With lacrosse season officially over thanks to the women’s team’s second-round NCAA tournament exit, MultiSport Facility has already begun shifting gears. And perhaps with good reason: Georgetown football, which started four different quarterbacks en route to a disappointing 5-6 record in 2012, might very well need to start practicing as early as possible.
It looks like there will be an heir to Markel Starks’ throne after all.
Tre Campbell, a junior point guard from local St. John’s High School, verbally committed to the Hoyas on Wednesday night following an offer from Head Coach John Thompson III last week.
Although currently ranked just 121st overall in the Class of 2014, Campbell also received offers from a host of other quality programs — including Maryland, Pittsburgh, Virginia Commonwealth and Xavier — and fills a necessary void for a program that going into 2013-14 will feature just one pure floor general on its roster.
Campbell marks the second recruit in the 2014 class for JT III, who previously received a verbal from 6-foot-9 forward Isaac Copeland in early March.
The most recent commitment on Wednesday was made public via Campbell’s personal Twitter account, with a tweet at 9:25 p.m. reading simply, “I have officially Committed to Georgetown University.”
You really want to read about this right now? Are you a Syracuse fan or something? No? Then stop reading, and go watch a Will Ferrell movie or listen to sad music or something. I don’t drink myself, but you can go right ahead and do that too. You deserve it.
Alright, you’re really still here? Fine, then I guess I’m kind of obligated to do a bit of recapping for you.
In short, junior point guard Markel Starks showed up to the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia for the second-seeded Hoyas’ first-round matchup with the Eagles of Florida Gulf Coast. He did so alone.
In what on paper should have been a breeze for the second-seeded Hoyas, Starks put up 23 points and six assists to account for more than a third of Georgetown’s points in what ended a lopsided 78-68 loss. Unanimous Big East player of the year and Wooden Award finalist Otto Porter Jr.? 5-of-17 from the floor, 13 points, no spark. Freshman guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera? Still cold: 3-for-11, six points.
Former Georgetown standout point guard Chris Wright is set to be signed by the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, according to a report from ESPN’s Marc Stein last night. The Mavs opened up a roster spot yesterday when they waived former South Florida shooting guard Dominique Jones, and Wright — who averaged 15.5 points, 7.0 assists and 4.3 rebounds for the Iowa Energy of the D-League — apparently impressed Marc Cuban’s front office enough to trust him with that 15th slot, albeit reportedly on only a 10-day contract.
Wright, who played alongside former Hoya teammate Henry Sims in the D-League All-Star Game on Feb. 16, has yet to feature for an NBA outfit in an official game. The floor general previously signed a non-guaranteed deal in October of last year with the New Orleans Hornets, but he did not make the final roster and subsequently caught on with the Energy.
Move over, DSR. Your time in the blue and gray spotlight — just like the Tindr craze, Manley Field House and now Big East games between GU and ‘Cuse at the Carrier Dome — has officially come to a close.
A record crowd of 35,012 fans had showed up to witness the latest installment in the conference’s greatest rivalry, and thanks to sophomore forward Otto Porter Jr., all but a handful of well-traveled Hoya faithful were turned back out into the cold disappointed.
Porter Jr., already the definitive front-runner for Big East player of the year coming in, might just have put any questions about his candidacy to rest Saturday afternoon in Syracuse, N.Y. The Missouri native, who has noticeably improved both his willingness and ability to launch it from three-point land this season, went 5-10 from distance and a ridiculous 12-19 overall from the floor in a career outing. His 33 accounted for just under 58% of the Hoyas’ point total on the day.
No other Georgetown player scored more than seven points, but John Thompson III’s squad more than made up for it with stellar work on the defensive end. Coming out in a 2-3 zone mirroring the trademark setup of Jim Boeheim’s Orange, the Blue and Gray switched over to man-to-man in the second half at times, and neither strategy allowed Syracuse much of anything offensively.
I’m not gonna lie: I almost left.
There was a minute remaining in Saturday night’s Big East matchup between No. 11 Louisville and No. 25 Notre Dame, and I was at The Hoya’s spring recruitment party doing what I do best: planting myself in front of a TV, avoiding actual human interaction, and watching sports. As time wore down, though, my interest began to fade.
Jerian Grant got his team to overtime with his late-game heroics. (Yahoo Sports)
After all, Notre Dame star forward Jack Cooley had fouled out early, and following Cameron Biedscheid’s jumper to knot things up at 37 with 11:31 to go, the Irish had missed seven straight from the field over the next 10 minutes-plus. The lid on the hosts’ rim was screwed on so tightly Touchdown Jesus himself couldn’t have taken it off. And so, when a Russ Smith dunk put the Cards up seven with a minute left, I nearly got up to prematurely grab my jacket and head out.
But I didn’t. I stopped, and I stayed, and I watched. And watched. And watched some more.
Through one overtime. Then a second. Then another three.
I’d stayed up in high school until 2 in the morning watching UConn-Syracuse go through six OTs at the Garden four years back, so that wasn’t really out of character. No, the far stranger part was how much everyone else was glued to it, too.