Georgetown won a game it had to win tonight. It wasn’t exciting and it wasn’t particularly pretty, but Georgetown continues to win. And Chris Wright continues to be the man on this team of late. Tonight he scored from all parts of the court, three-pointers, drives to the rim, big free-throws at the end of the game. Now don’t get me wrong, a lot of players made big plays including Hollis Thompson who hit some nice shots and had an absolute circus shot towards the end of the game. His biggest play of the game though came with less than a minute left after Wright had uncharacteristically turned it over. Thompson blocked an attempted layup from South Florida that had it gone in would have cut the Hoya lead to 2 points with less than 30 seconds left. Thompson continues to be an X-factor for this team.
Freeman continues to look off for some reason. Maybe his ankle injury against Providence is still bothering him, but for the 3rd game in a row, his shot has been off. That being said, he hit an extremely important leaning jumper late in the game to extend our lead to 8 points.
Jason Clark was a beast on the defensive end and had several steals including three on consecutive positions on the 2nd half which helped us extend our lead to close to 10 points halfway through the 2nd half.
We got eaten up on the boards all night which is discouraging, but overall this was a sleepy game for the Hoyas and I’m happy that we did not have a more serious scare. Playing South Florida is ridiculous. They should not be in the Big East, nor should the team from Texas that we will have to play next year. But that’s life. I still pine for the Big East where we had 8 teams and you played anyone twice. But as with most things, I have to stop living in the past.
The Hoyas now have three tough games in a row with two coming against Cincinnati and a showdown in D.C. next Saturday against Syracuse. In the Big East, one thing is for sure: the end never seems near and the with the Big East tournament looming, the NCAA tournament, the start of the games that ultimately define everything, really seems like a lifetime away.
Double vision: The Caps lost to San Jose again a couple of nights ago and again looked good, but not great. The fact though that we lost the game again in the 3rd period is concerning. Our goaltending was not great on the west coast trip, nor was our defense. Our PK has shown some cracks having allowed goals in 3 straight games and while our PP did register one goal from Ovie in the last game, no one would say that it seems to have turned a corner despite the positive steps it took against Phoenix.
There are not many teams that have been playing worse than the Caps in the last 10. Those teams include Ottawa, Florida and the Rangers – all in all, a pretty yucky group of teams. The Caps have 8 points in that span and while we are still in 5th space, nothing feels good about this team right now.
Tomorrow and Monday will be an opportunity for us to get back on track with big games against Buffalo and the Penguins.
Everyone is talking about the need for the Caps to get a 2nd line center, but in reality, the biggest problem this team may face is Green’s injury. If he has anything like a concussion, we will be in trouble. No fan and no one in the organization wants to see Tyler Sloan as a starting defenseman come playoff time.
The problems are many and the magical solutions don’t exist. The team will have to dig deep. Anyway who has been watching all year can see that Ovie is digging deep, but will everyone else? As of today, we are 5 points behind Tampa having played the same number of games.
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