LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – In the first battle of the Beltway since 2001, Maryland never had a chance.
Electing to play man-to-man defense for much of the first half, the Terrapins opted against using the one strategy – zone defense – that has consistently stymied Georgetown.
The Hoyas seized the opportunity, jumping out to 10-point lead six minutes into the game, and used a mixture of textbook backdoor cuts and smooth fast breaks to push their first-half lead to as many as 21 points. The Terps switched to zone with time winding down in the first period, but by then, the Hoyas lead was insurmountable.
Little changed in the second half, with the Hoyas going ahead by as many as 35. When the final buzzer sounded, the scoreboard showed the Hoyas ahead 75-48, a score not fully indicative of how dominant Georgetown had played. If there had been any doubts that the local balance of power had tilted towards the Hoyas, Georgetown’s wire-to-wire victory erased them.
What’s more, for the Hoya players, Sunday’s win was a chance to stick it to a team with seven local players, many of whom are friends with the Georgetown players.
“You play a team that’s from your hometown – everyone on our team is friends with the guys on their team, and so that comfort level, that familiarly with each other, raises the stakes,” Georgetown Head Coach John Thompson III said.
“The stars just aligned themselves well for us today.”
Added senior guard Jessie Sapp, a New York native who played his high school basketball at National Christian in Fort Washington, Md.: “It was emotional, I’m not gonna lie. . Like coach said, those are our friends on the other side so it was kind of like a bragging rights type game.”
aryland Head Coach Gary Williams said after the game that his team was not adequately prepared to face off against Georgetown.
“I’ll take responsibility,” he said. “We weren’t ready to play. You have to get your team ready to play. . We walked out on the court tonight I thought we were slow, we weren’t aggressive, we weren’t talking and when you play a good team, you pay the price for being that way.”
Sapp paced the Hoyas in the first half, scoring all 10 of his points on 3-of-5 shooting, including 2-of-3 from deep. He did not attempt a field goal in the second stanza, though he missed his two free-throw tries – his first two misses of the season.
Sophomore guard Austin Freeman led the Hoyas with 18 points (7-for-10) and six rebounds. Junior forward DaJuan Summers, who hit 3-for-5 from deep, added 14 points and freshmen center Greg Monroe had 12 points and six rebounds.
After missing his first eight three-point attempts of the season, Summers has made seven of his last 11.
Against the Maryland man defense, Sapp scored Georgetown’s first five points on a three-pointer and a put-back layup. The Hoyas went ahead 7-2 on a backdoor layup by sophomore guard Chris Wright. Three minutes later, Wright went backdoor again, receiving a perfect bounce pass from Monroe. He missed the layup but drew a foul and hit both his free throws, running the Hoyas’ lead to 14-4.
With 7:19 left in the first half, Georgetown’s bread and butter worked once again; this time, sophomore forward Julian Vaughn found a cutting Freeman to increase the Hoyas’ lead to 28-13.
A minute later, Monroe slipped his defender, took a precision feed from Wright and threw down a loud slam dunk, pushing the score to 30-13.
While the Georgetown offense was clicking, the Hoyas held Maryland’s best player, junior guard Greivis Vasquez, to a paltry two points on 1-for-7 shooting (0-of-4 from three). Vasquez did not score his first basket until 9:48 remained in the game.
All evening, Vasquez was chased around the court by Sapp and Wright. He tallied a few assists early, but he was unsuccessful each time he tried to score the basketball. A microcosm of the game as a whole, with the outcome already decided nine minutes into the second half, Vasquez was left wide open in the corner and still bricked his three-point try.
“As good a job as [Sapp and Wright] did individually, I think it was a group effort,” Thompson said of containing Vasquez. “Everyone was cognizant of what was going on, everyone knew what was going on. And so they did a good job individually, but our team as a whole did a pretty good defensive effort today.”
Added Thompson later in the press conference: “Greivis had a bad game. Greivis missed a lot of shots that he normally makes.”
Vasquez snapped a 30-game streak of scoring in double figures. The last team to hold the Venezuela native to single digits was Illinois on Nov. 28, 2007, when the Illini limited Vasquez to five.
Well known for being a rather loquacious competitor, Vasquez was in Sapp’s ear early.
“I feed off that,” Sapp said. “That stuff I love to do. That’s how I grew up. We play basketball, we talk junk to each other. So, when it started, I didn’t let it get to me at all. I just continued to do what coach wanted me to do on the defensive end. As the game went on, it started to get less and less talking, and I just wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.”
The last time these teams met, the Terrapins beat Georgetown in the 2001 Sweet 16, ending the Hoyas’ season. This time, Maryland just might have given Georgetown the win it needed to jumpstart the 2008-2009 campaign.
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