Where I Come From: My All-Time Favorite Georgetown Hoyas Team
by CasualHoya on Jul 6, 2010 10:40 AM EDT
in EA Sports NCAA FB 11
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This is the 2nd of about 100 consecutive daily posts in which we will write about odd Georgetown basketball topics in order to promote EA Sports' NCAA Football 2011. Yesterday we kicked off the series by telling you how Jim Boeheim's murdering of precious innocent dogs caused us to be Georgetown fans, and today we continue the series with a look at my personal favorite all-time Georgetown Hoyas squad, the 1996 Elite Eight team.
Hoya Legends in Casual Uniforms. via graphics8.nytimes.com
More on the 1996 team after The Jump:
The reason I chose to attend Georgetown over Duke was because as a high school senior visiting the school for the 1st time I witnessed Allen Iverson, Jerome Williams, and Othella Harrington playing pick-up hoops against scrubs who looked just like me at Yates - and dunking all over them. That was the only reason.
Joined the following fall by freshmen Victor Page, Joe Touomou, Daymond Jackson, and Village C East 4th floor hero Dean Berry, my fellow freshmen and the rest of the student body took on a similar swagger as our on-court heroes, and whether it was a 50 point shellacking over a communist practice squad from Croatia at McDonough or a blowout win over a Big East rival at that horrendous USAir Arena in Landover, we went to every game and cheered our guts out. We took the buses out to Maryland, drank Natural Ice in the back with our classmates, raced to be the first few in the door to get those precious seats up front in the student section, and hated Billy Packer with a passion after he called Iverson a "tough monkey" during a game aginst the hated Villanova Wildcats.
The high-flying Hoyas didn't just beat its opponents, they crushed them. Iverson was the ringleader and when he wasn't taking over games single-handedly, he was feeding Page on the wing for titanic dunks or dishing it inside where with Othella, Jerome, Jahidi White, Boubacar Aw, and Ya Ya Dia gave the Hoyas a remarkable size advantage against its opponents. The Hoyas finished with a 29-8 record and were 16-0 at home.
The seminal moment of that season occured when the then 11th ranked Hoyas faced the 3rd ranked UConn Huskies led by Ray "UConn has the wrong" Allen at USAir. If you don't have 6 minutes to kill today before the epic Netherlands-Uruguay match to watch the entire clip, fastforward to the 4:15 mark.
The 1995-1996 Hoyas lost a crushing game in the Big East Championship to the same Huskies when Ray Allen hit a shot eerily similar to the shot that DeSean Butler hit to win the Big East for West Virginia this season. That loss cost the Hoyas a 1 seed in the Dance (it went to UConn instead), and as a 2 seed Georgetown was placed in the same bracket as both UMass and Kentucky, two of the best teams in the country that season.
After a 37 point win against Mississippi Valley State, an 11 point sqeaker against New Mexico and an 8 point victory against the #3 seed Texas Tech (led by Jason Sasser and the backboard breaking Darvin Ham), the Hoyas were eventually eliminated by the #1 seed UMass with Marcus Camby, Carmelo Travieso, and Edgar Padilla and coached by John Calipari in the East Regional Semifinal in Atlanta. Shockingly, UMass' win has since been vacated by the NCAA due to numerous violations incurred by Calipari. A few weeks later, Iverson became the first player in Georgetown history to leave to school early for the NBA.
The Hoyas were an up-tempo, fast-paced, frenetic machine, laced with swagger and didn't give a shit about how badly they beat their opponents. They were the 1995-1996 Georgetown Hoyas. And they were the greatest.
The floor is open in the comments below. I'd love to hear your own thoughts and memories related to the 1995-96 Hoyas, or feel free instead to discuss some of your other all-time favorite Georgetown teams, and why they meant something to you as a fan.
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that uconn game
Was probably my first Hoyas experience – wasn’t really aware of college basketball at all before that. Little did we know that the lean years were right around the corner, but there were some spectacular games that season.
