A Review of the Hoyas

[kayako]

Also, I have it on good authority that Wahab has been exploring options for a reunion. Time will tell whether it’s even feasible and whether or not that door is still open, but I still find it interesting. Kids like playing for Ewing, clearly. Those with big egos and who are not as much about being great, less so. I think that’s a natural balance. No one player is bigger than the program.

Wouldn't Wahab have to sit a year?

[MUPanther]

Georgetown C Timothy Igohoefe has entered the transfer portal

[smallmodularreactor]

Also, I have it on good authority that Wahab has been exploring options for a reunion. Time will tell whether it’s even feasible and whether or not that door is still open, but I still find it interesting. Kids like playing for Ewing, clearly. Those with big egos and who are not as much about being great, less so. I think that’s a natural balance. No one player is bigger than the program.

Wouldn't Wahab have to sit a year?

That is a great question. Hadn’t really considered it, but his coach just did get fired which is usually grounds for an exception. The NCAA no longer has firm rules on these kinds of transfers imo. Really, those cases that fit under the traditional rules seem to be in the minority (they’re probably not, but it’s significant nonetheless).

[Burrito]

Jalin Billingsley and Tyler Beard have also entered the transfer portal.

[Hoya9697]

Patrick Ewing is the worst coach in college basketball

Worst coach in GU history and one of the worst of all time in CBB. The man is too lazy to be a coach at this level. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right and we’re worse off with this guy. What is it now, 15 transfers out?

[billyjack]

Patrick Ewing is the worst coach in college basketball

Worst coach in GU history and one of the worst of all time in CBB. The man is too lazy to be a coach at this level. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right and we’re worse off with this guy. What is it now, 15 transfers out?

Last time i checked, James Colliflower didn't have a Big East Tournament championship ring.

[smallmodularreactor]

Patrick Ewing is the worst coach in college basketball

Worst coach in GU history and one of the worst of all time in CBB. The man is too lazy to be a coach at this level. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right and we’re worse off with this guy. What is it now, 15 transfers out?

Again, in case most other BE fans don’t realize, some Hoya fans actually, literally fabricate criticism of Ewing in the same way a certain groups of folks didn’t want to see someone like Jt Jr. succeed at GU in the 80s. Has nothing to do with basketball and more to do with the history between groups in this country.

Ewing is literally the hardest worker in the program, that’s actually the problem. I don’t have time to link the Hilltop Hoops article from yesterday, but that’s the most recent piece of evidence supporting that. Local area hs coaching see Pat grinding and trying to connect with players, but his (former) staff less so.

Please just remove Hoya from your handle. You can’t actually be a fan of the program leaving unfair criticism like that. Or is it that you really lack the ability to understand basketball and team endeavors? Ewing is accountable for the bad season, but that’s not the same as being fully or mostly responsible. He is a good coach by any objective measure. He has not been given the tools and leeway to succeed at GU that the vast majority of other college HCs have. Maybe it’s also you don’t fully understand how the basketball program functions at GU? In an operational sense? Ewing has taken steps to improve the standing of the program (remember how our initial Pr presence increased in his first year, but then Ronny Thompson, because of his ego, got the person fired because Ewing brought them in - one of the only two staff members he was allowed to bring in. He’s also tried to make coaching changes in the past and has met staunch resistance from the Administration).

No offense, but get a clue.

Also, the transfers are due to Ewing sending kids packing to uphold GUs standards of conduct, etc. And is less than average. I don’t know where you’ve been the last 3-5 years, but I don’t see how that can be seen as a negative? Players are fickle and transfer, there’s not much a coach can do to influence a player wanting another environment. That doesn’t mean that the current environment is bad, it may just as well be that it’s too challenging for them…Ewing has good relationships with his players but he also doesn’t coddle them. Todays basketball players love coddling. I, personally, do not blame Ewing for not coddling players lol.

[smallmodularreactor]

Patrick Ewing is the worst coach in college basketball

Worst coach in GU history and one of the worst of all time in CBB. The man is too lazy to be a coach at this level. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right and we’re worse off with this guy. What is it now, 15 transfers out?

Last time i checked, James Colliflower didn't have a Big East Tournament championship ring.

These anti-Ewing, anti-Thompson tree Hoya fans do all they can to discredit Ewing.

