HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel will spend the upcoming months covering several Georgetown basketball home games, with (hopefully) a very special reward coming in March. He was in attendance Saturday night and prepared this photo essay about the Hoyas’ matchup against Holy Cross.
I rarely turn down the chance for free food…but I made a rare exception and joined my friend/season ticketholder Sam for a pregame meal across the street from Capital 1 Arena at Mi Vida. It is not easy to find great Mexican food in DC…but I recommend the Salmon Calabacitas and Enchiladas Suizas. 1 person I did NOT expect to see at the game was Fred Brown, who will always be remembered for accidentally passing the ball to James Worthy in the final seconds the 1982 NCAA title game…but he did help Georgetown win an NCAA title 2 years later so I guess he has been forgiven:
Let’s tip it off:
It has been a while since new Holy Cross coach Dave Paulsen won his previous game as a head coach: 3/4/21 to be specific, when as coach at GMU he beat GW in the 2nd round of the 2021 A-10 tourney. His SR G Bo Montgomery scored 17 PTS in the season opener and picked up right where he left off last night with a couple of jumpers and a lefty runner in the lane during the 1st 20 minutes:
Georgetown was favored by double-digits but was only up 37-32 at halftime. They did a good job of holding onto the ball (just 2 turnovers in the 1st half) and got a lot of scoring from FR SG Rowan Brumbaugh, who made a pair of threes and converted a nice give-and-go for a layup:
Hoyas’ SR PG Jayden Epps was mostly a distributor in the season opener (5 PTS/11 AST) but turned into a scorer in Game #2 with a bunch of threes en route to a career-high 22 PTS:
However, the star of the show was Holy Cross SR G Joe Octave, who almost singlehandedly was the cause of his team’s 38-18 points-in-the-paint advantage. He got into the lane over and over for a variety of scoops/layups, and when he was not making shots he was hitting the boards (setting a career-high with 11 REB). He remained clutch down the stretch, making his 1st 3 of the game to tie it at 57-all right before the under-4 timeout, then made his final 3 of the game with 56 seconds left to give his team a 68-67 lead. That turned out to be the final score as Georgetown was unable to get off a decent shot at the buzzer for the 1st loss of Ed Cooley’s tenure in DC. After scoring just 5 PTS in the season opener Octave exploded for a career-high 33 PTS (including an incredible 25 in the 2nd half) and did not have a single turnover while putting together 1 of the best all-around efforts I have ever seen in person:
In the postgame press conference I asked Octave if it was the greatest performance of his life and whether it felt extra-special to do it on Veteran’s Day after playing his 1st 2 years of college basketball at Air Force. He confirmed that it was indeed the best performance of his life, especially considering it was against a Big East team like Georgetown. Seeing the ROTC and hearing the national anthem before the game really motivated him but he was happiest that his team won the game:
Since Octave was near-unstoppable I wondered what sort of defensive philosophy Coach Cooley employed was facing such a red-hot opponent. He shot down my suggestion of playing a box-and-1 and just preferred to guard Octave with different players because “that’s the challenge, baby!” He also took ownership of the result by saying, “Coaches lose games and players win games.”
That is a wrap for now, the Hoyas head to Piscataway this week but check back next weekend as they host back-to-back games against Mt. St. Mary’s/American.