It’s hard to take away very much from No. 8 Georgetown’s 69-59 win Saturday afternoon against Hartford. Coming up with a scouting report on the Hawks, who have a first year head coach in Dan Leibovitz and return just one starter, wasn’t easy. Figuring out a rotation and finding time for a number of new faces was difficult. And, the inevitable first-game jitters had to have been a factor.
Still, here are some rapid-fire impressions from Saturday afternoon at Verizon Center.
There were two teams on the floor Saturday, and one of them played pretty well.
“Going into this game, we have no idea what they are going to do, and so it’s hard to prepare a scouting report when you have a new coach, no idea,” Georgetown Head Coach John Thompson III said after the game. “They played extremely well. I don’t think any of you guys should walk away from this and not talk about how well they played.”
Leibovitz came up with a very solid game plan – defensively, playing an always-evolving zone and offensively, focusing on the three-point shot – and his team did a good job executing this plan. Because of that zone defense, Georgetown was unable, for much of the game, to establish itself down low, and when they tried to compensate from behind the three-point arc, the Hoyas shot 6-for-23.
“I felt like our best chance in this game was to play a tight, basically pack in the zone and make some guys make shots and hopefully be able to get a rebound,” Leibovitz said.
On the other end of the floor, the Hawks, whose tallest starter was 6-foot-8, realized that trying to contend with junior center Roy Hibbert and junior forward Jeff Green would likely be an exercise in futility, and instead looked for success on the perimeter. Had more than nine of Hartford’s 26 three-pointers found the bottom of the net, or had the Hawks not made eight second-half turnovers, they may have left the nation’s capital and returned to the insurance capital with an unblemished record.
Roy Hibbert is still a work in progress. Listening to the preseason chatter, you would have thought that “Big Roy” was guaranteed 25 and 10 every night, maybe even more against a team like Hartford. Saturday, Roy scored 16 points on 5-of-11 shooting from the field, which is not bad, but all six misses came on layups. Of his five buckets, not one was a dunk. If Hibbert wants to reach the elite level, and there is no reason to suddenly say he can’t, he will need to use the gifts that are his size and his strength and make sure that the ball is put in the basket every chance he gets.
Instead of trying to kiss the basketball off of the backboard, Hibbert needs to slam it home. He’s more likely to make the basket, he’s more likely to get to the line – where, with a 6-of-7 performance Saturday, he continues to look comfortable – and it’ll get the crowd involved too, which is an added bonus for the Hoyas.
Georgetown lost more than most people think. With its zone defense, Hartford was able to take away the backdoor cuts upon which the Princeton offense is predicated. The Hawks were also able to make it increasingly difficult for Green and Hibbert to do too much damage down low. So, the Hoyas needed to rely on their outside shooting. Last year, Georgetown had forward Brandon Bowman (COL ’06) and guards Ashanti Cook (COL ’06) and Darrel Owens (COL ’05) to knock down the deep ball. Together, Bowman, Cook and Owens shot 128-for-342, a 37.4 percent clip.
Against Hartford, junior guard Jon Wallace was 3-for-6, but the three guys who were, for all intents and purposes, replacing Bowman, Cook, and Owens in the rotation – junior swingman Tyler Crawford, sophomore forward Marc Egerson and sophomore guard Jessie Sapp – shot 3-for-15 (20 percent). Think Georgetown missed the class of 2006?
What many miss, however, is something that Thompson has been keying into since media day in October. Georgetown also lost its three best perimeter defenders. A year ago, when the Hoyas needed to get a hand in the face of a hot shooter, it was Bowman, Cook and Owens that got the job done. This season Crawford, Egerson, and Sapp, along with Wallace will need to shoulder the defensive burden on the perimeter, or else teams with better shooters than Hartford can avoid Hibbert and Green and still have a field day against the Hoyas.
“I think they got too many open looks,” Thompson said after the game. “We did not defend on the three-point line well at all, and that’s something that will be taken care of.”
Georgetown will need to take care of it quickly, as Wednesday’s opponent, Vanderbilt, returns only two regular starters taller than 6-foot-5 and will likely look to employ a similar perimeter-oriented game plan.
The Hoyas’ newcomers – freshmen DaJuan Summers, Vernon Macklin and Jeremiah Rivers, along with junior transfer Patrick Ewing Jr. – delivered some highlights, but still have a long way to go.
