DAYTON, Ohio – Every Georgetown fan knows about Roy Hibbert’s vast improvement between this season and last.
On Sunday afternoon, the 7-foot-2 sophomore took the opportunity to demonstrate his talent and aggressiveness on a national stage, putting on one of the best performances of his young career to lead Georgetown over Ohio State, 70-52, in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
Hibbert tallied 20 points and nabbed 14 rebounds for his seventh double-double of the season, leading the Hoyas to the Sweet 16 to face Florida in Minneapolis on Friday night.
“Was this his biggest game? Yes, without a doubt – just because of timing,” Head Coach John Thompson III said. “You work all year to get here. You work all year to put yourself in this position to win now.”
While Hibbert had moderate success in the first round, scoring 17 points, it was Jeff Green whom Thompson specifically picked out after Friday’s game as needing to step up. The 6-foot-9 forward had just two points against Northern Iowa.
Green responded in kind, supplementing Hibbert with strong interior play while the center rested on the sideline or reset the offense at the top of the key. Green dropped in 19 points and added eight rebounds, six assists and a block in 39 minutes.
With Hibbert and Green controlling the paint, Ashanti Cook and Darrel Owens took advantage of open looks outside and thrived from the perimeter.
Cook finished 7-of-11 from the floor with 17 points, five boards and five assists, while Owens went 5-of-7, including a perfect 3-of-3 in the first half, for 14 points.
En route to one of its best all-around performances of the season, Georgetown outrebounded Ohio State, 37-24, including 12-3 on the offensive boards. The Buckeyes managed just a single rebound on the offensive glass in the second half.
The Hoyas also outscored their opponent 12-2 in points off turnovers.
On defense, Cook had particular success against senior guard J.J. Sullinger, who had only four points in the contest. He had averaged 10.3 points per game coming into Sunday’s match.
Hibbert’s anticipated battle with Ohio State senior forward Terence Dials, the Big Ten player of the year, never really panned out. Georgetown’s big man dominated the first half, earning 11 points and six boards compared to six points and two boards for Dials.
And senior guard Je’Kel Foster, who had 74 three-pointers on the year, never found a rhythm, though he did sink three straight treys for the Buckeyes at one point in the first half.
“We told our guys, `Don’t leave [Foster],'” Thompson said. “He’s been in a shooting slump but he’s a terrific shooter. Don’t listen to the radio, don’t listen to the television, because with our luck he’s going to come out of it against us.”
Tim Kehrer/The Hoya GU Head Coach John Thompson III and his father John Thompson, Jr., no stranger to arch Madness, discuss the Hoyas victory over the Buckeyes after Sunday’s game.
Georgetown’s victory over the second-seeded Buckeyes capped off an afternoon of upsets at the University of Dayton Arena. In the early game, George Mason overcame a 16-2 deficit to upset 65-60 victory over defending national champion North Carolina.
While GMU got some love from the crowd late in its game, Georgetown had no such luxury. Of the nearly 13,000 spectators, perhaps 90 percent were Ohio State supporters who had made the hour-long drive down I-70 from the university’s Columbus campus.
The Hoyas solved that problem by taking the crowd out of the game early, playing from behind for less than two minutes in the entire contest. They were lucky to do so, since the arena was deafening in the opening minutes and during a late Buckeye rally with five minutes to go.
“We’ve played in atmospheres where the whole crowd is against us, so we had to do our best,” Hibbert said. “We came together. Our seniors really led us on the court, and we followed right behind them.”
Georgetown was down 6-3 early in the first half, after Foster stole the ball from Green and made a fast-break layup at the other end.
Cook dropped in a long jumper near the baseline and Hibbert scored a three-point play on the next two possessions to keep Georgetown back the lead – for good.
Hibbert and Cook, who combined to score their team’s first 18 points, were both 5-for-7 after 20 minutes of play.
The Hoyas opened up a 22-13 lead with eight minutes to play, which the Buckeyes managed to close back to three points after Foster’s 9-2 run. But Georgetown ended the half outscoring Ohio State 11-2 in the final four minutes, punctuated by a three-pointer by Owens which gave the team a 38-25 lead at intermission.
The Buckeyes had a little more success pushing the ball inside to Dials in the second half.
Ohio State’s big man added 13 points after the break, completing a three-point play to slash Georgetown’s lead to six with 5:11 to play.
Yet the Hoyas did not falter, scoring the next nine points to take a 63-48 advantage with just under 2:30 to play.
And they completed free throws down the stretch. In fact, neither team missed a free throw until there were less than two minutes left in the game
Watching the game slip away for their Buckeyes, most fans began to depart the arena. Moments after the final buzzer sounded, there remained just a couple hundred students in the Georgetown fan section donning the blue and gray and heralding Thompson and the Sweet 16-bound Hoyas with cheers of “Let’s keep dancing!”
“We’ll wait till the end of the season to see what this all means,” Thompson said. “Hopefully we’re not done.”
Georgetown bore resemblances to teams of old under former head coach John Thompson Jr., using a smothering defense against Ohio State’s shooters.
It was no mere coincidence, then, that the elder Thompson was in the house watching his son accomplish what had taken him eight seasons – a berth in the Sweet 16.
Georgetown makes its 10th regional semifinal appearance in program history on Friday night and it’s first-ever trip to inneapolis to face the Gators (29-6) at the Hubert H. Humphrey etrodome.
The Hoyas are 7-2 all-time in the Sweet 16. Tip off is set for 9:40 p.m. EST.
