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Hoya destroyas will make you quake in your dancin' shoes
March 11, 2007
By Mike Freeman
CBS SportsLine.com National Columnist
Tell Mike your opinion!
NEW YORK -- The most dangerous team in the NCAA Tournament won't be overrated Ohio State. Not a Texas team that is one note and can't play defense. Not North Carolina, either. Puh-leeze. It won't be any team you are thinking of right now.
The nastiest, scariest, most frightening team in this tournament will be Georgetown. If you think any differently, you are a raging dope and deserve a Roy Hibbert elbow to the face.
Actually, there are two teams that should make plenty of coaches nervous and will force the selection committee to make interesting choices. After hearing for much of the last part of this season how much they suck, the Florida Gators are playing with a purpose and making doubters pay. They're angry. They're nasty. They hate you for talking smack about them.
No team, though, is as complete and dominating as the Hoyas. They enter the NCAAs winning 15 of their last 16 games. With a young team led by an Afro'd stud in center Hibbert, a smart coach in John Thompson III, a Princeton offense that still seems to befuddle even the most patient and studious defenses and chromosomal ties running rampant throughout the program, this is the team to beat.
Whether the Hoyas get a No. 1 seed, a two or whatever, it does not matter. Indeed, seed be damned. Whenever they play, whomever they play, that team had better be prepared.
"I haven't even thought about it," said Thompson, when asked if his Hoyas made a case for a top seeding.
"Oh, there's no doubt I think we're playing well right now," he added later. "You come out of the gate, and one thing I learned from (his father) is that NCAA bids, it doesn't matter how you play in the beginning of the year. So we come out of the gate, we lose a couple of games. I think people forgot about us, which is fine with me.
"We had a chance to improve and our guys worked extremely hard. And we're playing well right now. Hopefully we can continue and hopefully enjoy this. This is special."
The Hoyas battered Pittsburgh 65-42 in the Big East final at Madison Square Garden, but the score and setting are actually irrelevant. What is important is how Georgetown won. How it has been winning. How it will keep winning.
The Panthers are not the great team many in the media and college basketball have claimed. Still, Pittsburgh is a solid group, and Georgetown methodically erased it. The game was non-competitive.
Pittsburgh has seen Georgetown plenty and the Panthers still had trouble defeating the Princeton offense the Hoyas run. Once the NCAA Tournament begins, this is the area where Georgetown will possess a prime advantage over almost every opponent.
The constant passing of the ball patiently, the use of motion, the cuts, the pick and roll, all while utilizing the shot clock, waiting until it ticks as close to zero as possible -- it's all classic Princeton offense, forcing a defense to stay alert for the entire possession.
While the Hoyas do not always run a pure version of it, the bastardized one still causes massive confusion.
Since the Hoyas have superb athletes running the offense, that makes it even more formidable. They also have moments of pure explosiveness where they say screw the clock and launch 3-point bombs or play street ball.
The quirks and tweaks Thompson has made to this offense have been brilliant. He runs the Princeton offense for 15 to 20 seconds. If the open looks are there, the players have the green light. If not, they convert to a more traditional one- or two-man offense. All the while, they remain patient.
That is where Jeff Green, named the most outstanding player of the tournament, becomes dangerous. If the offense breaks down he can still almost single-handedly take over a game.
As for Hibbert, he is the next link in a long line of Georgetown centers. When discussing the best big men, his name is not always on the tip of basketball fans' tongues. It should be. Standing at a solid 7-foot-2 and checking in at more than 280 pounds, Hibbert moves with startling fluidity. There will be few centers in the tournament capable of dealing with his inside ferocity and quickness.
What he did to Pittsburgh center Aaron Gray was almost criminal. Gray was outmatched and would have emerged with fewer physical scars had he been covered in peanut butter and tossed in a tiger's cage.
Green finished with 21 points and Hibbert 18.
The Panthers scored 17 first-half points, making just 7 of 29 shots. This was not a championship game. This was a stone-cold beatdown.
When the Hoyas were dominant in the 1980s, they were the team many Americans loved to hate.
But it is almost impossible to dislike Georgetown 2.0. They play smart, hustling basketball, are unselfish and, like their head coach, are gentlemen off the court.
If you don't like Georgetown, then you must also hate Christmas morning.
By the time this tournament is over you will definitely respect them. Because I get the feeling we will be seeing lots and lots of the Hoyas in the coming weeks.