They believe that performing as the third best team in the BE for 60% of the entire season (behind Nova and Uconn) and then winning the BET was somehow a fluke and done in spite of Ewing’s ability.

They also can’t seem to conceptualisé that Ewing does wayyyyyy more tinkering with lineups and new faces in the OOC than most coaches do, actually to the detriment of wins because he’s coaching the long game. Whether you agree with that philosophy or not, we tend to start off slow by design and some fans are incapable of understanding the value of that design and think Ewing is a worst coach because he’s willing to take more risks to achieve greatness. He didn’t come back to GU to game the system and be good. This is a dude who has practiced greatness and excellence throughout his life. His coaching philosophy is go big or go home and take risks. He has nothing to prove to anyone lol that’s what a lot of Hoya fans don’t appreciate.

[Savannah Jay]

I think I speak for most BE fans when I say I really, really want Ewing to be successful. Having him back at Georgetown is good for the BE brand. Having him back at Georgetown AND be really successful would be great for the brand.

They believe that performing as the third best team in the BE for 60% of the entire season (behind Nova and Uconn) and then winning the BET was somehow a fluke and done in spite of Ewing’s ability.

Sex Panther, 50% of the time, it works every time (for you Anchorman fans). Seems like you may be cherry-picking parts of a season to make your case. Problem is that Patrick has been there 4 seasons now and pretty much the only thing that could have happened to tarnish the BET run last year is to come back and not win a single BE game this year. If I were a fan, that would be very frustrating.

They also can’t seem to conceptualisé that Ewing does wayyyyyy more tinkering with lineups and new faces in the OOC than most coaches do, actually to the detriment of wins because he’s coaching the long game. Whether you agree with that philosophy or not, we tend to start off slow by design and some fans are incapable of understanding the value of that design and think Ewing is a worst coach because he’s willing to take more risks to achieve greatness. He didn’t come back to GU to game the system and be good. This is a dude who has practiced greatness and excellence throughout his life. His coaching philosophy is go big or go home and take risks. He has nothing to prove to anyone lol that’s what a lot of Hoya fans don’t appreciate.

This sounds like a sales pitch when there is very little substance to make the sale. Fill the void with a bunch of words. The reason Ewing is always tinkering with new lineups is because half his roster is new every year. 15 transfers out in 4 years is not normal, even in the portal era. Take more risks to achieve greatness (still waiting on the greatness). Go big or go home (home it is, 75% of the time).

Again, we all want Ewing to be successful because that would be good for the conference. It is a high profile school and job that we've not been able to capitalize on in this era. When everyone says the BE is just Nova and everyone else...they are not waiting on my Jays to be great. They are waiting for Georgetown to be great and, save for 4 days at MSG last year, they've been the opposite of great.

[smallmodularreactor]

I think I speak for most BE fans when I say I really, really want Ewing to be successful. Having him back at Georgetown is good for the BE brand. Having him back at Georgetown AND be really successful would be great for the brand.

They believe that performing as the third best team in the BE for 60% of the entire season (behind Nova and Uconn) and then winning the BET was somehow a fluke and done in spite of Ewing’s ability.

Sex Panther, 50% of the time, it works every time (for you Anchorman fans). Seems like you may be cherry-picking parts of a season to make your case. Problem is that Patrick has been there 4 seasons now and pretty much the only thing that could have happened to tarnish the BET run last year is to come back and not win a single BE game this year. If I were a fan, that would be very frustrating.

They also can’t seem to conceptualisé that Ewing does wayyyyyy more tinkering with lineups and new faces in the OOC than most coaches do, actually to the detriment of wins because he’s coaching the long game. Whether you agree with that philosophy or not, we tend to start off slow by design and some fans are incapable of understanding the value of that design and think Ewing is a worst coach because he’s willing to take more risks to achieve greatness. He didn’t come back to GU to game the system and be good. This is a dude who has practiced greatness and excellence throughout his life. His coaching philosophy is go big or go home and take risks. He has nothing to prove to anyone lol that’s what a lot of Hoya fans don’t appreciate.

This sounds like a sales pitch when there is very little substance to make the sale. Fill the void with a bunch of words. The reason Ewing is always tinkering with new lineups is because half his roster is new every year. 15 transfers out in 4 years is not normal, even in the portal era. Take more risks to achieve greatness (still waiting on the greatness). Go big or go home (home it is, 75% of the time).

