Above and Beyond

Hoyas' Wallace Dispels Doubts in Becoming a Big-Time College Star

Jonathan Wallace has grown somewhat weary of recounting how he found his way from tiny Harvest, Ala., to the back court of fifth-ranked Georgetown. But tonight's game brings the tale full circle, as the Hoyas face Alabama at the Birmingham Jefferson Civic Center as part of the inaugural Big East/SEC Invitational.

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When Wallace came to Georgetown in 2004, he was a freshman walk-on who had followed the Hoyas' new coach, John Thompson III, from Princeton. He returns home today as one of Georgetown's stars, a senior leader on a team that played in the Final Four.

"Too much has been talked about how and why Jon ended up at Georgetown," Thompson said. "At the end of the day, Jonathan Wallace is a terrific basketball player. At the end of the day, despite the doubts and concerns that others may have had, he never questioned himself, and he's made himself into one of the better guards in the country."

Wallace was a second-team all-state guard at Sparkman High and dreamed of playing big-time college basketball. Luther Tiggs, the coach at Sparkman, thought Wallace was mentally ready to play at the major college level -- "He had the savvy; he could be a tremendous CEO of a company, because he doesn't just know what to do, but why you do it," Tiggs said -- but he wasn't sure if the 6-foot-1 Wallace had the physical strength to compete against bigger guards.

Those who shared Tiggs's opinion counseled Wallace to set his sights on smaller programs. Alabama didn't recruit Wallace, choosing to focus on another guard in the state, Ronald Steele (the all-American candidate is sitting out this season because of knee injuries). But Jimmy Tillette, the coach at nearby Samford University, wanted Wallace for his team, which runs a Princeton-style offense. Tillette soon realized, however, that Wallace was not interested in playing in the Ohio Valley Conference.

"Jonathan was not going to be dissuaded; he wanted to play at the highest level," Tillette said. "Doggone if he wasn't right. We thought he was our level. . . . It's like the American dream."

Said Wallace: "I had to be confident to pursue that dream. And I managed to get here."

Thompson encouraged Wallace to follow him to Georgetown, because he felt that "when you're starting a program, or even when you have an established program, you want people around you like Jon Wallace." But Thompson also warned Wallace that he might never play.

Wallace now has started every game of his college career, and he most likely will finish his career as the program's career leader in three-pointers made and three-point accuracy. He was voted to the coaches' preseason all-Big East team, an honor that delighted his teammates, who affectionately refer to him as everything from "Little Buddy" to "Cornbread" to "Big Head" (the latter a reference to the actual size of his head -- "When he dribbles, it wobbles," center Roy Hibbert explained -- and not his ego).

Opposing coaches have taken notice of his play. Michigan's John Beilein said that "Wallace has always been my guy . . . he just makes things go so well and he doesn't miss," and Fairfield Coach Ed Cooley called him "the best guard in the nation" and "the silent assassin."

In last season's postseason run, in which the Hoyas won the Big East tournament and advanced to the Final Four, Wallace shot 55 percent from beyond the three-point arc (22 of 40). He made one of the biggest shots of the season, a three-pointer from the left side against North Carolina in the NCAA East Region final that tied the score at 81 with 31 seconds to play and sent the game into overtime.

Some of the Hoyas joke that if they had a jump shot like Wallace's -- "That high arc, that rainbow," in Hibbert's words -- they would shoot all the time. But Wallace's selectiveness is one of the things that makes him so effective. He's averaging eight shots per game this season, two more than he did during his first three years.