Welcome Home Hoyas!

The Hoyas got back to campus early this morning after their flight was delayed in Toronto for several hours. While most people will only remember this trip for the brawl, hoya fans will remember it as the start of a great season where the team bonded for life.

The team had a great trip where they did not suffer a single loss and got an early jump on the season. It was great as fans to have so much coverage on the team in the off-season.  Heck the amount of media coverage we got on the team in china was unprecedented. I want to thank the athletic department for allowing us fans to get a glimpse behind the veil of secrecy that has long been standard at Georgetown. Getting to see the players just goofing around in their free time during site seeing was really refreshing.

While we won't know how much our success in China will translate to the Big East, we do know that we have a great group of kids who represent the university well and that we will be proud to cheer on. We certainly look like we have a lot of potential and could surprise in the Big East.

Our rebounding numbers were very encouraging. We out rebounded every opponent (that we have a box score for). A really nice development is that we're hitting the offensive glass. In the three games we had offensive rebounding rates of 39%, 37%, and 51%. Adding up the numbers from all 3 games we had an offensive rebounding % of 42.4% If we can average anywhere close to that we'd be very dangerous. Now I don't expect us to hit those numbers, but if we can get our OR% above 35% it will definitely be a huge boon for our offense.

We shot a respectable 35.6% from 3pt range on the trip. Hollis 4-11(3-6 in the first 2 games), Jason 6-15(2-5 every game) are the only reliable threats however. Aaron, Jabril, Markel, Otto, Greg, Mikael, and Nate can all make the shot, but have not proven they can do so at a reliable rate yet.

Another encouraging sign we can hope to take from the box scores is our high assist and steal numbers. We average 20.3 assists per game over in china and 10.3 steals. However, we also turned the ball over 13 times a game which suggests that ball control will again be a problem. But if the Hoyas can up their turnovers forced like they did in China then this may not be as big of a problem for the Hoyas as in years past.

Again all this is based on stats from exhibitions against teams we do not know the quality of, so take this all with a grain of salt.

JTIII always says that each team is different and has to learn what will work best for that team in order to go out and win games. Last year's team's strength was on the perimeter with Austin and Chris, so that's the way we played focusing on guard play and the 3 point shot. In '08 the focus was on big Roy and in 09 and 10 Monroe was the focal point. JTIII will adjust to fit this groups talent. I expect more transition, more dribble penetration, and more focus on defense from this years group.

No matter what happens on the court. This glimpse that the trip to China has given us is greatly encouraging. This group is at the very least entertaining and it should be a fun season no matter what the results.

Only 50 more days till midnight madness.