The Hoyas face their second-straight tough contest on the Big East highway Wednesday when Georgetown travels to the Keystone State to meet Jamie Dixon's streaking Panthers. Pitt has owned the Hoyas in rencet times, winning nine of the last 13 played between the two schools, four of the last five at Petersen Events Center. No.12 G'town looks to end the No. 9 Panthers' perfect start in the conference.
Everyone needs back-up at some point. We all have our limits, and the more effort we put in, the sooner we reach those limits. Case in point: the Georgetown Hoyas.
You’ll have to dig deep to find a college basketball team that works harder than the Hoyas. John Thompson III played and coached at Princeton, so it’s no surprise he brought the Princeton offense to Georgetown when he was hired in 2004.
This style requires a lot of movement away from the ball and disciplined decision-making. Very few college teams are able to pull this off. The Hoyas do; they’re 13-3 SU (6-6 ATS) and a viable contender to win the Big East this year.
That’s if they can make it that far. Thompson is pushing his starters harder than just about any other team in the nation. Hoyas reserves have taken up just 18.2 percent of the minutes played thus far, a figure that ranks No. 344 out of the 347 teams in Division I. On top of that, Georgetown is stocked with big players – including the lynchpin of the offense, 6-foot-11 center Greg Monroe (14.9 points, 10.0 rebounds, 3.3 assists per game). It takes even more effort to get all that beef moving up and down the court.
Thompson has already taken his lumps in the local press for the lack of depth on his team.
“Conventional wisdom would say, ‘Oh, they’re going to break down,’ so I guess you’re waiting for me to say that,” Thompson told The Washington Post this past weekend. “But I don’t know that there is a risk. They’re young. They can play all day.”
Then the Hoyas went out Sunday and lost 82-77 to the Villanova Wildcats (+4½), a super-quick team with no shortage of capable reserves.
Hoyas fans have seen this before. Their team went 5-14 SU and 4-14-1 ATS in the spring semester of 2009, crashing out in the first round of both the Big East tourney and the NIT. Part of that was fatigue, but the young players also had some trouble picking up the intricacies of the offense.
Inexperience is no longer a problem with guards Chris Wright (14.3 points, 4.0 assists per game) and Austin Freeman (15.9 points, 2.4 assists) playing very well in their junior seasons. The workload, on the other hand, remains punishing.
Not that Thompson should be criticized for trying to maximize his assets. He’s been working with limited resources, but the Hoyas were finally able to go seven-deep against Villanova with freshman power forward Jerrelle Benimon logging a season-high 21 minutes. Benimon has been limited this year with a high ankle sprain; at 6-foot-7 and 210 pounds, he needs to fill out to be truly effective, but he did manage to grab six rebounds against the Wildcats and add four points.
It will probably take more than that for the Hoyas to go into the Petersen Events Center and put the kibosh on the Panthers (15-2 SU, 8-5-2 ATS). This is another Charter member of the lunch-pail gang in the Big East, applying a work ethic under coach Jamie Dixon that creates results above and beyond the team’s talent level. Ken Pomeroy has Pittsburgh ranked No. 24 in the nation in team efficiency; Georgetown is No. 18.
The Panthers weren’t supposed to perform this well after losing players like DeJuan Blair and Levance Fields from last year’s Elite Eight squad. They were picked to finish ninth in the Big East by the conference’s coaches when they were polled during the preseason.
But their fortunes have been bolstered by the return of guard Jermaine Dixon (broken foot) and swingman Gilbert Brown, who missed the fall semester for academic reasons. The Panthers are 6-0 SU and 5-0-1 ATS with both players back in the lineup.
There’s the rub for Georgetown. Brown and freshman forward Dante Taylor have given Pittsburgh solid minutes off the bench in a seven-deep rotation. There might not be enough Gatorade in the world to keep the Hoyas fresh in the final minutes of this matchup. Be sure to monitor the betting odds for this one; tip-off is Wednesday night at 7 p.m. Eastern.
Last edited by SBR Jonelyn; 03-31-15 at 04:01 PM.
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Georgetown looks for answers at Pittsburgh
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