Hoyas sophomore appears to be ending his slump Nate Lubick backed down his defender and posted up on the right block. Surveying his options, he effortlessly dropped the ball behind his back along the baseline, his blind bounce pass finding Otto Porter under the bucket for an easy layup.
But afterward, the highlight from a resurgent performance from the Georgetown sophomore forward against Cincinnati brought no satisfaction, and Lubick desperately could have used it. The Hoyas still lost, dropping a second game in a row for their longest losing skid of the season.
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“I’m not somebody who likes people telling me how good I play or how awesome some play was,” Lubick said. “But for that game to come and how I was struggling playing, the fact that it came on a loss was terrible.”
| Up next |
| No. 11 Georgetown at St. John’s |
| When » Sunday, noon |
| Where » |
| Madison Square |
| Garden, New York |
| TV » MASN |
While the Hoyas (13-3, 3-2 Big East) have spent much of the year being celebrated for breakout performances from every other starter and most of the freshman bench, Lubick has been mired in a funk.
After eight points, five assists and a career-high 14 rebounds in a Thanksgiving weekend win over IUPUI, Lubick averaged 2.9 points, 3.6 rebounds and 1.4 assists over the next nine contests. He had zero rebounds against Louisville and just one against Marquette.
He finally broke out with eight points and eight boards in the 68-64 loss to the Bearcats, but the battle to find his game hardly makes sense for one of the best basketball minds on the team.
Raised in the game — he played for his father in high school — Lubick understands how sets should be executed and what plays need to be made for Georgetown to succeed.
But his indecision has shown in contrast to the emergence of Henry Sims as facilitator. Though Lubick hasn’t lost his starting spot, he has spent most of the year on the bench down the stretch with Porter on the floor as his replacement.
Rather than talk about himself, Lubick prefers to discuss the turnover-prone Hoyas’ need to value the basketball and take advantage of their defense, which is fifth in the Big East in opposing field goal percentage (.396) and first in guarding the 3-point line (.292).
Having watched his big man spin himself in a downward circle, Hoyas coach John Thompson III finally pulled Lubick aside last week.
“?’Look, just play,’?” Thompson said he told Lubick. “?’Stop thinking. Stop worrying about what you’re not doing well, what you want to do. Play, play hard, play with a lot of energy and things will work themselves out.’ That’s easy for a coach to say, but I think he tried to do that.”
Lubick responded with three offensive rebounds against Cincinnati and was set up by Porter on consecutive second-half baskets before returning the favor himself.
“I guess I got even more tired of how bad I was playing before,” Lubick said.
The behind-the-back special came naturally.
“The thing with that, though, that was the right pass to make,” Thompson said. “That wasn’t necessarily fancy — the people were sitting on [the right] side of him, and that was the right pass to make at that time. He’s capable of doing that.”