Again, we all want Ewing to be successful because that would be good for the conference. It is a high profile school and job that we've not been able to capitalize on in this era. When everyone says the BE is just Nova and everyone else...they are not waiting on my Jays to be great. They are waiting for Georgetown to be great and, save for 4 days at MSG last year, they've been the opposite of great.

Interesting. I don’t see it as cherry picking at all to focus on the most important stretch of the season. The idea for all programs is to improve and peak in Feb/March, not in November/December. Championships aren’t won in December and Ewing’s coaching reflects that.

Also, that 60% isn’t an arbitrary stretch - it’s the break between our precovid break performance and the post break performance. We had more new faces than any other BE team, and we were the last year to start practicing in the BE by FAR, and we were also the last BE team to go in lockdown. So during that time our coaches were put on equal footing by having time to scout and implement fixes during that break. If you think stating that we were the third best team in the conference for most of the conference season is cherry-picking to support an invalid argument, I don’t know what to tell you. That’s literally crunch time. Nobody cares what you did in November…

And agreed the tinkering is a result of a poor foundation, but you also have to understand how far we had fallen by the time Ewing took over, and again, the lack of tools and support provided by those around him to ensure success. That’s not speculation, I know folks within the program (and public reporting on dudes like Ronny Thompson give you some window in how he’s been trying to resist Ewing’s success at all costs. And outside of an injury mishap, for example, he was the main reason Max McClung left and was opposed to his presence from day one for whack personal reasons. We have been playing catch up in a way that would’ve been a challenge for literally any coach we would’ve hired. We were reeling when we fired JT3 and Ewing stepped into a very challenging situation.

Even given that. We were about as expected in year one. We were ahead of schedule in year two actually. In year three we were a few bullsh-- calls to protect Duke in msg away from being ranked in the top 25 (aka ahead of schedule again. I consider myself a pretty optimistic Hoya fan, but his coaching performance up to that point was a pleasant surprise to me). Then we had a couple of individuals put their personal aspirations above the team and imploded out roster a month into the season, and the person who spearheaded that vowed not even a month earlier “to bring GU back to prominence”. Even given 4 of our top 6 players transferring a month in, Ewing had us playing above average with a short rotation that forced us to literally regularly play wallons - and not good ones at that. We were playing well until Mac McClung and Yurtseven got injured (likely from overuse). So, after that season we had to reset.

And I agree with you that following up the BET run with a season like this was the worst possible scenario, but that’s why context matters. It’s not an excuse - Wahab transferred despite Ewing publicly rerecruiting him on national television throughout our March run (but his handler has already made the decision to transfer during that Covid break when we were underperforming and Wahab didn’t actually want to leave GU, hence him looking to come back), so I don’t blame Ewing at all for that. It’s not like he can imprison Wahab and force him to stay. A lot of Hoya fans can’t comprehend that Wahab could’ve given a commitment to another program in mid-January and there was no way to stop what had already been set in motion. But again, maybe that’s a fault of Ewing for starting too slow - he risked a bit too much and so maybe he bears some level of responsibility for that, but if we’re being objective and real, Wahab’s move was incredibly hasty, shortsighted, and flat out dumb. He would’ve been a a force this year rather than a bum at UMD.

And we lost our most importantly player and likely leading scorer and first or second leading rebounder unexpectedly less than a month before the season. Tre King, who Ewing grabbed to fill Wahab’s void. This was a well respected, well spoken, well disciplined kid who made a mistake (that would be swept under the rug at 90% of other programs, but GU doesn’t function that way for good reason), so I don’t blame Ewing for that either.

But it’s as simple as that - we lost our two most important players through no fault AT ALL of Ewing’s during the off-season. That’s why we went 0-19. It’s not an excuse, it’s just the reality but you can choose to disagree all you want. Had we kept Wahab and/or King we’d have finished middle of the pack. We had the worst frontcourt I’ve ever seen at GU, and they played like it. And our starting center (Igohefe) broke his hand early in the year and that stifled his development for the rest of the year. We had unfortunate luck this year in particular.

And that’s even without analysing for why Ewing didn’t return any super seniors (I believe his role in mentoring young men led him to push them to pursue the best options for themselves, rather than recruit them heavily to come back just because it would help the program. This is the Jt Jr model and Ewing was the ultimate student of that). In addition, our promising freshman class needed room to breath, but unfortunately they did not show up prepared to contribute (outside of Aminu).