Conference Big East | 2013–14 record 18–15 (8–10 Big East) | |
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Head coach John Thompson III (10th year) Assistant coach Kevin Broadus (5th year) Assistant coach Tavaras Hardy (1st year) Assistant coach Kevin Sutton (1st year) | ||
The 2013–14 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team represented Georgetown University in the 2013–14 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. They were led by John Thompson III, were members of the Big East Conference, and played their home games at the Verizon Center, with one home game at McDonough Gymnasium. The team started the season against the Oregon Ducks in the Armed Forces Classic at Camp Humphreys near Pyeongtaek, South Korea, and played in the 2013 Puerto Rico Tip-Off.
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This was Georgetown's first season as a member of the newly organized Big East Conference. It had been a founding member of the original Big East Conference in the 1979-80 season and had remained a member for 34 seasons. However, that conference's increasingly unstable membership and uncertain future and what Georgetown and the conference's other basketball-only members believed to be its focus on college football at the expense of the interests of its basketball programs led Georgetown and six other Big East members (DePaul, Marquette, Providence, Seton Hall, St. John's, and Villanova) to leave the conference after the conclusion of the 2012–13 season. In 2013 they joined Butler, Creighton, and Xavier in forming a new Big East Conference. (The original Big East Conference then added new members of its own and renamed itself the American Athletic Conference for the 2013-14 season.) One immediate effect of the conference realignment was that for the first time since the 1977-78 season the Hoyas did not play Syracuse, Georgetown's great rival throughout the original Big East Conference's 34-season history; Syracuse had itself left the original Big East in 2013 to join the Atlantic Coast Conference for the 2013-14 season.
Season recap
Junior center Joshua Smith joined Georgetown as a transfer from UCLA, and Thompson expected him to play a key role for the Hoyas and constructed a team that could take advantage of his presence. Smith scored a season-high 25 points in the opening loss against Oregon in South Korea and 17 points against No.10-ranked Virginia Commonwealth in a victory four games later in Puerto Rico. He scored 11 or more points in six straight games and in double figures in seven games, but his performance then began to decline. In the last four games he played, he scored no more than five points, and in his final game of the year, against longtime conference rival St. John's on January 4, 2014 – the 100th meeting of the teams. – he missed five of his six shots.
A harbinger of roster problems that would plague Georgetown for much of the season came on November 30, 2013, when Thompson announced that junior forward Greg Whittington – who had not played since January 8, 2013, because of an academic suspension and had suffered an injury over the summer of 2013 that prevented him from playing at all during the 2013-2014 season – had been dismissed from the team for unspecified reasons. A major blow followed on January 8, 2014, when Joshua Smith did not accompany the team for a road game at Providence. Georgetown officials revealed Smith would not play again until he resolved an academic issue. On January 24, 2014, Georgetown announced that he would not play for the remainder of the 2013-14 season, but would return for the 2014-2015 season if his academic performance improved enough by then.
Despite Smith's declining performance before his dismissal, he was the Hoyas' third-leading scorer for the season when he left the team for the year, averaging 11.6 points per game, and with him on the court the Hoyas went 10-3 in their first 13 games. With Smith out, Thompson was forced to move junior power forward Mikael Hopkins to center and play freshman power forward Reggie Cameron and senior Nate Lubick at forward, giving the Hoyas an undersized and less experienceed front court. More player losses soon followed. During the first game without Smith, junior guard Jabril Trawick suffered a broken jaw on January 8 at Providence and missed the next five games. Although Trawick returned to action ahead of schedule to play in a loss against ninth-ranked Villanova on January 27, 2014, the Hoyas played without their back-up center, senior Moses Ayegba, that evening as he served a one-game NCAA suspension because of a pre-enrollment infraction. By the time of the January 27 defeat at the hands of Villanova, the Hoyas had lost five in a row – tying the longest losing streak of John Thompson III's ten-season tenure at Georgetown set by the 2010-11 team. They had lost six of the seven games they played after Smith's departure and seven of their last eleven.
Georgetown's next game was against seventh-ranked Michigan State at Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 1, 2014; preceded by a game between Marquette and St. John's, it was the second game of the "Super Saturday Hoops" doubleheader celebrating the following day's Super Bowl. Trailing 30-29 at halftime, the Hoyas began the second half with an 11-2 run to take a 40-32 lead. Sophomore guard Gary Harris scored a game-high 20 points for the Spartans, and his three-pointer with 1:32 left reduced Georgetown's lead to 56-54. Trawick then made two key plays, tipping in a missed shot to give Georgetown a 58-54 lead and soon afterwards scoring on a breakaway dunk to give the Hoyas a 63-55 advantage. The Hoyas shot only 2-for-12 (16.7 percent) from three-point range but shot 22-for-49 (44.9 percent) from the floor overall, held the Spartans to 39.3 percent shooting from the field, and became only the fourth team to outrebound Michigan State during the season, 37-30. Senior point guard Markel Starks led Georgetown with 16 points, sophomore guard D'Vautes Smith-Rivera scored 12, Trawick had eight, and the front court had a strong game with Lubick scoring eight points as Georgetown broke its losing streak, upsetting Michigan State 64-60.
The victory over Michigan State began a four-game winning streak for the Hoyas and raised hopes that Georgetown's season would turn around. Smith-Rivera averaged in double figures for the season, with 17.6 points per game, but the shorthanded Hoyas stumbled at the end of the regular season, losing four of their last six to finish at 17-13 overall and in seventh place in the Big East at 8-10. They lost in the first round of the Big East Tournament – their first first-round loss in the tournament since 2009 – to last-place DePaul; it was DePaul's first victory over Georgetown in 20 years and ended a 14-game Georgetown winning streak against the Blue Demons. Missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2009, the Hoyas were invited to the National Invitation Tournament – their first NIT appearance since 2009 – where they defeated West Virginia in the first round before losing in the second round to Florida State, leaving them with a final record of 18-15, their least successful season since 2008-09.
Georgetown's switch to the new Big East Conference, loss of its annual home game against Syracuse, and lack of nonconference home games against marquee opponents hurt attendance at Hoya games during the season, which dropped 20 percent from an average of 10,911 per game in 2012-13 to 8,670 per game in 2013-14.
Rankings
Georgetown was not ranked in the Top 25, but was among other teams receiving Top 25 votes in the early weeks of the season.
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Schedule
Sources