LOCKED: What Last Night’s Win Means for Your Georgetown Hoyas

A deeper look into Georgetown’s positioning for March and beyond

With the dramatic come-from-behind win over Villanova last night, your Georgetown Hoyas (17-3, 8-11 BIG EAST) have completed several sizable accomplishments. Perhaps the biggest news is that Georgetown will face either Seton Hall or DePaul in the middle game on Wednesday of the BIG EAST Tournament.

Let’s take a deeper look.

1. The Hoyas are now a lock to finish at least in a tie for 7th place in the BIG EAST, which is three full places ahead of the 10th place finish that most pre-season polls forecast for them.

National pundits, BIG EAST basketball beat writers, podcasters, bloggers and fans generally agreed that Georgetown would finish just barely above the basement. A portion predicted 11th and a portion said 9th, but the average was 10th. They were all wrong. Before the season started, many Hoya fans would have been happy just to reach 9th. But this group of hard-working Hoyas managed to go two levels higher than that.

Moreover, they did it despite major obstacles. This included losing one of their best 6 or 7 players, Julius Halaifonua, near the start of the season to surgery. Also for many games last year’s top scorer, Jayden Epps, was either out with an injury or playing at only 60%. Another key rotation player Caleb Williams was out for some games. Then our best player, Thomas Sorber, had a season-ending injury.

But even though Georgetown was missing Thomas, Caleb and Julius, your Hoyas blew out Providence by 21, their worst loss to GU since 1986. That’s right. Despite missing 3 rotation players including their best, this depleted group of Hoyas hammered the Criers worse than Mourning, Mutombo, Iverson, Monroe, Sweetney, Green, Hibbert or Porter ever did.

Last night they also managed to upset Villanova, which has a monster power forward (Eric Dixon) who’s a finalist for BIG EAST Player of the Year. Going into last night’s game, ESPN’s Bracketology had Villanova as the 7th team out, meaning they’re close to being an NCAA tourney team. They were playing for a tourney bid, and your Hoyas were playing spoiler. They had their star player, and GU didn’t. Didn’t matter. Our Hoyas rose up and won.

2. The Hoyas now have 8 BIG EAST wins, which is 100% more than our total wins (4) in all of the last 3 seasons combined. That’s serious progress. Enough said.

3. Georgetown has a high probability of having 7th place outright with no tie. The Hoyas are 1.5 games ahead of both Butler and Providence in the standings.

GU will get 7th place outright if they beat DePaul in our last game, regardless of what Butler and PC do. But even if the Hoyas lose, Georgetown would still get 7th place outright if Butler and PC lose one of their last two games.

Butler’s last 2 games are Xavier and at Creighton. They’ll likely lose both, and I estimate a 95% chance they lose at least one. PC’s last 2 games are home vs DePaul then at Xavier. The Cintas Center is one of the tougher home courts in the country. It’s much more so in the final game of the season at 4pm on a Saturday when a Xavier win could result in a tourney bid. PC likely won’t win both.

4. Georgetown has already locked up the 7th seed in the BIG EAST tournament. This is true even if both Butler and PC win their last two games, and the Hoyas lose to DePaul and have a 3-way tie for 7th.

You The BIG EAST tiebreaker procedures are a bit tricky. The first tiebreaker step is head to head records, and GU splits with both PC and Butler. So it goes to the next step, which is who has the best record against the 1st place team or teams. If that record is the same, then proceed to the next highest team (or group of teams) in the standings to see whose record is better. Continue down through the standings until one team gains an advantage.

Providence is .000 against the top 4 teams in the standings, but Georgetown is .500 against Creighton, which won’t finish lower than 4th. So Georgetown is a lock to win that tiebreaker no matter if Creighton finishes 2nd, 3rd or 4th.

To finish 7th, Butler would have to beat Xavier and Creighton, making them .500 against both of them, and .000 against St. John’s, Marquette and UConn. Georgetown has the same record against all 5 teams, so it would move to the records vs 6th place Villanova. Your Hoyas swept Nova, but Butler got swept by Nova. So GU also wins that tie-breaker.

Being a lock for the 7th seed helps in two significant ways. First, it means in the opening round Georgetown will face the 11th seed, which will be either Seton Hall or DePaul. They are much easier games than the 8th and 9th seeds Providence or Butler. So the likelihood of advancing has increased a lot.

Secondly, the 7th seed means Georgetown on the opposite side of the bracket from the top seed, St. John’s. The Johnnies are clearly the strongest team in the conference, and they’ll have kind of a home court advantage at the BET. The winner of the game between the 8 and 9 seeds has to face them. So we likely dodged a bullet by getting the 7 seed.

Instead, Georgetown would play the 2 seed after a win, which will probably be Creighton or Marquette. With their distance from New York, they don’t have many alumni near NYC and not a lot of fans make the long trip. It’s also feasible that the bulk of tri-state fans will route for the underdog (GU) or pull for their fellow east-coast school (GU) or their fellow original BIG EAST founding school (again, GU). The Johnnies and UConn fans also have an incentive to help the Hoyas upset Marquette or Creighton because it increases their odds of being champions.

If Georgetown manages to upset the 2 seed, the Hoyas also avoid SJU in the third round. UConn is now in 4th, so if they stay there, GU would also avoid them in rounds 2 and 3. I prefer facing Creighton and Marquette for two reasons: A) I think without Sorber we match up poorly against UConn since they have a few strong big men. B) They also have a bit of a home court advantage in NYC.

5. Last night’s Villanova win keeps alive our hope of winning 10 BIG EAST games, which was eloquently laid out by Whipple part-way through the season. While he meant 10 regular season wins, I think most fans would be very happy with 10 wins including a tournament win.

