LINKS: Another ‘Started from the Bottom’ Year for Georgetown

The BIG EAST conference polls and previews are coming out and—surprise, surprise—the Georgetown Hoyas are not picked to be anywhere near the top, again. Even the addition of 7+ veterans as part of the fourth-best transfer class in the nation is seemingly not enough to persuade pundits and prognosticators that the Hoyas have a fighting chance for first (or fifth or sixth) in the conference. And all things said, that’s probably pretty fair right now.

The road to change minds is very much uphill for Georgetown. While Patrick Ewing got some great mileage out of Drake’s “Started from the Bottom” refrain in 2020-21 in the run to the BIG EAST Tournament Championship, the song has likely lost its appeal with Hoyas supporters. Another conference coaches’ poll with Georgetown in the basement is pretty predictable.

Even with all the changes, expectations will be very tempered for even the most diehard fans. Another rapid worst-to-first story for Ewing is simply too far fetched given the results of last season. We don’t need to talk about last year over again—fans are surely dreading 0-19 allusions on every telecast—but then we also don’t get to point to the 2021 trophy until the good ship Georgetown gets back on the right course. For the time being, the Hoyas faithful can acknowledge both that Georgetown likely deserves to be at the bottom of the polls until proven otherwise and that this team is probably the most talented preseason Hoyas squad since the Great Defection of 2019.

Around these parts, we’re pretty immune to all the “hot seat” talk and resigned to see Patrick Ewing on the sidelines for another few years. Fans made their pitch for change last year and now they will see if the staff shuffle and transfer signings are sufficient. Podcasters saying “I imagine Georgetown will be making a coaching change at the end of the season” just appear out of touch with Hoya reality. Ewing’s legacy is probably more at stake than his job.

But it’s easy for a national analyst to forecast doom and gloom for GU—especially after reviewing the years of roster turmoil culminating in a winless conference season. No one knows what this group is capable of this year. Could the pollsters possibly factor in all seven transfers, two freshmen, and new coaches to calculate a rational determination based on improvement of talent in Georgetown’s roster? Nah. None of the pundits will take a deeper look until the Hoyas give them a reason to. There are too many questions.

Can Qudus Wahab walk back in and be as good as his sophomore year? Will Brandon Murray be better than the 27th-best player in the BIG EAST? How will Bryson Mozone adjust to high-major conference play? Will a healthy Dante Harris have backcourt chemistry with Primo Spears and Jay Heath? Is Bradley Ezewiro deserving of more than the 37 minutes he saw at LSU last season? Can anyone defend well? Why did the players mention a goal of the “Elite 8” multiple times on their Pro Camps meet-and-greet? There are so many more questions out there right now—many that likely won’t even be answered until December or later.

So, while we certainly won’t ever be allowed to erase last season from brains, let’s try to have a little fun getting to know this team.

Here are the links:

Big East Men’s Basketball Preseason Rankings: New Coaches Are in Spotlight | SI

10. Georgetown ... There is a bit of a gap between the top nine teams in the Big East and the bottom two. The big question is: Can Georgetown win a Big East game this season? The Hoyas went an impressive 0–19 in conference play last season and ended the year on a 21-game losing streak. With another revamp of the roster this year, Patrick Ewing will be tested to find the magic he found during the team’s Big East championship win in 2021.

Big East Breakdown: Men’s basketball | Butler Collegian

KEY LOSSES: Aminu Mohammed (13.7 ppg), Donald Carey (13.5 ppg), Kaiden Rice (11 ppg), Collin Holloway (9.2 ppg), Tyler Beard (3.0 ppg), Timothy Ighoefe (2.8 ppg)

The Hoyas have an entirely different outlook for the upcoming season after going winless in the Big East last season. Patrick Ewing brings in a whopping seven transfer students including standout sophomore Brandon Murray from LSU. Georgetown, however, loses four of their top scorers and looks to depend on some newcomers to fill the voids in what could be Ewing’s last season as head coach.

Waiver Status for Heath | HOYAREPORT

Why would it be necessary to secure a transfer waiver allowing Heath to play immediately? A 2019 graduate of DC’s then-Woodrow Wilson high school, Heath initially attended Boston College (‘19-21), before headed to Arizona State for the subsequent season, deciding to return home and heading to Georgetown , where he arrived this June.

In the current NCAA environment, players can transfer without a penalty - automatically avoiding having to sit out for a year, practicing but not playing with the team - only once. Each subsequent transfer, a player must accept that hefty penalty, if a NCAA waiver is not granted.

