Georgetown Basketball: Struggles continue

Don’t let anyone tell you different… Georgetown never thought they would be here.

The Hoyas have three losses in their last four games with a non-conference schedule ranked over 300.

The roster is better than it was last season. That’s not debatable but the play that been just as disjointed.

It’s starts at the point position. Primo Spears came out of the game hot but he’s morphed into an inefficient shoot first guard. The Hoyas could live with him shooting 8-33 in the last three games if he wouldn’t have a five turnover game against, of all teams, American, who by the way, was missing their best player.

Head coach Patrick Ewing doesn’t have many options because, in the era of primary ball-handlers, Georgetown had two. Spears and freshman Denver Anglin. It’s obvious that, despite coming into college with a reputation was being a good shooter, Ewing hasn’t found nearly enough minutes for anyone to judge whether Anglin came bring that type of reputation to college basketball. Anglin is 3-5 from the field (2-4 from 3) in five games.

Brandon Murray has been as up and down as they come while Qudus Wahab still struggles against any half-decent big in college basketball.

Akok Akok has been one of the few bright spots this season.

Defensively Georgetown looks like a team whose oars aren’t rowing together.

On the one hand, “defensive coordinator” Kevin Nickelberry wants to get after teams and why not? Even though I wouldn’t classify Georgetown’s guards and wings as extremely athletic, they are long enough and quick enough to cause some disruption. Early in the season when the Hoyas would get good traps, it was usually undone by poor rotation.

Now there seems to be this regression back to halfcourt man-to-man with a limited sprinkle of zone even when the zone is working.

In the American loss, Georgetown went zone for three possessions. Even though, they had problems rebounding out of it, it forced American into multiple turnovers then, inexplicably, we didn’t see zone the rest of the game.

The Hoyas are on a dubious streak where they’ve had the lead at halftime in their last four games and have managed to go 1-3.

Look at UMBC

All this is to say, Saturday’s game against UMBC (3-3) is anything but a guarantee. You can’t convince me that the Retrievers don’t look at the loss to American and think “oh… we can walk in there and get a win”.

Last time out, UMBC lost 76-72 to UNC Greensboro in a game where they were down 16 points with 8:27 left. Retrievers managed to hit 17 three pointers in the game. The Hoyas rank 182nd in defensive 3P%.

Four Retrievers average in double-digits led by guard Cotton Lawrence (15.7). Fellow backcourt mate, Matteo Picarelli 55.6% from the three-point line.

45.2% of UMBC’s points come from the three-point line. That ranks 6th in the country per KenPom.

Related Posts