After a rough weekend in Anaheim, the Hoyas returned to Capital One Arena for a Tuesday night battle against the Longwood Lancers. In the end, the Hoyas prevailed 91-83 off a breakout performance from sophomore forward Collin Holloway.
The only way to describe Georgetown’s play to open the game was sluggish. The Hoyas simply could not get anything going for the first 10 minutes of the first half. Their offense was stagnant and just like in the first five games of the season, they couldn’t defend the three-pointer. In the first six minutes of the game alone, the Hoyas fell behind by eight points as they allowed the Lancers to take open three after open three as the defense broke down time and time again.
As the half continued, the Hoyas found their footing. They settled down on offense, started moving more without the ball, and ended the half on a strong 18-7 run to erase a six-point deficit and end the half up by five.
Once the decision was made to counter Longwood’s smaller lineup with a small ball lineup of their own, the momentum seemingly swung in Georgetown’s direction with the help of Collin Holloway. Holloway made his presence felt as he made plays on both sides of the court. Ultimately, he scored a team-high and career-high 23 points on 7 of 9 shooting from the field and a perfect 7 for 7 from the free throw stripe. His impressive touch around the rim, as well as his ability to draw fouls, shows clear progress from the end of last year. Similarly, Holloway was able to knock down two shots from deep, putting his scoring arsenal on full display. Now it seems pretty clear what Patrick Ewing saw in him at the end of last year.
Ewing’s decision to stick with the smaller lineup clearly helped with the team’s defense, especially guarding the three-point line. With the decision to go small, Ewing had his defenders switching on every screen, thus allowing them to contest more shots. While Longwood shot 6 of 15 from deep in the first half, in the second they were held to 3 of 9 shooting from three. Although 107 combined points were scored in the second half, it had less to do with Georgetown’s inability to maintain a cohesive defensive structure and more to do with the increased pace of play. While still not ideal, there was a clear improvement in their defensive cohesion which allowed Georgetown to maintain control of the game in the second half.
In that second half, the Hoyas battled and seemingly had answers for the Lancers’ fast-paced attack. Although there were a few miscues and Longwood hung around longer than Georgetown’s staff would have hoped, the Hoyas were able to hit contested three-pointers late, thanks to Kaiden Rice and Don Carey, while also making a number of defensive stops in important moments in the game to just keep the game out of reach.
For the first time this season, Georgetown also got scoring help from across the board, instead of output from just one or two players. In tonight’s bout, five Hoyas found themselves in double digits, which is the most in any game this season. On top of that, Aminu Mohammed recorded his second double-double of the season with 15 points and 11 rebounds. While we can’t expect the Hoyas to score 91 points on a nightly basis, just the fact that they received contributions from almost everyone who got significant minutes should give us some hope for this team going forward.
Although the game was tighter than it should have been, there was another reason to have hope: the Hoyas were able to outrebound the Lancers by a margin of 40 to 32. Coming into the game, Longwood was considered to be one of the top rebounding teams in the nation and the Hoyas were somewhat mediocre at rebounding, even with their size. But tonight’s aggression on the boards, especially on the offensive boards, showed that Georgetown could possibly use their size to dominate the glass in the future.
One story to look out for going forward will be the status of junior center Timothy Ighoefe. After falling victim to an apparent hand injury in the closing minutes of the first half, Ighoefe was ruled out for the rest of the game. While this may have acted as a blessing in disguise, forcing the Hoyas to stick with their smaller lineup, they were also somewhat fortunate that Longwood’s lineup is on the smaller side so Georgetown’s forwards had no real problem matching up against the Lancers’ bigs. At the same time, the possible absence of Ighoefe could really hurt the Hoyas when they play games against opponents with true bigs, as this team could then get bullied inside. After the game, Ewing said that Ighoefe is set to get x-rays on his hand and wrist tomorrow, which will hopefully provide further clarity on his status moving forward.
Looking ahead, Georgetown will travel to Columbia, South Carolina for a Sunday matchup against the 5-1 University of South Carolina Gamecocks. Colombia natives Kaiden Rice and Malcolm Wilson are set to revisit their old high school stomping grounds as the Hoyas look to build on tonight’s win and begin to right the ship.
