HoopsHD in the House: UNCW at Georgetown

After striking out at GW and MSG in November, my 1st press pass of the year got me into the Verizon Center on Saturday to see the undefeated Seahawks face the Hoyas. In the past their catered lunch has often featured some food that was perfectly average, but this season they went the extra mile to provide the media with Hill Country BBQ: Hoya Succulenta! They usually stick me up in a corner on the lower level, but due to some poor attendance on the part of the mainstream media I got to sit on the baseline right behind the basket about 20 feet away from the legendary John Thompson. The only downside was that between the cameraman right in front of me and the basket support itself, I was only able to see about 75% of the court…but no complaints.

The crowd was pretty sparse to start the game due to a lethal combination of final exams (so students were studying) and beautiful weather (so locals were outside…in shorts…in December). Usually the celebrities in attendance who are shown on the Jumbotron are former Georgetown players like Patrick Ewing or local rappers like Wale. However, wrestling fans received an early holiday gift as WWF legend Bret “The Hitman” Hart was sitting about 7 rows behind the Georgetown bench with a huge cast on his right wrist.

Both teams employed a little full-court press early on but the dominant story of the 1st half was the refs, who whistled a combined 14 fouls in the 1st 7 minutes, which made for a very slow start with neither team able to get into a good rhythm. When you sit that close to the court you are right in front of the cheerleaders. I suppose that I knew what I was getting into when they yelled directly into my ear every 30 seconds, but I was surprised during breaks in the action to hear them talk about which classes they were taking or who their friends were dating. The members of the Georgetown student section who actually showed up were in the holiday spirit: they successfully tried to distract UNCW’s shooters by singing Christmas carols during their FT attempts, resulting in 6 misses in the 1st half and another 6 in the 2nd half. The Seahawks were not much better when shooting FGs, as they made only 7-29 (24.1%) before halftime, with the last of the 7 coming on a 3-PT shot by Marcus Bryan in the final second. For the Hoyas, freshman Marcus Derrickson looked great on both ends of the floor: he knocked down a pair of threes on offense and had a STL/BLK on the defensive end. The star of the 1st half was Georgetown SR PG D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera, whose 13 PTS at the under-8 timeout was as many as the entire UNCW team had scored up to that point.

After saying hi to my old CHD partner Scott Zolotorow during halftime, the 2nd half started similar to the 1st with 9 combined fouls in the 1st 4 minutes. The most amusing moment of the night was when 1 of the refs let a little girl in the front row hold the ball while 1 of his fellow refs kept blowing his whistle over and over to get his attention that the game was ready to re-start. The fouls continued to add up: Craig Ponder entered the game as the Seahawks leading scorer with 15.2 PPG but ended the game by fouling out with 3 PTS on 0-6 FG in only 20 minutes of action. Derrickson knocked down a trio of threes in the 2nd half to finish with 15 PTS on 5-7 3-PT shooting and helped extend the Hoyas’ lead to 73-48 with 8:14 left to go. However, Bryan went to work inside and made open layup after open layup to ignite an insane 30-8 run and cut the deficit to only 3 PTS in the final minute before LJ Peak made a drive/huge dunk to clinch the game with 20 seconds left to go.

In the postgame press conference I got to ask UNCW coach Kevin Keatts if the 10-day exam break since their previous game affected his team more from a mental or physical standpoint, and he said that it was a combination of both factors. I also tried to ask Georgetown coach JT3 about the 1-year anniversary of his team breaking out “I Can’t Breathe” t-shirts last December, but he was only fielding questions about that afternoon’s game. I learned that you should never count out the Seahawks due to their fantastic full-court press and that you should never count out the Hoyas due to their terrific 3-PT shooting. I do not know if we will see either of these teams in the NCAA tourney, but I expect to see both of them in some postseason tourney this March.