1990–91 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team

Season recap

Georgetown radio voice Rich Chvotkin, who had broadcast every Georgetown men's basketball game since his debut in the 1974-75 season, missed this season after mobilizing for six months of United States Army Reserve service during the Gulf War. He would resume his Georgetown broadcasting duties the following season.

In the season opener at Hawaii Loa, senior center and team captain Dikembe Mutombo had 32 points, 21 rebounds, and 11 blocked shots, only the second recorded triple-double in Georgetown history. Eight days later he played against his older brother Ilo Mutombo in a game against Southern Indiana, scoring only six points and pulling down nine rebounds, while Ilo had 14 points and 11 rebounds against him.

In the fourth game of the year, Mutumbo had 13 rebounds and junior center Alonzo Mourning scored 22 points and pulled down 10 rebounds against Duke in the season's fourth game. The Hoyas held Duke freshman forward Grant Hill, sophomore point guard Bobby Hurley, and junior center Christian Laettner to a combined 9-for-42 (21.4%) shooting effort from the field, the Blue Devils as a whole shot only 32% from the field, and Georgetown won 79-74. Toward the end of the game Mourning injured the arch of his foot, forcing him to miss the next nine games. Averaging 22 points per game through the first four games, he returned to action in mid-January 1991, but recovering from the injury reduced his performance until early March. He then returned to form, averaging 18.6 points and 9.5 rebounds per game over the last six games of the season. He finished the year third in scoring on the team with an average of 15.8 points per game and shooting 52.2 percent from the field and 79.3 percent from the free-throw line.

Mourning's injury problems after the Duke game meant that Mutombo had an opportunity to build on his success of the last two seasons and come to the fore as Georgetown's "big man." Previously scoring mostly on dunks, he began to take more difficult shots. Although this caused his shooting percentage from the field to drop to 58%, he led Georgetown in points scored. Against Jackson State, he shot 13-for-16 (81.3%) from the field and a perfect 8-for-8 from the free-throw line to score a career-high 34 points. In 16 straight games from December 1990 through mid-February 1991, he led the team in rebounds. He finished the season averaging 15.2 points per game.

Freshman Robert Churchwell joined the team, succeeding Jaren Jackson at small forward. He started all 32 of the team's games, averaging 8.4 points and 4.8 rebounds per game. In Big East conference play, he scored in double figures eight times and shot 47% from the field, including a 10-for-11 (90.9%) outing against Providence.

Another newcomer was freshman guard Joey Brown. The team's point guard, he also started all 32 games and had a combined 31 points and 19 assists in the first three games of the season. He led the Hoyas in both assists and steals and, although he shot only 18-for-78 (32.1%) from three-point range over the season as a whole and only 26% from the field at any distance during the last seven games of the year, he scored in double figures 13 times, including a season-high 21 points at Villanova.

With a bye in the first round of the 1991 Big East Tournament, Georgetown faced Connecticut in the quarterfinals. Although shooting only 28% from the field, the Hoyas managed to win 68-49, with Mutombo scoring 13 points and pulling down 27 rebounds and Mourning shooting 15-for-16 (93.8%) from the free-throw line. Georgetown then defeated Providence in the semifinals to advance to the championship game, which the Hoyas lost to 21st-ranked Seton Hall 74-62 despite Mourning's 22-point, 13-rebound effort. It was Georgetown's first loss in the Big East Tournament final in seven appearances. Mutombo had scored a combined 34 points and collected a total of 44 rebounds during the tournament.

The Hoyas were the No. 8 seed in the West Region of the 1991 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament – the 13th of 14 consecutive Georgetown NCAA Tournament appearances – and defeated Vanderbilt in the first round. In the second round, they lost to West Region No. 1 seed and eventual national runner-up Nevada-Las Vegas, the second consecutive year in which they had been knocked out of the tournament in the second round. They had fallen out of the Associated Press Poll Top 25 by the end of the season, but were ranked No. 23 in the final Coaches' Poll.

Mutombo had spent his freshman year playing intramural basketball and had not joined the varsity team until his sophomore year, and he therefore had a year of collegiate eligibility left after the end of the season. However, he opted to forego a fifth year at Georgetown to graduate on time in May 1991 and move on to a 15-season professional career in the National Basketball Association. During his three seasons with the Hoyas he had averaged one block for every six and a half minutes he had played, and he left with the third-highest career blocked-shot total in school history and averaging 9.8 points and 8.6 rebounds per game. Despite having both Mutombo and Mourning on the team during those three years, Georgetown had not returned to the Final Four, largely because an unusually high number of scholarship players – 11 of 23 – transferred from Georgetown between 1987-1988 and 1992-1993, preventing the team from building a core of veterans to play with its two dominating centers. Without that core of veterans, the Mourning-Mutombo teams were unable to replicate the success of the veteran-filled Patrick Ewing teams of the early 1980s, which had reached the Final Four – and indeed the national championship game – three times in four seasons.

Roster

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Junior guard Ronny Thompson was the son of head coach John Thompson, Jr.

Rankings

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1990–91 Schedule and results

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The 33,048 people in attendance at the Carrier Dome for the Georgetown-Syracuse game of March 3, 1991, constituted what was then the largest on-campus crowd to witness a basketball game in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) history.