Observations, anecdotes and quotes from Georgetown's 102-89 BIG EAST opening game, home loss to Xavier follow.
Click here for both team's post game presser.
To Stick or Not to Stick
As has been the bane of Pat Ewing's existence this season, Georgetown's head coach and staff saw their charges display basketball, good and bad. And again, it centers on sharing.
As in passing the ball, rock, pill or sharing the game. Sophomore guard Brandon Murray's six assists were significant, leading his team and slotting third game-wide. Yet the Hoyas only managed 13 for the contest.
Clearly not good. Nevertheless, there's a greater, more anecdotal manifestation of G'Town's penchant for the ball not to move: During first half action as Ewing's guys chipped a deficit to a pair of points, passes were made, scores tallied.
Comparatively, the Hoyas executed oppositely in the second half, seeing a one point deficit balloon to 13 over six minutes and 45 early second half seconds.
Ewing was asked afterward if a reading of good, then bad ball movement, a narrative pitting multi-touch shot possessions vs. the ball touching only one person, maybe a second's hands, was accurate.
"That's a fair assessment. When we're moving the ball...to both sides of the floor, we tend to get better shots" answered the coach. "When we try and do it by ourselves, we don't. I think we cut it to three points".
He then expanded the critique, identifying "bad shots, turnovers, not getting back in transition. All of those things, miscommunications on defense, giving them wide open threes All of those things hurt us, second half".
For the game, Georgetown shot a lofty 51.6% overall. From three ball range, it was 35.3%.
Xavier's head coach, Sean Miller, respected the Hoyas' offensive work, particularly that from the perimeter, saying "Their three guards, I really believe it, are very very talented on offense. ...Just watching them go against our team, we didn't have a lot of answers. Thankfully we were able to score at the rate we did, especially in the second half to break the game open".
He was referencing sophomores Primo Spears and Brandon Murray, along with junior cohort Jay Heath. Spears paced the team with 22 points, The other two dropped 15 points and 13 points, respectively. Immediately trailing Spears was senior center Qudus Wahab's 16 points; he also led the team with seven caroms secured.
Multiple Tries are Charms
That Georgetown struggles with second, third and fourth offensive actions is pretty much well known, as the Hoyas consistently demonstrate it. Pass the ball around, you are likely to get a good shot.
Against Xavier there was no difference, particularly in the second half, when Xavier routinely passed, then passed again, with subsequent ball receivers being lightly guarded.
Miller anticipated this.
"Your assessment is a great one. What we tried to do, was change the ball side to side" answered the coach, in the first year of his second Xavier head coaching, stint. "I really thought that when we did that, a lot of good things happened; jump shots, hit the roller, got into the low post. We did a good job of passing out of the low post, as well. But the more deliberate and patient we were, i thought the more successful we were on offense".
His team's work more or less shocked him, since "If you look at the assist total tonight (27) in a college game it's hard to have that many assists".
Later, Ewing detailed much of what Miler posited: "Well they're a very good post up team. Their bigs do a very good job of posting up, sealing, going high low. We tried to double it. When they did their motion offense, we got lost a few times and they were able to make threes. We made a couple of mistakes on out of bound sets, they got threes off of that as well.
"So it was the mistakes that we made defensively that gave them wide open shots and they were able to knock them down".
Those miscues helped produce eye-popping Muskie shooting numbers of 53.8% on long balls, 60.3% from the floor. The second half numbers were astronomical, with Miller's team made 69.23% of their three pointers, 65.23% of all shots, then.
Souley Boum, a graduate guard, paced all scorers with 27 points, while classmate and center, Jack Nunge, put up 18 points and a game tops 12 rebounds. Senior forward Zach Fremantle led two other teammates in double figure scoring via 17 points; Grad wing Adam Kunkel managed 15 points while 13 points and a game tops eight assists were tallied by junior guard Colby Jones.
Gone and Respected
As reported earlier, special assistant Lou Orr recently passed, a fact people involved in this game understood. He's highly respected, and missed.
"My heart goes out to Louis Orr's family. Louis Orr is from Cincinnati, Withrow High School" declared Miller, when starting his presser. "Somebody who worked at Xavier as an assistant coach. Somebody I knew as a coach, not necessarily a friend.
"The one thing that everybody knows about him is (he's) an amazing , classed human being. I can't imagine how difficult it was for Patrick to coach the game, with Louis' passing. Our thoughts and prayers are clearly with Georgetown, their program, Patrick and of course Louis' family. That's way more important than the game".
Senior Hoya center, Qudus Wahab obviously knew Orr, a relationship in which "I was close to him". It started before Wahab arrived on G'Town's campus, since Orr "was the one that kind of recruited me to come to Georgetown", stressed the player, who upon learning the news "it was really sad for me. Kind of ruined my night". He and the team "wanted to get a win for him tonight", but alas it wasn't to happen.
Orr's friend, confidant and co-worker, Ewing, was clearly impacted by his passing, saying "It's been difficult" and "I already knew Lou was fighting cancer. We've been very close. Been knowing him since my first year with the Knicks (NY's NBA franchise)...We developed a great relationship and great bond".
