Exactly a week after Georgetown’s triumphant overtime victory at McDonough Arena, they returned to play with a disappointing 94-83 loss to St. John’s in their first road contest of the season. The game began as almost every Hoyas game does: for about four minutes, there was some hope. Although the Hoyas were able to jump out to an early 8-2 lead, they quickly lost energy and their shooting touch. Soon after, the Johnnies were able to take over, and they never looked back.
To start, it looked as though the Hoyas were picking up where they left off. They came out of the gate firing with two quick three pointers to take an early 8-2 lead, but in classic St. John’s v. Georgetown fashion, the Red Storm was able to thunder back to take the lead just two minutes later. At that point, the momentum completely shifted in the Johnnies’ favor and stayed that way for the rest of the game. Ultimately, the Hoyas were outworked and outplayed. It was clear which team wanted to win the game more, and it for sure wasn’t Georgetown. Outside of the first few minutes, there weren’t many times that you could point to and think that the Hoyas were giving it their all.
Of course, it would be easy to blame this on one or two underperforming players, but as Patrick Ewing pointed out in his (extremely short) postgame press conference, the game needed to be more of a team effort. “We’re going to need everybody if we expect to win,” said Ewing. “We’re not that dominant of a team or we don’t have that one dominant person that we can throw the ball to and say ‘go get me a bucket’ so everybody needs to do their part.”
But at the same time, it was clear that Jamorko Pickett struggled on the offensive side of the ball. Although he was able to produce in other ways, mainly with 11 rebounds, two assists, and a block, Pickett shot an abysmal 2 of 12 from the field. For someone who averaged 13.3 points per game coming into tonight, his 6 points did not help this struggling Hoyas offense.
Similarly, Dante Harris was given another opportunity to start, but this time around he was unable to produce points at a high rate. One week ago, he poured in an impressive 22 points, but after scoring a quick five points tonight, Harris cooled off quickly and did not score another basket even though he played a total of 33 minutes in the game. In a lot of ways, it looked like Dante was just trying to do too much when he had the ball in his hands, so it’s fair to say that he showed he was a freshman tonight.
On a positive note, Donald Carey and Javhon Blair showed their scoring prowess, combining for more than half of the Hoyas’ total offense. Carey built on his strong play with another 19-point performance on 7 of 11 shooting from the field and 5 of 9 shooting from three. He definitely showed that he is able to step up into a larger role as a consistent shooter. Similarly, Blair continued with his strong play tonight. After a rather benign first half with seven points, he exploded with 18 in the second for a total of 25 points. Although he provided some of the scoring the Hoyas needed, Blair did so while shooting an unimpressive 7 of 16 from the field and 3 of 9 from behind the arc. While their scoring helped, both Blair and Carey’s efforts proved to be too little too late.
As is usual with this Georgetown team, defense was a struggle. After a game that netted St. John’s 50 points in the paint and 20 offensive rebounds one week ago, the Hoyas attempted to adjust their play on defense. While they were able to out-rebound the Johnnies and limit their points in the paint, it came at the expense of defending the three pointer. In tonight’s game, St. John’s shot an impressive 13 of 29 (45%) from behind the arc which was a clear improvement from the 4 of 13 (31%) effort they put up at McDonough. Ewing harped on this point during the postgame press conference, saying, “we weren’t guarding the three point line. Last game they were getting the ball into the paint and they got 50 paint points, tonight we weren’t guarding them and they were making the three.”
Overall, this game felt like a celebrity boxing match as the Hoyas looked like Nate Robinson going up against Jake Paul. There is no doubt in anybody’s mind that they could have pulled off a decent victory tonight, but in the end, they didn’t have the same drive to win as the team on the other side of the ring. Georgetown endured punch after punch, but after a few too many knocks to the head, there was no coming back. To be blunt, this game left a lot to be desired out of our boys in blue and gray, but hey, at least John finally hit a bet.
The Hoyas will now look to get back to .500 in conference play on Wednesday in Newark against the 2-1 (5-4 overall) Seton Hall Pirates.