Lots and lots of them.
March 11, 2007
By Mike Freeman
CBS SportsLine.com National Columnist
Tell Mike your opinion!
NEW YORK -- The most dangerous team in the NCAA Tournament won't be overrated Ohio State. Not a Texas team that is one note and can't play defense. Not North Carolina, either. Puh-leeze. It won't be any team you are thinking of right now.
The nastiest, scariest, most frightening team in this tournament will be Georgetown. If you think any differently, you are a raging dope and deserve a Roy Hibbert elbow to the face.
Actually, there are two teams that should make plenty of coaches nervous and will force the selection committee to make interesting choices. After hearing for much of the last part of this season how much they suck, the Florida Gators are playing with a purpose and making doubters pay. They're angry. They're nasty. They hate you for talking smack about them.
No team, though, is as complete and dominating as the Hoyas. They enter the NCAAs winning 15 of their last 16 games. With a young team led by an Afro'd stud in center Hibbert, a smart coach in John Thompson III, a Princeton offense that still seems to befuddle even the most patient and studious defenses and chromosomal ties running rampant throughout the program, this is the team to beat.
Whether the Hoyas get a No. 1 seed, a two or whatever, it does not matter. Indeed, seed be damned. Whenever they play, whomever they play, that team had better be prepared.
"I haven't even thought about it," said Thompson, when asked if his Hoyas made a case for a top seeding.
"Oh, there's no doubt I think we're playing well right now," he added later. "You come out of the gate, and one thing I learned from (his father) is that NCAA bids, it doesn't matter how you play in the beginning of the year. So we come out of the gate, we lose a couple of games. I think people forgot about us, which is fine with me.
"We had a chance to improve and our guys worked extremely hard. And we're playing well right now. Hopefully we can continue and hopefully enjoy this. This is special."
The Hoyas battered Pittsburgh 65-42 in the Big East final at Madison Square Garden, but the score and setting are actually irrelevant. What is important is how Georgetown won. How it has been winning. How it will keep winning.
The Panthers are not the great team many in the media and college basketball have claimed. Still, Pittsburgh is a solid group, and Georgetown methodically erased it. The game was non-competitive.
Pittsburgh has seen Georgetown plenty and the Panthers still had trouble defeating the Princeton offense the Hoyas run. Once the NCAA Tournament begins, this is the area where Georgetown will possess a prime advantage over almost every opponent.
The constant passing of the ball patiently, the use of motion, the cuts, the pick and roll, all while utilizing the shot clock, waiting until it ticks as close to zero as possible -- it's all classic Princeton offense, forcing a defense to stay alert for the entire possession.
While the Hoyas do not always run a pure version of it, the bastardized one still causes massive confusion.
Since the Hoyas have superb athletes running the offense, that makes it even more formidable. They also have moments of pure explosiveness where they say screw the clock and launch 3-point bombs or play street ball.
The quirks and tweaks Thompson has made to this offense have been brilliant. He runs the Princeton offense for 15 to 20 seconds. If the open looks are there, the players have the green light. If not, they convert to a more traditional one- or two-man offense. All the while, they remain patient.
That is where Jeff Green, named the most outstanding player of the tournament, becomes dangerous. If the offense breaks down he can still almost single-handedly take over a game.
As for Hibbert, he is the next link in a long line of Georgetown centers. When discussing the best big men, his name is not always on the tip of basketball fans' tongues. It should be. Standing at a solid 7-foot-2 and checking in at more than 280 pounds, Hibbert moves with startling fluidity. There will be few centers in the tournament capable of dealing with his inside ferocity and quickness.
What he did to Pittsburgh center Aaron Gray was almost criminal. Gray was outmatched and would have emerged with fewer physical scars had he been covered in peanut butter and tossed in a tiger's cage.
Green finished with 21 points and Hibbert 18.
The Panthers scored 17 first-half points, making just 7 of 29 shots. This was not a championship game. This was a stone-cold beatdown.
When the Hoyas were dominant in the 1980s, they were the team many Americans loved to hate.
But it is almost impossible to dislike Georgetown 2.0. They play smart, hustling basketball, are unselfish and, like their head coach, are gentlemen off the court.
If you don't like Georgetown, then you must also hate Christmas morning.
By the time this tournament is over you will definitely respect them. Because I get the feeling we will be seeing lots and lots of the Hoyas in the coming weeks.
Lots and lots of them.