Both positives and negatives come out of defeat by Syracuse
Each of Georgetown’s losses has come with a lesson.
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Against Kansas in Maui, the Hoyas learned the importance of making plays down the stretch. West Virginia was a wake-up call after 11 wins in a row and Cincinnati the snooze alarm marking a two-game skid. At Pittsburgh, Georgetown learned that showing up by itself is never enough.
| Up next |
| St. John’s at No. 12 Georgetown |
| When » Sunday, 1 p.m. |
| Where » Verizon Center |
| TV » ESPN |
| » Georgetown assistant coach Kenya Hunter was released from the hospital Friday after passing out during the Hoyas’ practice Tuesday. He did not travel with the team to Syracuse. Coach John Thompson III had no further information on his condition. |
| » Thompson said he was proud of former center Roy Hibbert making the NBA All-Star team. “Just how far he’s come from the time he walked on campus here,” Thompson said. “I haven’t coached anyone who’s worked as hard as Roy.” |
After last week’s emotional 64-61 overtime loss in what could be the last visit in a long time to Syracuse, reflection was the order of the day.
“I think that was a big game for us,” Hoyas senior guard Jason Clark said, “and I think that we proved ourselves — that we can play with anybody in the country.”
The Hoyas (18-5, 8-4 Big East) have surpassed every expectation this season — except perhaps some of their own — but the hardest work remains ahead. There’s no margin for error when it comes to staking a claim to a crucial top-four spot in the Big East and a double-bye in the conference tournament. Georgetown entered the weekend in fourth place by a half-game over Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida.
“You have to figure out how we can get better, how we can grow, how we can learn from [the Syracuse defeat],” Hoyas coach John Thompson III said. “Dwell is the wrong word. It was a difficult loss, but then we have to move on.”
Much of the blame for Georgetown’s squandered chance against the Orange lays at the feet of forwards Henry Sims and Mikael Hopkins, who were a combined 2-for-20 from the field. Sims was 1-for-12 and had six points, his lowest scoring game of the year.
“There were a lot of situations where as a player you miss a shot, and so you’ve been programmed to think since you were 6 years old, ‘Ah, good players come back and take the next one and make the next shot,’?” Thompson said. “Well, in a lot of situations, the next play was not to take the next shot.”
In refocusing on the larger objectives of the team against the Red Storm (10-14, 4-8), Sims will find that tracking Moe Harkless, who had 21 points and 10 rebounds before crucially fouling out when the teams met last month, will be of paramount importance.
Defense has been the Hoyas’ calling card, and Thompson said the statistic he’s most proud of is his team’s field goal percentage defense, which is fourth in the Big East and 18th in the country. The objective, of course, isn’t numerical achievement, but it brings a smile to the coach, even in the wake of a loss to his biggest rival.
“Yeah, I’m having fun coaching these guys,” Thompson said. “You figure out whether you had fun when it’s over. It’s hard in athletics during the course of the season to step back and, ‘Ah, this is great’ or ‘This is hell.’ You have to move on and focus on what’s in front of you.”
