Bison get close but can’t pull off upset of Hoyas For a team that early on looked like it might never score, it was hardly fair for Howard to lose by double-digits Saturday. It was far from an easy 62-48 win for No. 18 Georgetown, which improved to 7-0 all time against its D.C. rival in the teams’ first meeting since the 2004-05 season.
The Bison (3-6), who are halfway to last year’s win total and at times play with five freshmen, allowed the Hoyas (8-1) to open with a 17-0 lead before closing to within two points four times in the second half.
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Using a team-high 13 points from freshman Otto Porter, a 42-22 disparity in free throw attempts and 23-12 advantage in turnovers, Georgetown pulled away with a 13-4 run down the stretch.
“I think it would be easy to stand here and come up with a bunch of excuses as to what happened,” Hoyas coach John Thompson III said. “But I don’t want to take anything away from [Howard] coach [Kevin] Nickelberry and what his team did. They outplayed us.”
But it took Howard nearly 10 minutes to get a basket. The relief was palpable from the Verizon Center crowd of 8,120 when Dadrian Collins (11 points) knocked down a 3-pointer at 10:39 to make the score 17-3.
Georgetown in turn went cold after halftime, missing its first five shots from the field and finishing with its worst shooting percentage overall (.327) of the season.
While Mike Phillips scored 12 of his 14 points for the Bison in the second half, Georgetown got 12 points each from Jason Clark and Hollis Thompson, who were a combined 18-for-21 at the line but 3-for-18 from the field and 0-for-6 from behind the arc.
After the Bison had closed to 44-40, Porter intercepted a pass and converted the slam at the other end with 6:13 to play. He pushed the Hoyas’ lead into double digits for good at 55-44 with another dunk off Markel Starks’ no-look pass.
“We eat with defense,” Nickelberry said. “That’s how we play. We ate tonight. We just didn’t finish off the meal.”
Before the game, the Hoyas announced that freshman center Tyler Adams was out indefinitely and was undergoing heart testing after complaining of chest pains earlier in the week.