Summers was the first to see the floor. He played 10 minutes, took just one shot and didn’t score or grab a rebound. He looked tentative, like the rest of the team, on the offensive end, but on defense he seemed at home.
On his first series in the game, he broke up a pass on defense, forcing a turnover, and though he missed a jumper badly on the other end, he hustled back on D and made what may have been the play of the game, blocking a Hawks’ shot with authority.
Rivers, a guard, played 11 minutes and was also quiet. He didn’t shoot the ball, though he did have two boards and an assist. He looked comfortable handling the ball, but as a cog in a complicated offense, he appeared ineffective. Rivers may have had something of the freshman deer-in-the-headlights look. Saturday’s effort did little to refute the popular notion that Rivers will see little run this season.
Ewing played fewer minutes than any other Hoya, and did not attempt a shot. He grabbed one rebound and committed two fouls, but the hustle for which he is often praised was evident nonetheless. Just minutes after entering the game, Ewing dove onto the floor for a loose ball that was eventually recovered by Georgetown. And when he wasn’t in the game, Ewing was the first one to jump off the bench and pick up his teammates.
“They came in, they did their deed,” Green said. “They got some rebounds, got some blocks, made some hustle plays . They’re gonna help [Roy and me] out down the road, giving us that quick breather that we need.”
Suffering from what Thompson called Wednesday the freshman “beat-ups,” Macklin was restricted to the bench. After the game, Thompson said that the freshman forward probably could have gone, but the staff instead chose to err on the side of caution and sit the program’s first McDonald’s all-American in nearly a decade. Macklin will likely make his debut Wednesday in Nashville or Sunday against Old Dominion.
Green is still really good. In 37 minutes, he scored 17 points, grabbed seven boards, tallied four assists and made two blocks. He shot the ball just eight times, making five. He attempted eight free throws as well, and unlike last season when he shot just 62.4 percent from the line, he cached all but one of his foul shots.
At times, though, Green was a bit too deferential. It seemed as though he scored when he wanted to do so, but sometimes seemed determined to have other players take the shots. In those situations, Green often tried to make a pass that was not there, and turned the ball over as a result. On the afternoon, he committed six turnovers, which is not likely to be the norm for a guy that many consider to be the best passing big man in the nation.
If Green shows more aggressiveness – and Saturday’s passivity may have been because the Hoyas were playing Hartford – he is likely to not only improve his own statistics, but more importantly, to help his team even more than he already does.
Playing at Vanderbilt is not an automatic win. Coming into the season, a lot of people figured that until Duke on Dec. 2, Georgetown would be guaranteed victory (and even then, that the Hoyas would probably win walking away). Well, such is not the case. Vanderbilt (17-13 last year) is unranked, but will still present a challenge.
Junior guard/forward Shan Foster, who led the Commodores a year ago with 15.9 points per game, scored 20 points in Vanderbilt’s 68-61 victory over Georgetown last Nov. 26. Foster is a threat from deep, having hit 41.5 percent of his 217 three-pointers last season.
Joining Foster on the wings is senior guard/forward Derrick Byars, who averaged 12.4 points last season and shot 44.1 percent from three.
Junior forwards Alan Metcalfe and Ross Nelter, who both stand 6-foot-9, along with freshman guard Jermaine Beal (6-foot-3) will likely join Byars (6-foot-7) and Foster (6-foot-6) in the starting lineup.
The Hoyas will have a size advantage inside – whoever guards Hibbert will be giving up five inches – but on the perimeter, Vanderbilt will not only have several adept shooters, but will have adept shooters that are taller than the Georgetown defenders (Crawford is 6-foot-4, Egerson 6-foot-6, Sapp 6-foot-3 and Wallace 6-foot-1). The Hoyas will need to get their perimeter defense in order if they intend to defeat the ‘Dores.
“I don’t think anyone came into this with any illusions,” Thompson said after beating Hartford. “We are not gonna go into the next game without any illusions. . So our guys know that in closed doors, we need to get better.”
Having faced Hartford’s zone defense should help prepare Georgetown for Vanderbilt, who will likely run a similarly confounding defensive scheme.
“We don’t know what kind of defense Vanderbilt is going to play, probably zone also, so [Saturday] helps us out down the road,” Green said.
Game time Wednesday at the Commodores’ Memorial Gym is set for 9 p.m.