Heath, the Hoyas led by head coach Pat Ewing and the rest of Hoya Nation are on pins and needles with the situation; an aggressive guard with size, Heath plays both ends of the floor and is an x-factor scorer, one that can make it happen on three levels, outside of the scheme.

The pressure is on for these coaches in the 2022-23 men’s college basketball hot seat | ESPN+

After leading Georgetown on a stunning run through the 2021 Big East tournament that culminated in the program’s first NCAA tournament appearance since 2015, the wheels came off for Patrick Ewing’s Hoyas last season. They didn’t win a single Big East game, finishing 6-25 overall and 0-19 in the conference. In Ewing’s five seasons as head coach, Georgetown has never finished above .500 in the Big East, and it finished above .500 overall just once. Despite all this, Ewing received a vote of confidence from athletic director Lee Reed last spring and also received a contract extension after the tournament appearance — which reportedly puts his buyout in the eight figures.

Your 2022-23 Anonymous Eagle Big East Men’s Basketball Preseason Poll! | Anonymous Eagle

Predicted Order Of Finish ...

9 — Seton Hall, 22

10 — DePaul, 17

11 — Georgetown, 6

The methodology here is simple: Rank your teams, 11 points to first, 1 point to 11th. Yes, Georgetown was picked to finish last on all six ballots. Why is that? I’ll turn the mic over to Phil Bush from the Scrambled Eggs podcast:

Is Ewing still the coach? Oh he is? Can I go lower than 11? No? So then I’ll go with 11.

Mike Anderson raising bar for St. John’s: ‘Most talent I’ve had since I’ve been here’ | NEW YORK POST

Mike Anderson firmly believes he has a contender this season. On Thursday, he set expectations with his optimistic tone.

“[This is] probably the most talent that I’ve had since I’ve been here, more guys that fit what we’re doing,” the St. John’s coach said on media day inside Carnesecca Arena. “This team here has all the components of some of the best teams I’ve had.

“I’m excited by this team. I’m looking forward to this team going out and showing not only this university, but this city — the whole country — what St. John’s is all about.”

A commissioner wants to blow up the NCAA Tournament. Can we not? | The Athletic

Let’s translate this. The big bogeyman in NCAA Tournament restructuring discussions — which, to be clear, shouldn’t be happening in the first place — is that the big conferences will use their leverage to exclude mid-major leagues from receiving their AQs. They’ll just tear up the whole thing, use it to exclude the small teams from small leagues that actually make the NCAA Tournament special, and reset the field with high-majors, no matter how mediocre. This is not just an awful idea that would obviously backfire, it’s also a morally bankrupt way to look at the landscape of the sport.

Big East Season Ticket Prices For 2023 Season | Paint Touches

Having pulled up all these numbers, I thought I’d put them into one place for the world to be able to reference, if they want to nerd out like me.

Before you get all up in arms about any particular seat section and how much you personally are paying, remember that I’m taking incomplete data from buildings that have much different sizes.

Carnesecca seats 5k total, that’s less than one side of the lower bowl at Fiserv. As such it’s not fair at all to compare ticket prices. Still, knowing that there won’t be a ton of like for like similarities across 11 schools in very different markets, this is still a useful measure overall to be able to gauge what the average for these Big East schools looks like. So I went digging through every school’s season ticket pages and pulled out the data to try and synthesize it.

Jahki Howard down to 8 schools, sets commitment date | On3

Atlanta (Ga.) Overtime Elite Academy four-star recruit Jahki Howard tells On3 he’s down to eight schools, in no order: Kentucky, Auburn, Kansas, Florida State, Texas, Arkansas, Georgia Tech, and Georgetown. The 6-foot-6, 175-pound class of 2024 small forward has also set his commitment date for November 20th. The announcement will be made back in his hometown of Boston, Mass...

Howard is the No. 58 overall prospect in the 2024 class, according to the On3 Consensus, the average ranking from all four major recruiting media companies. He’s also ranked as the No. 17 small forward and the No. 6 prospect in the state of Georgia.

Breaking: 2024 5-Star Trentyn Flowers cuts his list of schools down to thirteen | Circuit Scouting

Trentyn Flowers, the 9th ranked prospect in our 2024 rankings has just announced the thirteen schools left in his recruitment. Flowers has been offered by over forty schools.

This upcoming high school season, Flowers will be attending Combine Academy (NC), where he will have the chance to showcase his talent on a national schedule...

Georgetown: “Coach Nickelberry and Coach Pat are my guys. They do a great job reaching out to me and coming to watch me play. The unofficial I went on was a good time and the blueprint they have there is amazing. Coach Pat playing in the NBA is a coach that has been through it and played under an amazing coach in John Thompson.”