When Ed Cooley got to Washington, he quickly discovered how talent-bankrupt the program was.
Georgetown didn’t need a rebuild; it required a complete build.
That meant that in a college basketball world that expects quick fixes because of the perception that the transfer portal is like professional free agency, Georgetown would have to do it the old-fashioned way. A slow, strategic build where the need to get key transfers would have to complement multiple freshmen who would be ready to play early on.
It’s what makes Georgetown different than conference foe St. John’s. Rick Pitino took over a program further up the food chain than Georgetown. Mike Anderson might not have reached the expectations set by the fan base, but he didn’t leave the program in ruins. That has allowed the Red Storm to concentrate more on filling gaps with transfers rather than pressuring freshmen to contribute immediately.
The Hoyas non-conference schedule was designed based on where Cooley thought the program was. That meant a schedule that didn’t resemble the ones at Duke, Kansas, or North Carolina. It was a non-conference schedule that had only three opponents from power conferences: Notre Dame (ACC), West Virginia (Big 12), and Syracuse (ACC).
Before the season, in a perfect world, if Georgetown could go 2-1 in those games, it would show progress. West Virginia was always going to be the penciled-in loss. Once Georgetown lost to Notre Dame in the fashion they lost, the talk was that this season didn’t look any different than the last, and 0-3 in those games was in play.
