Four Cornerstones

For Georgetown's four seniors, the enormity of the moment likely will not register until sometime today, when they're pulling on their jerseys inside the locker room or when they're walking off Verizon Center's court for the last time. Today's game against 12th-ranked Louisville will be the final home game for Roy Hibbert, Jonathan Wallace, Patrick Ewing Jr. and Tyler Crawford, teammates and best friends.

"I'm not the type of guy to get tears or anything, but I'm going to be sad to see my last home game," Hibbert said. "Hopefully, I'll be playing at Verizon sometime next year [in the NBA]. I have a great bunch of guys that I love, and we're going to go out there and have fun."

It's fitting that the 11th-ranked Hoyas will be honoring their seniors on a day in which the Big East regular season championship is at stake. This class (which included Jeff Green, now with the Seattle SuperSonics), whose arrival coincided with that of Coach John Thompson III, helped reinvigorate a program that had declined.

Over the past four seasons, the seniors have led the Hoyas to a 96-34 overall record, 45-20 in the Big East. Hibbert, Wallace and Green all will finish their careers among Georgetown's top 25 scorers. Today's game will be the sixth home sellout crowd of their careers (the Hoyas sold out one game between 2000 and 2004).

"Who your teammates are shape your life," Thompson said. "I've been extremely fortunate and proud to have coached them individually and as a group. They all are good men. That's something. To get a group like that is special."

Thompson's predecessor, Craig Esherick, was the one who recruited Hibbert, Wallace, Crawford, Green and Cornelio Guibunda (who eventually transferred to American). Ewing transferred in from Indiana in fall 2005.

"You just don't hear of too many teams that have a group of seniors who are that close, because not that many people stick around," Wallace said. "I think our camaraderie off the floor helps us with our transition onto the floor. We have like a sixth sense of where each other is going to be, and what they're going to do."

'That's a Great Group of Guys'

Crawford and Wallace hit it off immediately when they met as freshmen, as did Crawford and Ewing, when Ewing came to visit the campus before transferring. "We threw alley-oops all day for two days straight" during open gym, Ewing said.

But Hibbert, to be honest, didn't particularly like the brash Ewing when they first met as high school players. Ewing, Hibbert recalled, "was just obnoxious, screaming at everybody. I just wanted to smack this kid."

Now they're good friends, even though they still disagree over whether Ewing actually dunked over Hibbert in an AAU tournament. They sit next to each other on charter flights -- in the exit row, naturally -- and talk about whatever is on their minds.

"The seniors have that bond," said guard Jessie Sapp, the team's lone scholarship junior. "Some people wish to have bonds like that, because no matter what, they have each other's back. No matter what, they're going to stick together. You need that in this world, in life. That's a great group of guys, if you ask me."

Each one brings something a little different.