Schedule lightens, barely, for Monroe, Georgetown
Georgetown won’t play another ranked team for at least a week.
In this year’s Big East, that’s the best the Hoyas are going to do when it comes to getting a break. After facing five teams ranked in the national top 10 in the last six games — Georgetown’s strength-of-schedule is No. 1 in the country — the next three opponents are all in the bottom half of the conference standings.
Not that the Mountaineers (13-4, 2-2 Big East) are pushovers, but the Hoyas (12-4, 3-2) will welcome a chance to gather themselves after a brutal recent stretch ended with an emotional non-conference loss at Duke, where Greg Monroe was again the center of attention.
But it wasn’t just the freshman center’s play. Instead, Monroe’s controversial technical foul — called by an official who heard an offensive remark from the direction of the Hoyas bench, then pointed at a seated Monroe, giving him his fourth personal foul — took the steam out of a second-half comeback.
“I can’t say if I heard someone else,” said Monroe. “But I know I definitely didn’t say anything.”
A referee’s decision will have little impact on the Hoyas down the stretch. But head coach John Thompson III’s choice to begin the second half at Duke with backup guards Omar Wattad and Jason Clark in place of starters Jessie Sapp and Chris Wright indicated that backcourt inconsistency is a growing area of concern.
“We made two separate runs when [Wattad and Clark] were on the floor,” said Thompson. “So it’s going to be a different group on different nights depending on the flow, depending on what my feel is, and what I think is working and what is not working.”
Sapp, the Hoyas’ lone senior, is in a full-fledged slump — he’s 12-for-55 from the field (21.8 percent) in Georgetown’s last nine games. Wright was 1-for-6 against the Blue Devils, but he also had five assists and just one turnover.
“Shooting is just one aspect of the whole game,” said Sapp recently. “It just so happens that I haven’t been doing that very well lately. But it’s going to come to me.”
