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 Wednesday evening for the Hoyas’ game at Capital 1 Arena and prepared this photo essay about their matchup against Binghamton.
The pregame meal featured 1 of the most diverse groups of side dishes that I have ever seen at a sporting event: chicken/mashed potato/sweet potato/rice/broccoli/cucumber/tomato! There was a nice moment of silence before the game to honor Paul Tagliabue, who passed away last Sunday. He is best known for his 17-year tenure as NFL commissioner, but after graduating from high school he received a scholarship to play basketball at Georgetown, and was captain of the team as a senior:
Hoya coach Ed Cooley looked confident before the game as his team was trying to get off to a 3-0 start for the 1st time since 2018 (5 years before Cooley was hired!):
Let’s tip it off with plenty of good seats still available:
Binghamton was not expected to do much, and the situation looked even bleaker after their leading scorer/rebounder Demetrius Lilley picked up his 3rd foul less than 10 minutes into the game and had to sit out the rest of the half. In response, Georgetown 7’1” center Vince Iwuchukwu went to work in the paint, converting an old-fashioned 3-PT play, getting a REB/putback, and was beat up so much that he tied a career-high with 9 FTA in just the 1st 15 minutes. The game got so physical that he had to receive some treatment on his left hand during a TV timeout:
His teammate Kayvaun Mulready had 1 of the best sequences I have seen in-person in a while. He had a steal on defense, then dribbled up court and knocked down a 3, then got another steal on the following possession and recorded his only assist of the game by finding Jeremiah Williams for an open 3. The bad news is that Kayvaun missed each of his other 4 attempts from behind the arc, but on the plus side his 7 STL this season are tied for the most in the Big East:
Since the Bearcats were short-handed due to injuries, Coach Levell Sanders only used 7 players, which was 1 reason that PG Jeremiah Quigley stayed on the court for the entire 40 minutes. He made a pull-up jumper, got to the rim for a pair of 3-PT plays, and finished the half with 14 PTS while keeping his team in the hunt:
However, Arizona transfer KJ Lewis helped the Hoyas maintain a 5-PT lead with a 3, a REB/put-back, a baseline drive leading to a reverse layup, a jump shot off the glass, and another jumper to beat the halftime buzzer:
Lewis kept things rolling in the 2nd half, getting into the lane time and again while also hitting the boards to finish with his 1st career double-double (20 PTS/10 REB). His backcourt mate Malik Mack went scoreless during the opening stanza, but flipped the switch after intermission with a jumper, a three, and a pair of floaters in the lane en route to 13 PTS as the Hoyas opened up a 23-PT lead before taking their foot off the gas as they cruised to an 83-70 victory:
After reading in the game notes that Coach Sanders had played for Seton Hall in the 1990s, I wanted to see if he had a most vivid memory of facing the Hoyas in conference play back in the day, but I did not get to ask him a question during his postgame press conference:
I asked Lewis whether his double-double was due to simply getting more minutes or the fact that Coach Cooley has helped turn him into a better all-around player. He said that it was a little of both. He will do whatever it takes to win and did a lot of that toward the end of last season in Tucson, but Coach Cooley emphasized the importance of rebounding during the offseason. He knows that he is more athletic than most other players in the country and hopes that this is not his last double-double. Coach Cooley then chimed in that it would NOT be his last 1 because he is 1 of the best players in the country:
That is a wrap for now but check back this weekend as the Hoyas host Clemson while trying to start out 4-0 for the 1st time since 2017!