My other memory from that game was the decibel meter repeatedly freaking out. Can we get one of those installed at VC?
KBE
Casual...quick question
I always seem to mix up the games but I always thought that Billy Packer made that monkey comment during the Memphis game Iverson’s sophomore year? Insane game where there were something like 25 dunks…sick athleticism. Oh and by the way, when I say “his sophomore year”, I mean my senior year of high school while I was dying to get into Georgetown because of how much I loved the Hoyas only to have my heart ripped out when it was communicated to me that he was driving an E Class around campus nary a month later. Then enter the Shamel Jones era. Those were a great four years to enjoy some hoops on the Hilltop. Kill me.
"Before the answer was a 3, I was down in Georgetown with a Hoya chick, lawyer chick....."
by brandonbowmansfootistoobig on Jul 6, 2010 11:21 AM EDT reply actions
that game against Memphis was amazing
for 3 reasons:
1) nationally televised game on a saturday on cbs
2) non-stop fastbreak dunking action by all hoyas and specifically memphis’ lorenzen wright and michael wilson (who eventually went on the join globetrotters and dunked on like a 16 foot rim)
2) i joined The Century Club that night, successfully inhaling 100 shots of beer every minute for 100 minutes, puking twice yet recovering in time to dominate
Casually.
one more thing
we mercilessly heckled the memphis pointguard in that game, and for the life of me i can’t recall his name. he had a funny first name if i recall that was like a nickname…like pooh richardson, except not.
Casually.
Mingo Johnson, over-hyped guard for the Tigers
After that game, Joe Touomou gave a pantheon quote about guarding Johnson. When asked how he was able to stay in front of the “lightning fast” guard from Memphis, Joe replied “when you have to guard Allen Iverson every day in practice, other players just don’t seem that fast!”
by RepublicansWearNikes2 on Jul 6, 2010 3:48 PM EDT up reply actions
Not trying to be a douche...
But it was a black S600, top of the line he was driving. I lived in Harbin and he parked it behind that small building that used to house the Riggs ATM above the cemetery.
by Lord Humongous on Jul 8, 2010 3:29 PM EDT up reply actions
great info
was worried about him driving an E class.
Good talk.
Casual Hoya
by Hire Esherick on Jul 9, 2010 12:12 PM EDT up reply actions
my favorite gtown team was the 03-04 hoyas
the last team esherick ever coached
Good talk.
Casual Hoya
Great memories...
Thanks for the walk down memory lane, Casual – that was a great year and the bus rides to Landover were well worth it. My favorite memory of that UCONN game was jumping out of the back of the bus, running to the student section and flinging ourselves over the best seats we could get.
Oh and was I there after your first Hour of Power? You puked, really? I must not have been there because I would remember making fun of you…
The picture at the top
is amazing, if only to remind me just how ugly Skeletor Vic Page was.
I ate the blue ones ... they taste like burning.
Iverson
1. “Iverson college mix” on youtube…enough said.
2. Thank god Chris Wright is “the second coming”.
Section 101.
by RileysDressLikeAHoyaJersey on Jul 6, 2010 3:12 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
The Iverson Dunk in that clip
was my hands-down favorite moment at a home game during my time on the Hilltop . . . it happened in the first minute of the second half and it absolutely ended the game . . . you could literally see the UCONN players lose their collective will to win at that moment . . .the Cap Centre crowd absolutely exploded . . . it was unreal
by RepublicansWearNikes2 on Jul 6, 2010 3:52 PM EDT reply actions
Birmingham, AL
Ah, and the road trip to Birmingham to only have my hopes shattered by Camby & Calipari. My hatred for him (Cal) is personal. That is a terrible road trip! Karma’s a bitch – still waiting for it to really catch up to him.
by iheartgregmonroe on Jul 6, 2010 4:16 PM EDT reply actions
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