
Season Opener, Take 2!
Your Georgetown Hoyas are back and continue their 2021-22 campaign against the American University Eagles at home on Tuesday Evening!
Game 2: American University Eagles (2-0) at Georgetown Hoyas (0-1)
When: Tuesday 8:30 PM
Where: Capital One Arena
Series: Hoyas lead 46-8
Last meeting: Omer Yurtseven, Terrell Allen and Jahvon Blair all went for double-figures as Georgetown beat American by 20 a few days after Christmas in 2019.
TV: FS2 (Kevin Fitzgerald, Stephen Bardo)
Radio: The Team 980 (Rich Chvotkin, 48th season), SiriusXM as well as SiriusXM 384
KenPom Ranking: Georgetown 90, American 254
KenPom Projection: Georgetown 77, American 62 (91 percent)
Line: Hoyas -14.5, o/u 139.5
Mutombo Coffee:
PREVIEW
When coach Patrick Ewing asked for everyone’s patience last week, I’m not sure many people took that to mean that losses to teams such as Dartmouth were in play. Simply put, it’s the worst loss for the program in the KenPom, RPI, whatever-metric-you-want-to-use era.
One thing it does do is it makes every game interesting from now until the end of the season.
For tonight let’s just see how the players respond. Let’s see if Timothy Ighoefe, Kobe Clark or Colin Holloway are cleared to return, and, if they do, what does that do to the minutes and lineups going forward.
Until the Hoyas get their 3-point defense sorted out, they aren’t – as we just saw – going to beat many teams while scoring only 60 themselves.
AMERICAN REPORT
Former Hoyas assistant Mike Brennan is in his 9th season at AU, having made one NCAA Tournament back in 2014. Brennan was part of four NCAA Tournament teams in his four seasons with Georgetown (2010-13).
Last season the Eagles were only able to play 10 games because of covid but that’s 10 more games than Dartmouth got in last season and we saw what there were capable of just a few days ago.
Fifth-year guard Stacy leads five Eagles in double-figures with 21 points per game while shooting 57 % from deep and grabbing a team-high seven boards per contest. Six-foot-nine forward Johnny O’Neil leads AU attempting 11 3s through two games. We’re probably going to see a lot of Princeton action but in wins over Marist and William & Mary, Brennan’s club has attempted fewer than 20 3s in each game so far. We’ll see if that changes but that’s probably good news for Georgetown.
Eagles associate head coach Scott Greenman was also on the Hoyas staff with Brennan back in the JT3 days.
SIMILAR RESULTS
In trying to figure out the most comparable loss to Dartmouth the games that tossed around were Radford in 2015 and Northeastern in 2013. From a numbers standpoint they made the most sense although in neither of those games was Georgetown bossed around. Both of those L’s were in the balance until the very end.
Since Ewing’s taken charge, the Dartmouth lose most resembled the season opener to Mount St. Mary’s in the 2019-20 season. The Mountaineers – who were a bad team that year, hanging around the 300 mark in most rankings – dominated the first half and led by double-figures at the break. The main difference with this game is that (obviously) Georgetown was able to storm back and avoid an embarrassing defeat. The Hoyas had the talent to do so and could dig themselves out of a hole by scoring 80. Probably the one connecting to thread to all of Ewing’s team (so far) is that they struggle to defend.
CLOSE CALL
Now Ewing wasn’t in charge back in December of 2004 but there was another game that would have been in the running for worst program loss in the modern era. Georgetown was down three late to Norfolk State in JT3’s first season as I was in the crowd as a season ticket holder wondering if things would ever turn around. Well, you know what? They did for that day and then for the next 10 years or so. Ashanti Cook hit a big 3 late and Brandon Bowman dominated in the only OT ever played between the Hoyas and a school from the MEAC.
Casual Prop Bets
AU attempted 3s – 20.5
Ighoefe plays – YES/NO
Georgetown points – 70.5
Number of times Casual Hoya Tweets: “Sports is pain” – 1.5
Bobby’s Prediction
Hoyas 72, AU 69
Leave your witty (and non-witty) in-game comments here!
HOYA SAXA!