Summers Makes Certain Hoyas Don't Get Upset

Forward's Three-Pointer, Blocked Shot Help Secure Win: Georgetown 61, Fairfield 49

DaJuan Summers, left, going for a steal against Fairfield's Yorel Hawkins, finished with a team-high 16 points. (Toni L. Sandys - The Post)

Fairfield Coach Ed Cooley watched his undersized team battle Georgetown yesterday afternoon at Verizon Center, even pulling within one point of the fifth-ranked team in the country with less than seven minutes to play.

But as soon as he saw Hoyas sophomore DaJuan Summers make a three-pointer from the left side to push Georgetown's lead back to four, Cooley realized that the Stags' chance at an upset was slipping away. Cooley looked down his bench and said, "Ooh, that's a game-breaker right there."

It was, and the shot was just one of several key plays made by Summers down the stretch, as the Hoyas pulled away for a 61-49 victory in front of 8,764 at Verizon Center. The 6-foot-8 forward sparked Georgetown's decisive 16-5 run to end the game and led the Hoyas with 16 points and one very big blocked shot.

Georgetown won its fifth straight game, despite a quiet performance from 7-foot-2 senior Roy Hibbert (seven points on 2-of-3 shooting) and an injury that limited the playing time of second-leading scorer Jessie Sapp. The Hoyas also did not play well defensively in the first half, giving up uncontested shots to the Stags, and were terrible from the foul line (9 for 22).

But Summers and another sophomore, guard Jeremiah Rivers, stepped up. Rivers filled in for Sapp, who got kneed in the back of the head while going after a rebound in the game's first minute. Sapp, who averages 12 points per game, returned to the court at the start of the second half, but played just six minutes.

Rivers played a career-high 27 minutes and had nine points, five assists and no turnovers. He also was at the forefront of Georgetown's second-half defensive effort.

The Stags (2-5) made 7 of 11 shots three-point attempts in the first half, and the score was tied at 33 at the break. Rivers, whom Summers describes as Georgetown's best on-the-ball defender, was charged with defending Jonathan Han, who made 3 of 4 three-point shots in the first half. With Rivers constantly in his face, Han (17 points) got off just two second-half shots, making one. As a team, the Stags shot just 18.5 percent in the second half.

"The pressure he can put on people defensively, it can have an effect," Georgetown Coach John Thompson III said of Rivers. "In the second half, I think it wasn't necessarily a tactical change [they made on defense], we just picked up our intensity a little bit."

But the Hoyas weren't able to pull away until the final seven minutes. After Han made a long three-pointer to bring Fairfield within 45-44 with 6 minutes 40 seconds remaining, Summers scored the Hoyas' next five points, starting with the three-pointer from the left side. Then, at the defensive end, he came from the weak side to swat away a shot from Anthony Johnson, who was wide open after Hibbert fell.

"I thought the dude was going to dunk it," Rivers said. "DaJuan came out of nowhere and threw it, and we got the ball back. Man, I was like, 'I can't believe you just blocked that!' . . . It was one of those [game-]changing blocks."

Said Thompson: "Boy, did we need that right there."

Immediately following Summers's block, the Hoyas worked the ball inside to Hibbert. Rather than force up a shot while being surrounded by defenders, Hibbert dumped the ball to a cutting Rivers for a layup and foul (he missed the free throw).

"Everybody knows what [Hibbert] can do down low if you just have single coverage, or even double-coverage," Rivers said. "The funny thing is, at that timeout, I told Roy, 'If you get the ball, I'm cutting, and they're going to double you. I'll probably be open.' "

Summers, fittingly, ended the game with a wide-open dunk. But the plays he made in the minutes leading up to that were especially valuable.

"What DaJuan has been doing, and what we need him to do, is things like that," said Thompson, referring specifically to the blocked shot. "He needs to run down rebounds; he needs to make defensive plays. The baskets, the points will come. He has the ability to be pretty successful in a lot of different areas: the areas that are dirty, the hustle stuff. Not to say that he can't do the pretty things also."