Georgetown sunk further into the depths with a 80-67 loss Sunday afternoon on the road against South Carolina. For nearly the entire 40 minutes, the team looked lifeless and lethargic. The game was eminently winnable, but a horrendous offensive performance and the Hoyas’ continued defensive woes (long-running issues which have reached the point of putrefaction) gave it away to the Gamecocks. This kind of double-digit loss should have been an aberration, but it’s beginning to feel like the norm.
The game opened with Georgetown getting a five second violation on an inbounds pass, which was a fitting sign for what was to come. The opening minutes set the tone for the rest of the game, with the Hoyas and the Gamecocks engaged in a rock fight. It took over four minutes of game time (and agonizingly longer in real life) for Georgetown to even score. The Hoyas finally scored on their tenth field goal attempt, doing so in style with Aminu Mohammed dunking on South Carolina’s AJ Wilson and staring down the Columbia crowd.
For as electric as the Mohammed dunk was, Georgetown’s offense simply was unable to get anything going. Emblematic of this was one possession where Kaiden Rice had his three-point attempt blocked, managed to grab the rebound, and missed a floater. He got the ball again, and tried for the putback attempt, and missed that as well.
12 minutes into the game, Georgetown had gone 3 for 25 from the field. Had they played against a better team, Georgetown would have long been left in the dust by that point. Thankfully for the Hoyas, South Carolina stinks too. Georgetown managed to rattle off a 12-2 run before a media timeout, pulling within four of South Carolina at the 3:22 mark to make it a 27-23 game. The Gamecocks then went on a 9-3 run after the media timeout to end the half with a lead of 36-27.
The Hoyas had 10 turnovers in the first half, with Kaiden Rice accounting for three of those. Georgetown managed to shoot a cool 22% from the field. You read that right. South Carolina didn’t have any special defensive scheme that threw the Hoyas off; rather, it was poor shot selection and, at times, baffling decisions made on the floor by the players. On offense, it seemed to be a free-for-all with no semblance of anything that could be considered to resemble a scheme or offensive identity.
Georgetown did manage to keep South Carolina’s three-point shooting percentage to 11% on nine attempts, although most of that was because of the Gamecocks being a bad three-point shooting team than any special defensive effort by the Hoyas.
Aminu Mohammed was the sole bright spot for the Hoyas in an otherwise disastrous first half, with 9 points on 4-9 shooting, six rebounds, and a nice poster dunk mixed in.
The second half was more of the same, with the Hoyas going tit for tat with SC. The offensive struggles continued, while Georgetown’s continual overhelping on defense gave the Gamecocks good looks. The play and the coaching during this half did little to engender any confidence that the Hoyas would mount a comeback, as the deadly duo of lackadaisical play and non-existent scheming combined for a borderline-unwatchable slog to the end of the game.
Ewing continued to roll out the same lineups, although it was clear they weren’t working. Kaiden Rice saw 21 minutes of action despite not scoring a single point, while solid defensive players like Tyler Beard and Kobe Clark either saw limited action or no minutes at all, respectively. The lineups were rigid and uninspiring. Any hopes that fans may have had of seeing new approaches to lineups and scheming due to the weeks-long absence of Timothy Ighoefe were dashed. Ewing started Malcolm Wilson in Ighoefe’s stead, and continued to play with a true center on the floor most of the time. Time will tell if this inclination towards playing a center the vast majority of the time was because of South Carolina’s size—a one-off event dependent on the opponent matchup—or indicative of a larger rigid adherence to playing a true center at all times.
The Hoyas went into the last two minutes of the game down by 14, and they finally switched to a press. One Don Carey three and and several South Carolina turnovers helped the Hoyas inch back into the game. It was the first time Georgetown showed any signs of life in the entire game, but it was just too late. That spark didn’t even last until the end of the game, as the same old problems cropped up once again.
Unfortunately, Kaiden Rice and Malcolm Wilson didn’t get any homecoming boosts to their performances: Wilson was a near non-factor on offense and on the boards, while Rice went 0-10 from the field with 4 turnovers.
Aminu Mohammed continued to be the sole bright spot for Georgetown (a role which he will likely continue for the rest of the season) by chipping in 17 points and 8 rebounds, in addition to playing aggressively the entirety of the game.
The same problems that Georgetown fans have seen time and time again this season (and before then) were on display again today, to an even more extreme level. The Georgetown offense simply has no consistency or identity, and the defense is as bad as was feared. This was a terrible performance wire-to-wire, and it raises even more questions about the program and the direction it’s headed in.
Jam