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Sophomore guard Chris Wright scored 14 points . 12 of which came after halftime . in the No. 19 Hoyas’ 79-70 overtime win.
With just over a minute remaining in overtime and his team leading by one, sophomore guard Chris Wright caught the ball ahead of the press, dribbled over half court, and spun through two defenders around the three-point line. Like a top twisting across the floor, he rolled towards the basket, drew contact and chucked up a wild running layup. The basketball rattled home, the Hoyas led by three, and the Tigers never recovered.
“It was a big play,” Wright said. “Just a play that I played off my instincts. I saw an open lane and I was fortunate to make a basket.”
Wright played 41 minutes and registered 14 points, 12 of which came after halftime, as No. 19 Georgetown pulled away to a 79-70 overtime victory against No. 17 Memphis.
With the win, the Hoyas improve to 7-1 and keep their 27-game home winning streak alive.
“The flow of the game was – we can never pull away, they can never pull away,” Georgetown Head Coach John Thompson III said. “It was back and forth, it was two teams that probably will, I think, continue to get better. It was a tight, tense game where there was no breathing room. For our young group right now that hasn’t been in those situations – we have some people, some individuals, that have, but collectively that unit hasn’t been in that type of situation, and we held on and we stayed with our stuff.”
The game featured 15 ties and 18 lead changes. The Hoyas were as cold from three-point range as they’ve ever been, converting just four of 20 tries. The Tigers were hardly better, hitting 5-of-19. Overall, Georgetown shot 41.4 percent, while Memphis posted a 34.6 percent clip.
After the contest, Memphis Coach John Calipari said he admired Georgetown’s will to win.
“I have to tell you, my hat is off to John Thompson, the job he’s done,” Calipari said. “To lose what they had and to have a team that had that much desire to win anyway and have the swagger that they have, I gotta give it to them. Because there were times we had a chance to get it to 8-10 and they just said `Nope, not happening.'”
Countered Thompson: “They’re a terrific team. You look at all that they lost last year. You look at their losses and they come back out, to play at the level where they’re playing right now with the young guys they’re playing right now – that’s a very good win against a very good team.”
It seemed that each time Georgetown needed a big play late in the second half, Wright delivered. With the game tied at 44 early on the half, he drove to the cup and converted a layup to give the Hoyas a lead. With 13 minutes left and Georgetown trailing by four, Wright drove at three Memphis defenders and made another lay-in. Ten minutes later, Wright drove baseline and drew a foul. At the line, he calmly knocked down both free throws.
Perhaps more clutch than his offense, though, was Wright’s defense of freshman guard Tyreke Evans. With senior Jessie Sapp in foul trouble, the 6-foot-1 Wright drew the assignment of Memphis’s star freshman and limited the 6-foot-6 guard to one make in his final eight shot attempts.
“First of all, I remember before the game y’all were talking about how big they are,” Wright said. “But we made plays, so obviously that goes to show size isn’t necessarily the biggest thing in games. If you play hard, you can overcome size. But Tyreke, he’s a great player and I just wanted to try and force him into tough shots.”
Said Thompson: “He works his behind off at the defensive end. And Tyreke is good. Tyreke’s very good and they put him in positions where you’re running off screens, running off screens where it’s difficult to guard. And as much as he worked, I thought, collectively, that we did a very good job of trying to shadow, of trying to help team defense.”
With regulation winding down, it looked as though Georgetown had the game in hand. Two free throws from Wright put the Hoyas ahead by one with 2:58 to go, and an Austin Freeman free throw with 30 seconds left pushed the lead to a deuce. On the Tigers’ final possession, Evans drove from the left side towards the center of the court and launched an errant runner. The rebound was tipped up and kept alive by several players, ultimately finding its way to the bottom of the net with four seconds to play. Officially, the basket was credited to Shawn Taggart, but it looked as if a Georgetown defender inadvertently knocked it in.
In the bonus period, the Hoyas grabbed the lead on a DaJuan Summers free throw 1:14 in and never relinquished it. Freshman center Greg Monroe hit a pair of free throws with 12 seconds left and Sapp tossed in a nonchalant three as the clock hit zero to make the final margin nine.
The play on which Memphis forced overtime was similar to nearly a dozen others throughout the game. Indeed, the Tigers had a field day on the offensive glass, grabbing an astounding 25 offensive rebounds en route to a 53-rebound afternoon. Taggart had seven offensive boards of his own, nearly as many as Georgetown captured as a team (10). The Tigers converted their rebounding advantage into 42 points in the paint and 28 second-change points.
“That number 53 is huge,” Thompson said. “That’s huge. And in that regard, I think that between DaJuan and Greg, I think we got a couple of key rebounds when we had to come up with the ball. We got a couple of key rebounds when we had to.”
Summers grabbed a rebound of Evans’s missed three with 44 seconds left and Monroe secured a board with 12 seconds remaining to all-but-end the game.
Taggart, who came off the bench, finished the afternoon with 23 points and 11 rebounds.
Summers led Georgetown with 21 points, Freeman added 18 and Monroe chipped in 13. Monroe also tallied six rebounds, three assists, three blocks and two steals. He played a game-high 42 minutes.
For the Hoyas, the win came in front of 15,238 – several thousand of which were raucous students, taking a break from exam week. The lower student section was completely filled and most of sections 425 and 426 accommodated overflow undergraduates. For the first big home game of the season, the crowd was loud throughout, and always in Georgetown’s favor.
The Hoyas return to action a week from today at home against Mount St. Mary’s. They play Florida International on Dec. 23, but then competition gets serious again, as they travel to Connecticut Dec. 29 for the start of Big East play.
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