Georgetown's Austin Freeman to miss game against West Virginia

Georgetown will be without its leading scorer, Austin Freeman, for Monday night's game against West Virginia in Morgantown, a team official said early Monday.

Ailing with what appeared to be the stomach flu, Freeman struggled through 23 minutes in Georgetown's 78-64 loss to Notre Dame Saturday, scoring a season-low five points and unable to add much on defense.

Nonetheless, the junior guard joined his teammates for Sunday's bus ride to Morgantown, hopeful of playing in the Hoyas' second-to-last game of the regular season.

But according to a team spokesman, Freeman became increasingly ill as Sunday evening wore on and he was driven back to campus to be evaluated by the team physician at Georgetown University Hospital.

Monday's game is critical for the 11th-ranked Hoyas (19-8, 9-7), who seek to stop their slide down the Big East standings after dropping three of their last four games.

Eighth-ranked West Virginia (22-6, 11-5), meantime, seeks to bolster its standing among the league's top four teams, which carries with it a double-bye into the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament, which tips off March 9 at New York's Madison Square Garden.

Freeman had been averaging a team-high 17.5 points (and 20.2 in conference gamesentering Saturday's game against Notre Dame and was largely responsible for the Hoyas' comeback against Louisville the previous week, scoring 29 points in the 70-60 road victory.

But shortly before tip-off against Notre Dame, he told Coach John Thompson III that he felt ill. He was given intravenous fluids and, for the first time since his freshman year, didn't start a Georgetown game, ceding his spot to freshman forward Hollis Thompson. Freeman joined the game roughly midway through the first half and struggled to contribute.