Georgetown looks like the first team to struggle with the rigors of playing a Big East schedule. After going into Hartford and smacking the Huskies around, Georgetown has followed that up with two losses in three days to Pitt and Notre Dame. And after playing Providence on Saturday, they head to get Syracuse at home, head to Duke, and then host West Virginia.
Against the Irish, the Hoyas never seemed to get into a flow. Under JT3, Georgetown has always been a balanced team. They win games because they run an offense that makes everyone on the floor a threat (shooters, cutters, etc.), which is even more effective when you have a talented player at each spot on the floor. But last night, only one guy was effective for the Hoyas, and that was Greg Monroe. Chris Wright did have 13, but it came on 14 shots, and DaJuan Summers added 11, but he was in foul trouble the whole game. Monroe was really the Hoyas 
only reliable offensive weapon. That lack of balance on the offensive end really was what did in the Hoyas. It even got to the point in the second half where they were coming down and trying to isolate Monroe on the block instead of running through their stuff.
Back to Monroe for a second. This kid keeps getting better and better. Tonight, his passing wasn't as precise as it usually is (he threw away at least two back doors), but he was going right at the Notre Dame post defenders. He finished with 21 points and 10 boards (7 offensive), but really showed a nice repertoire of moves with his back to the basket. His biggest problem right now is also his best move. Let me explain: Monroe is a lefty, and does everything going to his left. Teams know this, and force him to go to his right. When he does, he always spins back to his left hand for the shot, no matter where he is on the floor. It probably won't be a problem at this level. He is quicker, even going right, than most of the big men he will face. When he goes right, he can usually get a step on them (forcing them to have to recover on defense) so that when he does spin, he will be open. But he is also a good enough passer (with excellent body control) that if you send another guy at him on the spin, he will find the open man while avoiding a charge. Once he gets to the league, he is going to need to develop that right hand a little more.
For the first time in the four or five Georgetown games I have seen, Monroe was really aggressive going to the offensive glass. He also played with much more emotion than he normally does. That is a good sign for Georgetown, because down the stretch of this game (and a little bit against Pitt towards the end as well), Monroe seemed like he was trying to be a leader and take the game over. I don't think the Hoyas really have a guy they can count on to make a big play or get them a big bucket in crunch time. If Monroe can turn into a Jeff Green (which it looks like he is well on his way to doing), the Hoyas will be much better.
One last thing about Georgetown. They seemed tired and it didn't look like they had their legs under them. Their cuts weren't as sharp as normal, their defense was not as good as it has been, and they left a lot of shots short. If they were tired, can you really blame them? They really only go six deep (Henry Sims, Julian Vaughn, and Omar Wattad are getting minutes right now more out of necessity than out of earning the playing time), and played in a dog fight against Pitt on Saturday half the country away. But hey, this is the Big East.
To their credit, the Irish really just dominated this game. They got pretty much whatever they wanted offensively. The Hoyas had no answer for Luke Harangody on the block. He finished with 31 and 11 despite playing in foul trouble basically the entire game. He is such a smart player, especially when it comes to getting position on the block. This year he has added a much improved perimeter shot. One of the knocks on him has been that he struggles against bigger players (case in point: he never scored more than 13 against Georgetown before tonight), but tonight he was knocking down jumpers all over the court. He's not Kyle McAlarney just yet, but if he consistently hits 15-17 foot jumpers, then it forces the other teams bigs to come out and guard him, opening up space in the paint for penetration and offensive rebounding lanes.
Speaking of Kyle McAlarney, he finally found his jump shot as he went 5-11 from deep for 15 points. A couple of the three's he hit were really tough shots. One was off the dribble from about 28 feet with a hand in his face. The second was even more difficult, as he came off of a ball screen wide (essentially dribbling along the three-point line and away from the basket) before pulling up with both his feet pointing towards the baseline (he was below the free throw line when he pulled up) and knocking down a twisting, fade-away three that Jason Clark came about 
an inch from blocking. On the very next possession, K-mac his another three for his own 6-0 spurt that essentially iced the game (it put the Irish up 13 with under seven minutes left).
Notre Dame blew this game open in the last four minutes of the first half when Harangody scored all of the Irish points in a 13-3 run to go into the locker room up 39-28. The Hoyas scored the first seven of the second half, but they never mounted any serious threat after that. The guy that gave them a big boost in the second half was Ryan Ayers. Georgetown played their best basketball of the game coming out of the second half gates, but Ayers had an answer for them every time. He scored eight straight points for the Irish, which helped sustain the Notre Dame lead as the Hoyas tried to chip away.
The bottom line is that Notre Dame just was the better team tonight, especially on the defensive end. They rotated between playing man and playing what looked like a match-up 2-3 zone, and both were very effective. But the Irish were exposed on the glass, which is somewhere they have struggled all year long. Georgetown is not a good rebounding team (they were more than doubled up on the boards against Pitt), but they out rebounded the Irish while picking up 13 offensive boards. It doesn't matter how well the Irish shoot, if they can't figure out how to prevent second chance points, they can lose to anyone in the conference (just ask St. John's, who beat them 40-27 on the glass).
The rest of the night's action:
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Tuesday Morning Shootaround |
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