Undaunted by Doubters, Hoyas Rough Up Cincinnati

After Georgetown’s tough stretch over the past two weeks, everybody seemed down on the Hoyas — especially the AP and the coaches of the ESPN/USA Today poll, who both knocked Georgetown out of the top 10 for the first time all season.

But if today’s 73-53 victory over Cincinnati proved anything, it’s that Head Coach John Thompson III and his Hoyas aren’t listening. They’re just going to get to work.

“How you want to judge us as the season’s going along, you can do it however you want. The guys in that locker room, we know what we need to improve on, how we need to improve,” Thompson said after the game. “We take it one game at a time focusing on getting better. Everyone here can make judgments on who we are, where we are, how we are. I don’t really care how we’re being judged.”

Against the Bearcats, the Hoyas (22-4, 12-3 Big East) started to look like their usual selves again. Their 47.6 field-goal percentage, not too far off the mark from their season average of 48.4, is the highest of their last seven games. Four players finished in double digits, led by junior guard Jessie Sapp with 16.

On defense, the Hoyas had let four of their last five opponents shoot better than 42 percent. Today, however, Georgetown’s nation-leading field-goal percentage defense (.360) kept a tight leash on Cincinnati, as the Bearcats (13-13, 8-6) connected only 36.4 percent of their shots.

“They’re by far the best defensive team we’ve played all year,” said Cincinnati Head Coach Mick Cronin. “Georgetown’s got a great team. They displayed that today. We were unable to penetrate their defense and take care of the basketball and get the kind of shots that we needed to get to have a chance to win the game today.”

Cincinnati opened the game by trying to exploit one of Georgetown’s biggest weaknesses, breaking the full-court press. The press, which has made Georgetown’s offense go haywire in the past, caused the Hoyas to turn the ball over five times during the first 10 minutes. It kept the Bearcats within striking distance, but Cincinnati was never able to capitalize off of the turnovers with points, so the press started to lose its effectiveness.

“You know the old adage, you can’t press if you can’t score,” Cronin said. “I think what happens when you can’t score, you get a little demoralized on the defensive end.”

Thompson made two big substitutions in the middle of the first half which also helped turned around Georgetown’s momentum. Only senior guard Jonathan Wallace stayed on the floor as Thompson exchanged guard Jeremiah Rivers, swingman Tyler Crawford, and forwards Patrick Ewing and Vernon Macklin for the usual starting lineup of guards Sapp and Austin Freeman, forward DaJuan Summers and center Roy Hibbert within a minute and a half of each other.

With this new group, the Hoyas expanded their lead from 11-9 at 10:56 to 25-13 at 6:17. During that run, Sapp and Wallace contributed a three-pointer each. Sapp also grabbed back-to-back steals that he and Freeman converted into four points.

“I just went with the flow of the game. We got an opportunity to get transition points, and we took advantage of it,” Sapp said.

In total, Georgetown scored 27 points off of turnovers on the game.

“I think that in the on-ball situations later in the game — we were not good at it the first five minutes — but the rotations were a little better. Early on, they were not. Then we settled into our rotations,” Thompson said.

Georgetown opened up its margin over Cincinnati to as much as 14 points with 2:27 left in the first half. But two three-point daggers from Cincinnati sophomore guard Deonta Vaughn helped bring the Bearcats within seven, 34-27, by the halftime buzzer.

Vaughn had 10 points in the first half as he made 3-of-4 three-point attempts. He and teammate John Williamson, a senior forward, each finished the game with 13 points, but Georgetown was able to hold Vaughn to only three points in the second half.

Meanwhile, Hibbert, Georgetown’s senior big man, scored 10 of his 12 points in the second half, mostly on free throws, and he finished with a low three rebounds. On defense, however, Hibbert racked up five blocks.

“His numbers aren’t as great as some of the people being mentioned for best player in America, but I think that anybody that doesn’t consider him hasn’t seen him in person,” Cronin said. “His presence causes you to run the offense in an entirely different way.”

The Hoyas held a double-digit lead over the Bearcats for most of the second half, so Thompson called for junior forward Bryon Jansen and freshman swingman Omar Wattad to enter the game with 2:14 left.

On the day, the weakest area for Georgetown was three-point shooting. The Hoyas only made 6-of-22 (27.3 percent) from behind the arc.

Georgetown has a few days to rest up before playing host to St. John’s on Wednesday night. Said Cincinnati’s head coach: “I know I’m glad we don’t play them again.”