6. Perhaps more importantly, last night’s win (combined with earlier wins) cements some key things:

A) Ed Cooley is great at developing players. One prime example is the huge leap forward that Micah Peavy has taken in the past six months under Cooley’s tutelage, training and teaching. He went from being just a defensive specialist to being a masterful offensive player who can run an offense, and who can drive to the hole, stop and pop or rain down 3s. Most other Hoyas have improved by a lot since joining the program.

This was on full display in last night’s impressive come-from-behind win. Down by 9 points with 3 1/2 minutes left, the Hoyas scored on 100% of the last 7 possessions: twice with layups, twice with dunks, once with a 3 and twice with free throws. They weren’t at all settling for low percentage outside shots, and instead getting high percentage shots which resulted in 100%. Last year 5 or 6 of the possessions would have been outside heaves or turnovers.

Such dramatic improvement is not possible without players learning a lot from the coaches. We’re seeing first-hand why Cooley won National Coach of the Year at Providence. Even winning BIG EAST coach of the year is a really hard to do in a conference loaded with strong coaches. But winning it nationally over 360 other coaches is extremely hard to do.

B) Cooley is great at evaluating players to find ones that are under-rated. Coming out of high school nine months ago, Sorber was ranked #50 in his class. Before his injury, he was one of the top 10 freshmen. Fellow Hoya frosh Caleb Williams was ranked only 182 in his class. Now he’s likely among the best 60 or 70 freshmen. When Cooley won the Naismith COY, he also won the Sporting News COY. They noted that Cooley won the BIG EAST championship and went to the Sweet 16 with low-ranked recruits.

Some of this is Cooley’s ability to develop players, but some of it is his ability to evaluate. If Cooley tells a recruit that he’s better than people think and Georgetown is going to show that to the world, the recruit should listen. Keep in mind that this season was Cooley’s first real Hoyas recruiting class. When he was hired at the end of the 2023 season, he had little time to recruit for a new school and kind of had to take what he could get.

C) He is strong at connecting with players and building team chemistry and buy-in. He inherited a program in shambles that had almost zero buy-in to teamwork, defense or fundamentals. Those key areas have improved greatly and relatively quickly. You can visibly see that players like Ed and also respect him. He pushes them and talks strongly to them about what they need to do to improve, but he also bonds with them. That’s a winning combination.

D) One of the many strong appeals of the Georgetown job is being in the middle of the hotbed of basketball talent known as the DMV (DC, Maryland and Virginia). In comparison, the area near Providence is far weaker. Cooley’s plan and efforts to tap into the plus nearby Philly for talent is smart and already working quite well. For example, both Sorber and Caleb Williams are products of this region. To build on this, Cooley in the off-season hired a high-quality recruiter, Kenny Johnson, with strong ties to the DMV area.

With the DMV plus Georgetown’s strong basketball tradition and resources, combined with Cooley’s abilities, he is likely to very much exceed his strong success at Providence.

Echoing Danny Hurley’s phrasing some years ago, I recommend that people get the Hoyas now. One reason is Cooley’s teams play hard and play smart with strong fundamentals, so they’re enjoyable to watch. Also, it’s more fun and rewarding if you “get into” a program in the early stages of it becoming great.

Cooley could well build a program capable of winning another national title for the Hoyas. I believe the likelihood of the program going in that direction goes up a fair amount if Sorber returns for a second year. I say that because if he does, I think the Hoyas will definitely make the tourney next year and have a good shot at making a strong run. A tourney bid plus even 1 or 2 wins would create big momentum, nice national spotlight and give a real boost to recruiting. A lot of college hoops success is about momentum. Success begets success, and attracts talent.

If Georgetown alums or fans are going to pick any time to contribute to NIL, I think the coming months is a good time. This is because if the NIL collective can offer enough to Sorber, I think his staying for another year might be a win-win including for him including financially. I’m not an expert in the NBA draft, but I know a few key things. One is the guaranteed contracts for the top 12 players are far higher than for those who are 10 to 20 spots lower in the first round.

Another is 2nd round picks often don’t get guaranteed contracts. Recovering from turf toe surgery generally takes 2 1/2 to 4 months. If that prevents Sorber from participating in pre-draft camps and individual team workouts, it seems that would move him back about 5 to 20 spots in the draft. I don’t know if NBA teams would risk using a first-round pick on a player if they’re not sure he’s going to fully recover and be able to operate at his previous level.

Also, it’s really hard to get drafted in the top 20 spots. Many high-quality BIG EAST stars get drafted late in the first round, in the second round or not at all. With people playing hoops in lots of countries, the amount of international talent vying for draft spots is pretty high.

I don’t know enough about the draft to be confident in where Sorber truly would have been drafted if he didn’t get injured; or how many spots this would end up dropping him this year. I am somewhat confident that if he plays a second year, develops a consistent 3-point shot and helps Georgetown make the tourney, he’ll be a top 12 pick.

Of course, only he can decide what to do. A good amount of NIL money plus the likelihood of a much bigger guaranteed multi-year contract if he goes pro next year might result in his staying. There’s the risk of injury to consider, but it seems the percentage of college players who have career-ending injuries is very low.

Other factors are a second year would also give him a strong likelihood of getting to play in March Madness, give him another year to enjoy the positives of college life and develop deeper Hoya friendships that will last a lifetime. It could also make him a bigger figure in Georgetown hoops history. Only he can weigh the various factors and decide. But some added NIL might help the Hoya cause at a crucial juncture for the program.

Let’s go Hoyas! Hoya Saxa!