It's Finally Over

The much awaited end to this season has come. JT3's worst season as a head coach and one of Georgetown's most disappointing seasons ever is officially over. It is remarkable that the same selfish and out-of-sync group of players donning the Georgetown uniforms on Saturday against DePaul beat UConn in Hartford a little over two months ago. It is remarkable that this group of uninspired players has beaten four teams this season that were at some point ranked in the Top Ten. And it is remarkable that this team itself was once ranked as one of the Top Ten teams in the country and has spent nearly 70% of the season ranked in the Top 25.

Here were my preseason predictions. Not too far off on these, I was 9-4 in the major games I forecasted, two games off my 18-11 finish to the season and three games off on my 10-8 prediction for the conference season. I knew we would lose some bad ones, but never thought we would lose to Seton Hall and St. John's in the same season. If we had won one of those games we would still have a fighting shot for a tourney spot come Sunday. Now our only shot is to win four straight to be a bubble team and five straight to get an automatic bid.

Here were my midseason predictions.  I was way off on these, but I was trying to predict the sloppy and sporadic play we saw through the first half. I knew we would lose a really bad game and win a really good one. I just thought it would be a South Florida loss and Syracuse win instead of the actual St. John's loss and Villanova win.

For the midseason review, I split the conference season into two types, Good Georgetown and Bad Georgetown. Not every win was good (Providence) and not every loss was bad (Notre Dame). But for the end of the season, there aren't enough games considered to be good to make any type of statistical comparison relevant. The only good wins were UConn, Syracuse and South Florida. The other four wins were horribly played games where we pretty beat a much weaker opponent (South Florida, DePaul and Rutgers) or we lucked out (Villanova). So instead, I will just split the conference season into games we won and games we lost and look at the difference in the teams through the same six categories.

Fouls
Good Georgetown committed 17 infractions a game, whereas Bad Georgetown committed 19. Opponents of Good Georgetown (teams that lost to us) averaged 11 points from the line and opponents of Bad Georgetown (teams that beat us) averaged 16 points. But the numbers are all over the place; in the loss to Pitt, the Panthers only made 3 foul shots, whereas Marquette scored 30 from the line when they beat us for the first time.

Turnovers
Good Georgetown averaged 16.1 giveaways which were converted into 15.9 points by opponents. Those figures are skewed by the Villanova win where Georgetown had a season high 23 turnovers and miraculously won the game. Bad Georgetown averaged 13.4 turnovers a game which were converted into 17.8 points by opponents. So Good Georgetown actually had more turnovers, but opponents were less likely to take advantage of the mishaps.

Good Georgetown averaged 18.3 points off of 15.3 turnovers by opponents, whereas Bad Georgetown averaged only 12.7 points off of 12.6 turnovers by opponents. So Bad Georgetown was more likely to have Chris Wright throw a layup off the bottom of the rim after a turnover.

Passing
Assist to turnover ratios for Good and Bad Georgetown were the same; both were below one, a telling sign since we run an offense so dependent on precise passing. This marks the first time a JT3-led Georgetown team has had more turnovers than assists in a season.

64% of the field goals for Good Georgetown were created by assists whereas only 54% of field goals for Bad Georgetown had the same attribute. Seems logical, Bad Georgetown had a tendency to forget the principles of its offense (i.e. Summers shooting off balance jump shots with 25 seconds left on the shot clock whilst trying to impress NBA scouts with his lack of an outside game).

Rebounding
Both Good and Bad Georgetown were badly rebounded on the offensive glass, embarrassing since they normally had a height advantage over the teams they played. Major problem for this season and probably will be in the future until Monroe learns how to... wait for it... BOX IT OUT.

With the offense we run, it is okay to not get many offensive rebounds since we take high percentage shots. But there is no excuse to allow opponents to hit the offensive boards as much as they do. We are not a running, up-tempo offense; there is no need for our five players to be out of position when a shot goes up. Opponents realized this very early on and took advantage. Opponents of Bad Georgetown took five more jumpers and three pointers than opponents of Good Georgetown.

Defense
Opponents of Good Georgetown averaged 10 assists a game and had an assist to turnover ratio of 0.65. Opponents of Bad Georgetown averaged 15.5 assists a game and had an assist to turnover ratio of 1.22. That is where the games were lost. We were unable to shutdown opponents' best players and often were unable to get a defensive stop in critical times. Good passing leads to easy buckets, something that affected Georgetown on both sides of the court.

Good Georgetown gave up 56 points a game (very skewed by Rutgers, South Florida and DePaul games but those make up half our wins...) and Bad Georgetown gave up 74 (also skewed by the three overtime losses).

Offense
Good Georgetown averaged 67 points a game and Bad Georgetown averaged 65. Good Georgetown shot 50% from the field whereas Bad Georgetown shot 43%. Surprisingly, both types of teams took and made the same types of shots. Of Good Georgetown's 49 shot attempts a game, 58% were layup/dunks, 25% were three pointers and 16% were jump shots. Of their 24 field goals a game, 45% were layup/dunks, 34% were three pointers and 21% were jump shots.

Of Bad Georgetown's 55 shot attempts a game, 56% were layup/dunks, 25% were three pointers and 19% were jump shots. Of their 24 field goals a game, 45% were layup/dunks, 34% were three pointers and 21% were jump shots. Interesting that despite the opponent, we still managed to do the same thing on offense, miss the shot.


Summary
What does all this mean? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, so sorry for wasting your time. It really comes down to intangibles. It comes down to execution in crunch time, it comes down to making the play when it counts and it comes down to heart. Georgetown has shown all of the above at different times this season but was never really able to put it together for a meaningful streak (we haven't won two in a row since Jan. 14). Before this season, JT3 was 5-1 in overtime games at Georgetown and had won his last three conference overtime matches. This season, JT3 was 1-3 in overtime games and lost all three conference overtime matches.

Syracuse found a way to regroup in overtime against us in order to thwart a crushing and historic collapse. We couldn't find a way to do that against St. John's. Good teams find ways to win when it matters. People call it luck but at the end of the day it is really about confidence in yourself and trust in your teammates. This team severely lacks both.

A quote to sum it up:

"We've got a serious challenge on our hands and I've got a young team."

As said by JT3 in a preseason press conference when asked about his expectations for this season.


Good talk.