WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Any true eastern basketball fan fondly remembers when Georgetown basketball mattered. It's a shame that's no longer the case.
The Georgetown most people recall doesn't exist anymore. The Georgetown of Sleepy Floyd and Craig Shelton and John Duren that wrote the word "Hoya" into the sporting world's lexicon. The Georgetown of Patrick Ewing and Reggie Williams and David Wingate that took the school's basketball fortunes uptown, all the way to three Final Fours in four years and the 1984 national championship. John Thompson's program was America's program then, complete with all the notoriety (positive and negative) Hoya Paranoia could muster.
Thompson kept things rolling after the great Ewing years. Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo followed in Ewing's footsteps and made Georgetown the place to enroll if your game included physical post play and your goal was the NBA. In the mid-1990s, Georgetown caught lots of flak for giving a skinny, jet-quick, troubled kid from Virginia a chance to play some ball. Allen Iverson stayed around for two years, long enough to earn his way as the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft.
But things have changed since Iverson left in 1996. Thompson's recruiting fell off and he resigned during the 1998-99 season. Long-time assistant Craig Esherick replaced one of the college game's most dominant figures, complete with Big John's stamp of approval. But the program's slide continued. In fact, the slide has become a torrent.
When Providence College faces the Hoyas tonight at the MCI Center, it'll be evident that the once-vaunted Georgetown program is a shell of itself. Once the epitome of talent and toughness, now no one fears the Hoyas (12-11, 4-8 Big East). You think of Georgetown now and images of errant shooting, ugly scrums for loose balls, and stupid plays under pressure rush to the mind's eye.
College basketball is big in the nation's capitol, but few people seem to care about the Hoyas anymore. The 20,600-seat MCI Center never is close to full. A last-second loss to UCLA drew a season-high 14,227 fans. Last week, just 7,242 came to see a visit from nationally ranked division rival Pittsburgh. In 14 home dates, the Hoyas have attracted an average crowd of 7,685 in the cavernous home of Michael Jordan's Washington Wizards.
Maryland has blown past the Hoyas in the eyes of district fans. The defending national champs are what Georgetown used to be, the focus of the D.C. winter. The area's newpaper of record, the Washington Post, accords the Terps front page, blanket coverage. Georgetown stories land on page 10 or so. The Post didn't even send a reporter to Georgetown's 74-72 win at Miami last Saturday.
What happened? How did one of America's premier hoops programs become irrelevant in its own backyard?
In college ball, the coach is always the top reason. Esherick is a nice man, a Georgetown-educated lawyer. But have you ever hear the line about someone better suited to be a lieutenant than a general? That's him. In his first four years as coach, Esherick compiled a 31-31 Big East record. Only one of his four teams has qualified for the NCAA Tournament.
This season has seen the lowest lows. With perhaps the Big East's most dominant player, bruising forward Mike Sweetney, at his disposal, Esherick's team has mustered only a 4-8 Big East record. With four games left, the Hoyas are battling to stay out of last place in the West Division and avoid the embarrassment of not qualifying for the Big East Tournament. Most disturbing is the team's results in the close games that dominate the Big East these days. Over the last two seasons, the Hoyas are 1-6 in overtime games. This season, the Hoyas lost six straight games, with three coming by a single point. Esherick has two years left on his contract, but reports out of D.C. have indicated the coach has begun talks on an extension with the school.
"I've never been in this position in any way, shape or form," Esherick said last week. "I'm laughing to keep from crying. We've been extremely competitive, but we have to figure out a way when it's game-winning time to make the plays."
Barring an unlikely sweep through the Big East tourney, Georgetown won't be in the NCAAs again this March. That'll make five times in the last six years when a program that did so much for college basketball will sit and watch instead of creating more memories. And that's sad.
For Georgetown once sat atop the college hoops world, right there with Duke and Indiana, Kansas and North Carolina, UCLA and Kentucky. Now the Hoyas fight to stay out of last place in the Big East, and the days of regular runs deep into March are only a memory.
