Tournament Push: Hoyas Need to Complete DePaul Sweep

Game 30: Georgetown Hoyas (18-11, 8-8) at DePaul Blue Demons (14-13, 6-10)

When: Wednesday, 830pm

Where: Wintrust Arena

Series: Hoyas lead 31-9, Hoyas won first meeting last week 82-73

TV: FS1 (Justin Kutcher & Donny Marshall)

Radio: Team 980, SiriusXM channel 98/202/965 (Rich Chvotkin)

NET Ranking: Georgetown 72, DePaul 104

KenPom Ranking: Georgetown 79, DePaul 112

KenPom Projection: DePaul 80, Georgetown 79 (54 percent)

Line: DePaul – 1.5, o/u 157.5

In a season of memorable games for Georgetown, we’ve stumbled across another collector’s item in the form of a really important game with longtime conference doormats DePaul.

Tonight’s match-up in Chicago is arguably the biggest meeting between the Hoyas and Blue Demons in BIG EAST play. The only other game that really comes close since DePaul joined the league was in the 2014 BET. That game became much more notable after the fact once it was revealed that Georgetown was one of the FIRST FOUR OUT on Selection Sunday that season.

As far as this year’s NCAA Tournament is concerned the Hoyas must keep their end of season momentum going by completing a season sweep of DePaul in the span of eight days.

Coach Patrick Ewing is looking for his first 3-game conference winning streak in what has been a hospitable location for the Hoyas. Georgetown has won all nine of its road games against DePaul in league play and 11 overall in the Chicago area. The Hoyas last loss at DePaul came in Jan 1994 - the season before Allen Iverson arrived.

So, yeah, it’s been awhile.

Tonight’s game represents a chance for four year seniors Jessie Govan and Kaleb Johnson to avoid the Wednesday night first round games at the BET next week and it’s something that hasn’t been lost on Govan.

“We don’t want to play on Wednesday,” Govan said on Saturday after his impressive late game performance against Seton Hall on Senior Night.

“We’ve never started the BIG EAST Tournament on Thursday. We want to be one of those teams. That extra day definitely helps – the extra day of rest, extra day of preparation. We want to go in there, build momentum, go in there strong and try make a run there. We feel like we can win the whole thing. Hopefully we come out focus in the Garden, I’ve heard there’s nothing like Saturday night at the Garden and hopefully I can experience that this year.”

They Hoyas were able to beat Seton Hall despite an offensive explosion from Myles Powell (35 points). Georgetown will have to deal with a similar problem in the form of Max Strus who went for 43 as DePaul completed the season sweep of DePaul.

The Blue Demons need one more victory in their final two games to finish with their second best total since joining the league for the 2005-06 season.

With the status of Johnson uncertain after landing in the concussion protocol on Saturday against the Pirates, look for Trey Mourning and even Grayson Carter to get more minutes than normal. Another thin to watch for is whether Ewing sticks with Jagan Mosely in the line-up over Jamorko Pickett. As hard as it might be to recognize, Mosely did a good job defensively on Powell for large stretches despite the scoring outburst.

SCRAMBLED STANDINGS

With Butler’s win over Xavier last night, Georgetown remains the last team that can join Marquette and Villanova with double-digit league wins. The Hoyas can nab the third spot in the BET by winning at DePaul and then at Marquette. A loss would obviously knock the Hoyas down to 8-9 and back into a tie with St. John’s and Xavier. The tiebreaking scenarios going into the final game would become a rather complicated exercise.

PREDICTION

Georgetown 88, DePaul 79 – The Hoyas will climb over .500 in the league standings for the first time since starting the season 1-0 with a win at Butler.