When I first started watching college basketball in the mid-80s, Georgetown was a national power. The first year I watched to any real degree, the 1986-87 season, not as much was expected of them, which I didn’t know at the time, but they were a national power all the same, losing to the storybook Providence team in the regional final as the Friars completed a most unexpected Final Four run.
35 years later, Georgetown looks nothing like that. And because of that reality, the school is now in a tight spot as we push towards the end of this season.
The late John Thompson Jr. made the school a national power and was a difference-maker in the lives of his players. In his 27 years at the school, the Hoyas made 20 NCAA Tournaments (including three Final Four appearances and the 1984 national championship) and four NIT appearances, and he also established the school as the place where big men starred before the NBA with Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo chief among them.
His son, John Thompson III, restored the program to its heights for a time after a non-descript five-plus seasons under long-time assistant Craig Esherick that featured nearly as many NIT bids as Big John’s tenure did. After an NIT bid his first year, the Hoyas were in the Final Four again in his third season during a run that saw them reach the NCAA Tournament seven times in eight seasons.
During that run, the Hoyas got just about any top talent between Baltimore and the nation’s capital that they wanted. He inherited Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert, who committed while Esherick ran the program, but took to a new level with the likes of DaJuan Summers, Chris Wright, Austin Freeman, Jason Clark, Julian Vaughn, Henry Sims, Markel Starks and Mikael Hopkins all choosing to play there. They recruited from plenty of other places, of course – Greg Monroe was from Louisiana and Otto Porter was from Missouri, as just two examples – but they got pretty much any kid near the nation’s capital that they wanted and that set a big tone.
Then things changed on that end, and the bottom line results also changed for the worse. After making it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament in 2015, the Hoyas had two straight losing seasons, after which JT III was shown the door.
The school was at a crossroads. The roster was devoid of talent, with their best underclassmen either leaving for the NBA Draft (L.J. Peak) or transferring (Isaac Copeland), a continuation of a clear decline for the program. The program declined under Esherick, but it looked like this could be worse. Yet Georgetown was – and still is now – seen as one of the best coaching jobs in the country, largely owing to the great recruiting base.
What would they do for JT III’s successor? Would they stay in the John Thompson family, or go outside of it? Who was even a possibility within the family?
They certainly looked outside the family, reportedly getting turned down by the likes of Mike Brey, Chris Mack and Shaka Smart. Ed Cooley’s name came up, and comes up now (we’ll get to that), but it seems like the longest of long shots since he makes $3 million running his hometown program. But they stayed inside the family and went with Patrick Ewing, the school’s greatest player who had been an NBA assistant and had tried unsuccessfully to be an NBA head coach.
Given the history of star players coaching in college, especially at their alma mater, Ewing’s hire was a gamble. For a time, it looked like it might work out. The Hoyas struggled to a 15-15 mark his first season, then went 19-14 and reached the NIT in year two with a good nucleus. The Hoyas were widely seen as solidly trending up and a likely NCAA Tournament team entering his third season, before everything changed on December 2, 2019. Ewing announced that James Akinjo and Josh LeBlanc, the former a key part of the nucleus Ewing had rebuilt around, would no longer play at the school in the aftermath of on-campus incidents a couple of months earlier. The Hoyas were 4-3 at the time and went 11-14 the rest of the way, and have never recovered. Omer Yurtseven and Mac McClung both departed after the season, leaving the roster decimated compared to what it was in October.
Since then, not much has been expected of the Hoyas, so they were already irrelevant as they have largely lived up to the low expectations of them. Now, they are quite relevant, but for the wrong reason: they enter Monday night’s trip to Creighton having lost a program-record 13 straight games and with a 6-17 record. Under Ewing, the Hoyas are 26-56 in Big East play, with their 9-9 record in his second season their best to date. If not for a magical run in the Big East Tournament a year ago that got them into the NCAA Tournament, there would be nothing to write home about at all in his tenure, but that looks more and more like a fluke all the time.
All the talk now is about whether or not Ewing is on borrowed time in the nation’s capital and where the program goes from here. Ewing’s contract is a six-year deal that goes through the end of next season. You have to think they are not going to fire him – from an optics standpoint, firing the program’s greatest player would be a disaster. But they can try to push him out and get him to step down. It’s unfortunate, but this is not working by any objective consideration. A great feature about his tenure that touched on the recruiting aspect leaves you giving him credit for trying valiantly, but you sense a coach who was never fond of it to begin with and hasn’t grown to like it any more than when he first came on board.
Should Ewing move on, the Hoyas would almost certainly go outside the family this time around. Big John is no longer with us, having passed almost a year and a half ago, and there are no viable candidates in the family. His presence will always loom over the program for obvious reasons nonetheless. Ed Cooley is a popular name, as noted earlier, but would he leave his hometown school? Georgetown could certainly pay him, and he would have a better natural recruiting base, but would he really leave? I have to think he will be very picky if it comes to leaving Providence, and I’m not sure Georgetown is one that he leaves there for. It would be fascinating to see what direction they go this time around.
One thing is for sure: Georgetown looks nothing like the program I saw the first time I followed college basketball. Little was expected of these Hoyas just like not as much was expected of that 1986-87 team, but the comparisons end there.