Dec. 11, 2009

Two Mornings in December

December 3, 2005, sometime around 11:00 am:

Yawn. Fun night last night. Let's see, got time to roll out of bed, study for finals for an hour or so, spend three hours at brunch at Leo's and then wander over to the Alumni Loungeto catch the basketball game. All that and only spending 45 seconds outside in this weather? New South really is the greatest thing ever. Oh man, we're playing Oregon at the Pit in Eugene? I've always hated them. Part of that Husky pride, right? Oh, and Hoyas now too.

December 10, 2009, 6:00 am sharp:

Turn off alarm. Mutter at self. Look at Blackberry; respond to overnight emails from the East Coast and Europe. Shower. Respond to more emails. Send out follow-up emails apologizing for typos in previous emails. Who schedules 8:00 am meetings four days in a row? Coffee. Go to office. Two more days until watching the Hoyas in Anaheim…

If you're wondering when the Hoyas last played on the West Coast, well…it's been a while.

The 7-0 Hoyas will get their second test of what Coach Thompson has deemed a "Big East week" in December on Saturday in their first away swing to the West since a 71-57 win against Oregon back in 2005. On that day it was Ashanti Cook making the most of the trip back to his home coast as the California guard led the Hoyas with a career-high 25 points.

Four years, in college terms, is quite literally an epoch. Just ask anyone who has attempted to narrowly define what years at Georgetown constitute which Generation of Hoya basketball. If you look back at how drastically things have changed since that game at McArthur Court:

• Back then, the Hoyas still early into a season that would attempt to redeem the previous year, when the team ended with a disappointing stretch and went to the NIT,
• The Hoyas were coming off two wins against local mid-majors,
• A pair of sophomore big men were starting to look like they were ready for a breakout season
• And somewhere in North Dakota a pediatrician with a guitar was singing about a Southern California-bred #1 jersey-clad swingman

My, it's remarkable how things change.

All cleverness aside, this is certainly a program at a different place than the team that ran the Ducks off their court and quieted the famed McArthur crowd four years ago. Jeff Green gave way to Greg Monroe, Jon Wallace was succeeded by Chris Wright, and DJ Owens begat Austin Freeman. And I think there were some Big East titles and possibly a Final Four appearance in there somewhere as well.

But four years is forever in college basketball, and even last year seems like a distant memory, so where are we now? This seems like a common theme for the season, since we all want to know how the team builds on the lessons learned in 2009 and writes the story of this season. In fact, my fellow blog contributors have touched on the matter here and here. Thus far, the Hoyas have managed to win on the road, at the Verizon Center, and now at a neutral site, with a victory over a top-25 team to boot. But 7-0 is never a position confident enough to be really sure what the season holds.

The beauty of the college basketball season is its dynamism: the early-season games when everyone, regardless of preseason expectations, is a blank slate, the fits and starts of players trying to adjust to one another and an opponent at the same time. Early-season tournaments and marquee non-conference games provide fans with flourishes of what might be later down the road. As December pushes on, themes and trends emerge like phrases in a well-orchestrated symphony, and as the new year starts the sustained crescendo of conference play builds toward the final movement (and, of course, its coda) in March.*

Four years ago, I doubt anyone was concerned with Luther Vandross' greatest hit. (This might be debatable.) In fact, I think anyone watching the Oregon game would think that beating Duke the following month would be a moment that shined enough to tide us over the rest of the year. Now, though, we've seen what a team of talented individuals executing a precise offense to its efficient utmost can achieve. Hopefully as the Hoyas complete "Big East" week, we as fans will start to envision what's in store for the Hoyas the rest of the year, and imagine what could be come March. Coach Thompson always talks about taking one game at a time, but we as fans are free to dream…until the next time the alarm goes off.

Four years ago, I was a 17-year-old with an unfortunate haircut who rolled out of bed in New South room 432 and was worried about two things: my Intro to Sociology term paper and who would stop Malik Hairston off the dribble. Now I'm an alum that will hop on an early morning flight down the California coast to see the Hoyas square off against a school whose fan base I was born into. (More on this in Part 2). Half-jokingly, my dad asked me the other day how weird it would feel to root against the Hoyas in Anaheim. I reminded him where my loyalties lay and he asked how I could go against my upbringing. My answer was simple.

It's been a great four years.

Paul Campbell (MSB '09)

Generation Roy

(* I apologize for the orchestral tangent, but I believe I saw a first for the Hoop Club blog in our previous entry, a Gauguin reference, and now I'm determined to turn the 2009-2010 season into the Year of High Culture for the blog.)