Hobbs, GW Are Looking for Answers

For a while Thursday night, it was like the good old days at Smith Center.

The home team kept making plays, kept playing good defense, kept the visiting team, which had arrived in town with a 16-2 record, on the short end of the score. The game had a big-time feel. Even the officiating crew was top-drawer, with Jim Burr, Tim Higgins and Mike Kitts having been to 29 Final Fours in all.

But the good times didn't make it to the finish line. Leading 60-54 with just more than two minutes to play, George Washington found a way to lose, allowing Dayton to escape with a 63-61 victory that left most of the 2,517 in attendance baffled, confused and angry. The fact that the key moment in the game came with 21.9 seconds left -- when the Colonials somehow ended up with six men on the court after taking a 61-60 lead -- made it that much worse.

"I understand their frustration," Coach Karl Hobbs said 30 minutes after it was over, staring at a stat sheet as if boring a hole in it with his eyes might change the result. "I certainly feel it, too. They got a little bit spoiled." He forced a smile. "We all did."

What spoiled them all was a four-year run during which the Colonials went 90-32, went to the postseason four years in a row -- the last three to the NCAA tournament -- and won two Atlantic 10 titles. A run like that is bound to turn a 9-17 season a year ago followed by the current record of 6-10 into a winter of serious discontent.

"I'm as frustrated and confused by it as anybody," GW Athletic Director Jack Kvancz said during the game Thursday. "I understand that drop-offs happen, that you might go from winning 23 to winning 13 or 14. The escalator doesn't just go up, up and up. But we went straight from the penthouse to the outhouse. One year we're in the NCAAs (2007) and the next year we're not even in the league tournament. I don't know how that happens."

Hobbs is equally frustrated but says he does know how it happened.

"We made some recruiting mistakes," he said. "It really comes down to that. We took some kids we probably shouldn't have taken, kids who were very good athletically but weren't what we'd had or what we need in terms of character. When we realized that mistake, it was almost like going back to square one.

"That's what keeps me from losing my mind while this is happening. I know it's a process. The first step was recognizing the mistakes. The second was getting the guys we've got to start playing better. I think we've accomplished the second step. We are playing better. The third step is to finish games -- not just compete, but win. That may be the hardest one. You get past that step, you can get on a roll. Then, and only then, you can start to talk about winning championships again."

The good news, process-wise, is that the Colonials have been competitive recently. The loss to Dayton was the third in a row in which they had a chance to win the game in the final minute. In those three games -- at Duquesne and at Saint Louis before the loss to the Flyers -- they have lost by a total of 11 points. That's a lot better than the disastrous late-December trip to Hawaii, which included a 26-point loss to the host team and an embarrassing loss to Coppin State.

The Colonials are 0-4 in the Atlantic 10 entering this afternoon's game against Rhode Island. Once again, they are in danger of being one of the two teams that don't qualify for the 12-team conference tournament. Hobbs talks process; Kvancz knows people want to see results.

"Do I feel pressure?" Kvancz asked rhetorically. "You bet I do. I'm an old coach; I see what Karl is doing and I get it. I know how capable he is -- look at where he took us from when he first got here to the three straight NCAAs. Do I think the kids are playing hard? Absolutely. But we both know that people really don't want to hear about how young our guards are (two freshmen and a sophomore get most of the minutes) or about rebuilding. Doesn't matter that it's true; people don't want to hear it."

Thursday's bizarre ending was, in a sense, a microcosm of the season. The Colonials had played excellent defense all night, Hobbs using a soft zone most of the evening to cut off a team that likes to cut-and-slash more than shoot from the outside. GW trailed 43-39 after a 13-2 Dayton run, but Hobbs called a timeout and the Colonials responded with an 11-1 run of their own. Wynton Witherspoon was superb throughout with 19 points and seven rebounds.

Even after Dayton had rallied to tie the score at 60, Damian Hollis got into the lane and was fouled with 21.9 seconds to go. He missed the first free throw but made the second for a 61-60 lead.

That's when things came apart. Because GW was out of timeouts, Hobbs had sent freshman Aaron Ware to the scorer's table to sub in for Hollis after the second free throw to buy time to set his defense. The horn sounded and Ware came in. The problem was, Hollis never came out.

"I looked and saw we had all five guys covered, and I didn't have anybody," Witherspoon said. "I went, 'Oh no, we've got six guys out here.' That's when I tried to get off court. But I was too late."

Even after Dayton's Marcus Johnson made both technical free throws and 1 of 2 after an ensuing GW foul, the game still could have been won. Tony Taylor missed a three-pointer from the wing with the clock running down, but the weak-side rebound went right to Rob Diggs, who had a layup that would have tied the score. He missed.

"Once upon a time we make that shot, Rob gets fouled, he makes the free throw and we go home with a win," Hobbs said, shaking his head. "But that's not where we are right now."

Dayton Coach Brian Gregory agreed with Hobbs.

"I didn't feel so great on that last possession," he said. "I've been down that road before in this building. I remember Carl Elliott hitting a three-quarter-court shot to beat us at the buzzer and that little kid who always killed us (T.J. Thompson) beating us on a last shot, too. This is a program with a lot of pride. I expected a game just like this tonight."

Hobbs knows games like this may be part of the process, but it doesn't make it any easier to sleep at night.

"Even understanding it all, I still find it mind-boggling that we are where we are," he said. "I always tell the kids, 'When it's all said and done, you're going to be asked two questions: Did you graduate and did you win games?' There's no middle answer to those questions. It's either yes I did or no I didn't and yes we did or no we didn't.

"It's a very thin line between winning and losing. We saw that again tonight." He forced a smile. "We have to get back on the right side of that line. No one understands that better than I do."