My game story, filed at the buzzer, is here, and here are a few quotes and thoughts:
I didn’t cover Georgetown four years ago — although i know that I was a couple of blocks away at Jaleo while that famous upset went down in 2006 — but I couldn’t help but think of where the Hoyas are now vs. where they were then. I asked Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski about the contrast from four years ago, when Hoyas fans stormed the court, and he couldn’t remember a thing. Of course he couldn’t.
In any case, Krzyzewski did say that this afternoon Georgetown played with more emotion than his guys, also a nice way of avoiding both compliments and insults. But my take-away comment from him was this: “We’re not a powerhouse, and I don’t think Georgetown’s a powerhouse. But we’re both really good teams, and so at times – they didn’t look that good against Syracuse. But they looked great today. We looked really good on Wednesday. We didn’t look good today. You try to find a level of consistency, that consistent excellence, and you can’t let one game define you. We won’t let this game, hopefully, define us in a negative way.”
John Thompson III also didn’t give us insight on how Duke’s man-to-man defense was a match-up godsend for the Hoyas or the fact that Duke just didn’t have any answers for Greg Monroe, Chris Wright or Austin Freeman. Instead, just another generic compliment-fest after Georgetown shot the best they ever have since JTIII took over:
“This group, our team, with each game is getting a heightened sense of and understanding that we don’t have to take a bad shot. With the offensive palyers, and the guys know where their shots are coming from, and they’re doing an outstanding job, night-in and night-out, of trying to help each other get shots. As good as they are as offensive players, hopefully, we will have other days like this.”
Thank goodness for Wright, who was a savor with something tangible to help understand how the Hoyas got 20 fast break points: “Last year, when we played them, we noticed that they weren’t really getting back as well as we thought they would usually get back in transition, so we came into this game, especially, off of rebounds we wanted to push the ball and try to get as many easy layups as possible. I don’t think it was anything out of the ordinary. I just think were playing solid defense and we came up with plays and that led to transition buckets.”
And, of course, there was President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Thompson on the atmosphere: “It was good. Everyting about it, from who was there, to how we played, against a terrific team, against a well-coached team, against a team that’s one of the best in the country. The stars were aligned properly. Hopefully, we’ll have, maybe our president won’t be here, that’s an atmosphere we can duplicate.”
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