Georgetown Basketball History Project. Home Features Forgotten Rivals. By John Reagan June 4, A basketball history stretching over a century has brought a lot of familiar and unfamiliar names to Georgetown basketball. We remember names St. John's and Syracuse as it were yesterday. Others, like U. International University or New England College, are long since forgotten. What keeps some schools top of mind and others out of mind altogether?
In sports, it is the concept of rivalry, that odd confluence of repeatable and remembered opponents that bring home the competitive nature of sports.
Down at the half, the Hoyas proceeded to rally to a victory of — exactly the same score as the game in Athletic parity, then, will serve as our sixth and final criterion for evaluating potential rivalries. Nor may the schools be a perfect match in terms of academics. Perhaps, for Villanova, it is the other way around. The feeling appears to be mutual. While Georgetown has since enjoyed some recent dominance, every game against the Orange remains an event. Syracuse, however, is not a Catholic university, nor does it typically compete for the same applicant pool as Georgetown.
Finally, there is Fordham, a team with which Georgetown football has shared a field more than any other, albeit through some irregular periods of play. Evening News. Like Georgetown, Fordham put its football program through a mid-century hiatus, and both teams picked the sport up in time for matchups in and that broke attendance records at Kehoe Field and in the Bronx.
Fordham is a Jesuit school and common Patriot League football opponent, but the similarities end there. The Hoya lacrosse teams have faced off numerous times against out-of-conference Duke in recent years, but in what other sport are the two teams competitive?
Where has Maryland been since ? Among other things, Cuse, UConn and Nova are known for their combined four national titles during the lifetime of the Big East Conference. Until recent years, Pitt was recognizable primarily because of four words: Send it in, Jerome! But during these recent years, Pitt has sent a powerful message to the Big East, establishing a sort of mini-dynasty in the conference's era of hyper-competitiveness.
Rivalries are often founded on a healthy hatred of opposing players. It's enough to make me foam at the mouth to watch evil-doers like Khalid el-Amin, Gerry McNamara and Scottie Reynolds, yet try as I might it's impossible to harbor any ill will towards Carl Krauser always respect your elders and Ronald Ramon he's like a bizarro Drew Hall!
It's also part and parcel of a rivalry that opposing coaches are on the same moral plane with Lucifer and the ad executives who green-lighted the Applebees Shrimp Sensations commercials that ran during the NCAA Tournament a few years ago.
If St. Peter has any dirt on me, I would expect nothing less than to be in Hell's waiting room with the Jims Calhoun and Boeheim.
On the other hand, I wouldn't mind sitting down for a drink and talking basketball with Ben Howland or Jamie Dixon Finally, rivalries give us classic games. We came up with an entire list of classic Georgetown-Syracuse games for the blog last season.
We could probably do the same for Connecticut and Villanova--although the thought of including the Big East Tournament Final or the National Championship game is borderline blasphemous although this is probably the point--those games would have a fraction of the lasting relevance if they were played against UMass and Temple.
But wait a second now. If you're looking for recent classic Georgetown games--games that have a lasting significance for the Big East hierarchy, games that meant something at the time, games that were legitimately classic contests--shouldn't the search begin with Pittsburgh? It was at the near-impossible fortress of the Peteresen Events Center where John Thompson III earned his first Big East victory and Georgetown it's most shocking victory in three years, toppling the 16 ranked Panthers and marked the Hoyas' re-emergence as a player in the Big East.
One season later, after a victory over undefeated 1 Duke at the Verizon Center provided the Hoyas' national coming-out party, Georgetown's triumph over 9 Pittsburgh signaled the Hoyas weren't leaving the party any time soon. It took just one more season for the Hoyas to reach the summit of the Big East--and they did it thanks to two victories over Pittsburgh. In a February showdown at the Verizon Center which ultimately decided the Big East regular season title, the Hoyas overcame an eight-point deficit and Levance Fields' chest-bumping and held Pitt to shooting over the final twelve minutes of the game for a victory.
Not bad for less than a decade of work. But Pittsburgh--whether you like them or not--is unquestionably the team of the moment these days in the Big East, and Georgetown-Pittsburgh over the past two years the marquee matchup in the conference.
Georgetown holds the last two regular season conference championships, but perhaps more relevant for tomorrow's game is that Pitt defeated the Hoyas in last year's Big East Tournament Championship game. For me, there's something even further about Pittsburgh that adds to the significance of tomorrow's game. In my years as a Georgetown supporter, I can point to two experiences that I consider formative points in fandom.
Six years apart, they both involved the Pittsburgh Panthers, and they both taught me something unique about being a Hoyas fan.
January 20, The Speedbump. When anticipating the most significant basketball game since you arrived at Georgetown, the waiting is the most difficult part. I was awake for what felt like forever on Inauguration Day. Woke up at am on a few hours sleep to walk two miles to the National Mall and stand through a cold, damp morning for the Inauguration to which my hometown had the highly dubious honor of contributing.
My mind was as far away as possible from Butterfly Ballots; after all, the real story in Washington DC for me that day was the Hoyas, who had extended their season opening winning streak to sixteen games and broken into the Top Crowd control and traffic planning have been the bread and butter of Washington Post A1 headlines since November. Clearly we lived in a different era in one in which it seemed a capital idea to hold a Big East basketball game in downtown Washington DC on the night of Inauguration.
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