-99 season. As the elder Thompson’s long-time assistant and hand-picked successor, Esherick had modest success. In 2001, the Hoyas appeared in the NCAA Sweet 16 for the first time since 1996, but the next three years featured only one postseason appearance – as the runner-up in the 2003 NIT championship game. After the conclusion of the 2004 season, bitter and outspoken alumni and fans wanted change. And many called for Esherick’s head.But University President John J. DeGioia publicly supported Esherick and refuted demands for a new head basketball coach.In a statement in March of 2004, DeGioia said, “I believe that this season’s men’s basketball team, and our new class of recruits,” by which he was referring to future players Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert, among others, “hold a great deal of promise. I have confidence that Craig Esherick, who helped to build our tradition of excellence, is the right person to strengthen and lead our program.”A few days later, following a similar endorsement from athletic director Joe Lang, Esherick headed out west on a recruiting trip. But almost as soon as he left, alumni threatening to withhold donations bullied DeGioia into changing his mind, and the president fired Esherick a few days later.He then tapped Thompson Jr.’s son, Princeton head coach John Thompson III, as the Hoyas’ next leader, and the current chapter in the story of Georgetown basketball began. Esherick’s recruits re-signed with the new Coach Thompson, who led the team to an appearance in the NCAA Final Four last year.The end of Esherick’s coaching career may have been inevitable. We’ll never really know. But the period surrounding his termination was certainly a time during which the character of Georgetown faltered: The administration seemed to have lied to an alumnus and dedicated leader. After 30 years as a player and coach, Esherick fell victim to the whims of an impassioned mob, a president who succumbed to its demands and the fetters that bind Georgetown’s decision-makers to the selfish wallets of rich alumni rather than their own convictions.Esherick was more than an employee. And the event raised an important question: If a long-time servant and alumnus could be so easily denounced and destroyed by fellow alumni, what, for the rest of us, is the incentive to serve our school? After all, Esherick did a lot more work for Georgetown than many of the rest of us will, and many students and alumni are comfortable with the way he was treated.Like Esherick, DeGioia is also a twice-alumnus of Georgetown and has spent three decades as a member of the Georgetown community. Were DeGioia’s short presidency to end in the near future, it would be silly to trample his legacy with suggestions that he somehow engineered increases in D.C. crime or intolerance between students of different ethnic backgrounds. Nor would we judge DeGioia’s presidency by comparing it to those of John Carroll or Patrick or Timothy Healy, whose successes took place during very different periods, and with very different challenges. We would thank him for his efforts, probably name a building after him, and see to it that he was remembered affectionately.If only a similar treatment had been provided to Coach Esherick.Very few Hoyas might have regretted a decision by DeGioia to ask a venerable and dedicated alumnus to step aside for the betterment of the school. It’s quite common for former coaches to move on from official coaching positions while remaining integral contributors to a program’s success. In 2005, Thompson Jr. remained on salary at Georgetown, and was still one of the school’s five highest-paid employees. Such a request would have allowed Esherick to be remembered for the contributions that he made as opposed to the sloppy and uncomfortable manner in which his life at Georgetown was expunged.Instead, a damnatio memoriae of sorts has surrounded the legacy of Esherick. His innumerable contributions are obscured by a bizarre notion that he was some villainous athletic saboteur, hell-bent on ruining a storied program – a program that he helped create.No reasonable Hoya regrets the addition of John Thompson III to the Georgetown community. His record as a coach speaks for itself, and he is extremely popular among students for his strong leadership and positive demeanor on and off the court. JTIII inspires students with his infectious sense of pride in all things Georgetown.Esherick might not have been the right man for the coaching position at Georgetown, but the manner in which his replacement took place was a negative experience for the school that has long been ignored. Georgetown has more class than that.Hoya Saxa, Coach Esherick. Thanks for your time at Georgetown, and I, for one, am sorry.D. Pierce Nixon is a senior in the College and contributing editor for THE HOYA. He can be reached at nixonthehoya.com. DAYS ON THE HILLTOP appears every other Tuesday.”