Sophomore point guard Chris Wright and senior guard Jessie Sapp were the only two Georgetown players who seemed to show up for Monday night’s must-win game, and they combined to shoot 6-for-22.
The rest of the team was thoroughly disappointing, both in performance and in effort. Junior forward DaJuan Summers (four points) is quickly playing his way out of the NBA draft, freshman center Greg Monroe (three turnovers, officially) acted like he was allergic to the basketball, and sophomore guard Austin Freeman (no assists) was pulled to start the second half. Redshirt freshman Nikita Mescheriakov scored five points, grabbed zero rebounds and turned the ball over three times.
And each of those guys, with the possible exception of Monroe, was guilty of playing more than his fair share of matador defense.
“I think we had stretches where we were flat and then we had stretches where we tried to pick it up and just couldn’t sustain it,” Head Coach John Thompson III said. “The first part of the game, you know, we were a little flat and then we ended the first half with a group that made a good run. . The start of the second half, the effort was there, but we couldn’t put the ball in the basket. And then we got a little frustrated because of that.”
The term “outclassed” is somewhat ambiguous and often overused in sports, but it applied against Louisville. On ESPN’s Big Monday, the Cardinals were the only team that fit the billing, dominating the Hoyas en route to a 76-58 victory.
Now just 14-12 and 5-10 in league play, Georgetown probably needs to advance to the Big East tournament finals to make the NCAA tournament, and they may need to win once they get there. Given the Hoyas’ inability to win a big game in 2009, there is little evidence to suggest that is possible.
While much of the talk in recent days has focused on whether Summers will bolt for the NBA after the season, it is looking more and more likely that he’ll be forced to seek refuge back on the Hilltop. After shrinking in the final minutes of the Marquette game -and indeed, he has shrunk in the waning moments of many games this season -he made very little positive impact on Monday.
He sank just one of his eight shots, including four whiffs from three-point range, and hit just 2-of-4 free throws. He committed four fouls, including two in the first 7:16, forcing him to the bench for several minutes toward the end of the first half.
The contrast between Summers and Louisville’s two all-purpose forwards, senior Terrence Williams and junior Earl Clark, was striking. Williams struggled with his shot (3-of-9) but did everything else, grabbing 12 rebounds and recording seven assists.
Clark was on fire, shooting 5-of-10 from the field, including 3-of-3 from deep, and 9-of-13 at the line. He also grabbed eight boards and tallied three assists.
When a shot went up, Clark and Williams attacked the glass; Summers slinked away. With the ball in their hands, the Louisville duo was smooth and confident; Summers was unsure of himself and clumsy.
After the game, Thompson took a pass on identifying why Summers struggled so mightily.
“People have good games, people have bad games,” Thompson said. “I’m not sure there is a specific reason why DaJuan didn’t have a bigger impact on the game. The stars just were not aligned for him today.”
Summers is a phenomenal athlete, but he has shown recently that his game is largely one- dimensional -he has just a mediocre midrange game to go with a set-shot jumper -and is rarely elevated for the biggest stage. To his credit, he played well at Duke and at Marquette, but lately, he’s struggled when his team has needed him most.
onroe, meanwhile, was as maddeningly passive as his post predecessor, Roy Hibbert, was at times. He rarely called for the ball, he flubbed at least a pair of passes, and he was never the force on the boards that Georgetown needed him to be.
Throw in Mescheriakov and Freeman, who were mostly non-factors on offense and liabilities on defense, and a Hoyas renaissance was simply not in the cards.
For Wright and Sapp it was different. At times, they struggled against the press. At others, their shots refused to go down. But from start to finish, they kept the energy high and intensity up. Wright did his best to jumpstart his teammates, but to no avail.
“I think that’s part of my role on this team just to try to be a leader of some sort, to try to pick up where other guys, you know, feel, just try to pick up energy,” Wright said. “I noticed that energy was down and I wanted to try to do something I could, whether it’s being aggressive on the offensive or defensive end, trying to make a play.”
Despite the Hoyas’ mind-boggling, almost incomprehensible collapse -Georgetown stood at 10-1 after beating No. 2 Connecticut on Dec. 29 and has gone 4-11 since -both Thompson and Wright proclaim continued confidence.
“If I didn’t think this group could do it, maybe I’d say `Oh what the hell, no biggie.’ But I said it then, I believe it now, I have a lot of confidence in not just these two [Wright and Monroe] but everyone else in that locker room,” Thompson said.
Wright said that he thought his team has been close to turning it around, but that they just can’t seem to do it.
“That’s what hurts the most,” he said. “We feel like we’re right there, we just can’t turn the corner. That next step, we just haven’t made it yet. But we’re trying to.”
Unfortunately, there may not be enough time for that to happen. Despite the effort from Wright and Sapp, who seems to be realizing that his Georgetown days are dwindling, this team’s chances seem to be all but exhausted.
Pegged in late December as a possible top-3 seed, the Hoyas instead look to be headed for the NIT.
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