Missing a Chance To Erase All Doubt

NEW YORK

A team that wears uniforms in the shape and color of gym towels naturally is going to be treated with a certain amount of understatement. According to the Georgetown basketball team, the critics focused too much on what the Hoyas didn't do, instead of what they did. They didn't dazzle. They didn't blow out anybody. All they did was win a lot of close games -- there was something wrong with that? As it turned out, yes.

Entering the Big East tournament final, the top-seeded Hoyas seemed on the verge of proving a point. Their army of guards had made the nets flutter, and the 7-foot-2 Roy Hibbert was playing like a self-described "monster." A victory on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden would have given them a second straight tournament title to go with their regular season mantle, an achievement that would have been hard to deprecate. It would have established Georgetown as a team impossible to ignore, one poised for a significant NCAA postseason run.

But given how the Hoyas played in their 74-65 loss to seventh-seeded Pittsburgh, it's frankly hard to say they resolved any doubts about their perfectly respectable yet somehow still unpersuasive 27-5 record. Yes, they fought through one of the deepest conferences in the country -- a league that probably will qualify at least seven teams for the NCAAs -- and yes, for a time in this tournament they were plainly a cut above the competition. In the previous two rounds, they showed discipline and meticulous execution, and an ability to meet just about any contingency. But it all fell apart in the final, a game they never came close to winning and in which their functionality ultimately seemed like a weakness. Pitt, a team that was sky-high despite playing its fourth contest in as many days, somehow made Georgetown look plain and sluggish.

The bottom line was that the Hoyas were crushed on the boards, 41-29, got beat to every loose ball, gave up the middle of the floor, let Pitt charge straight through their defense to the rim and generally were outplayed and outfought. They also allowed five players to score in double figures, led by Ronald Ramon with 17 and Sam Young with 16.

"They just played like they wanted to win," Georgetown guard Jessie Sapp said. "They made a lot of hustle plays."

The knock against the Hoyas during the regular season was that they didn't win by enough -- half a dozen victories came by three points or less in the closing seconds. Louisville Coach Rick Pitino even suggested that their great escapes were "lucky." But according to the Hoyas, it wasn't luck; it was more like a defining characteristic.

"We take whatever we can get at the end of the day," Hibbert said earlier in the week.

Entering the Big East tournament, the Hoyas seemed determined to prove that luck was no part of the discussion, and to use the tournament to launch a deep postseason run, as they had last year in getting to the Final Four. In the quarterfinals and semifinals, they shot better than 53 percent and racked up margins of victory in the neighborhood of 20 points: They beat Villanova, 82-63, and West Virginia, 72-55. That suggested they had slowly but surely grown into the sort of team all coaches covet: One playing its best ball in March.

"It's just a matter of us coming out and doing what we got to do, day in and day out," DaJuan Summers said.

But on this night, the Hoyas couldn't do much of anything after halftime. They were weirdly off kilter and lacking in energy -- they inadvertently stepped out of bounds, dribbled off their toes, that sort of thing -- and at halftime were trailing 31-28. It was a performance that left Coach John Thompson III baffled.

"You know who, what, when, where, why, I don't know," he said. "It just happens. It's one of those days."

Even so, the Hoyas still were within reach midway though the second half, and when Hibbert's massive shot block with 10 minutes 7 seconds to go brought the crowd to its feet, you wondered if it was the jump-start they needed. Instead, Chris Wright crouched for a wide-open three attempt from deep in the corner -- and hit the side of the backboard. Less than a minute later, Hibbert picked up his third and fourth fouls in succession and went to the bench. It deteriorated steadily from there.

Ultimately, the Hoyas couldn't blame it merely on an off night. They had played like a slightly flat, and perhaps self-satisfied, defending champion. Their opponent, meanwhile, played like it was starving for a title. Pitt had appeared in seven of the last eight tournament finals, but won just once. Perhaps it craved the victory more.

For the time being, the Hoyas proved the naysayers right: All of their careful composure and equilibrium suddenly looked like a potential failing. At any rate, it was hard to say people were wrong about them after winding up on the wrong end of the score.

Without question, good teams lose in conference tournaments -- Duke and Tennessee were among yesterday's other upset victims -- and no one remembers if they go on to make the Final Four. The question for the Hoyas is whether Saturday night merely was a cautionary performance, or a harbinger.

Said Thompson: "We have to grow. We have to be better."