Thou Shalt Attack The Rim

The Georgetown Hoyas lost to the DePaul Blue Demons on Friday, 73-68. DePaul took a 6-5 lead less than 3 minutes into the game and never conceded it, despite a frantic Hoyas comeback attempt that came as close as 65-63 with just over 2 minutes left. DePaul's first conference win in its last 40 tries brings them up to 10-9 (1-7 in the Big East) and drops the Hoyas to 12-6 (3-4 in Big East).

While there are some excuses to be found, this was undeniably a setback for Coach Cooley and the Hoyas. Both Jayden Epps and Thomas Sorber were not available for this game. Epps continues to deal with an ankle injury and Sorber was dealing with the elbow injury he picked up at the end of the St. John's game. Without their two top scoring options, the Hoyas needed someone to step up offensively. Instead, the Hoyas shot a horrible 30% from the field in the first half to put themselves in too deep a hole to escape. Georgetown finished 41.5% from the field, including 6-22 from three, for the game.

There will be games, especially at the college level, where the basket will seem to have a lid on it. There will be games, especially at the college level, where your offensive execution results in exactly the shots you as a team are trying to get, but you as a team are not able to make them. There will be games where you are forced to bring 2 players off of your already short bench to replace your two best offensive starters. The reason we think this game was a setback rather than an excusable outlier is because the response to this kind of game was not at the level of a winning program, and not at the level that we witnessed from both Marquette and St. John's when they faced exactly those kinds of problems against Georgetown in the last 2 weeks.

Frankly, Georgetown was unreasonably stubborn in its gameplan at both ends of the court, given the shooting woes. The Hoyas missed 12 of their first 15 shots. Here is a sampling from the start of the game until a Mack layup got the Hoyas to 7 points:

Caleb Williams missed Jumper.
Micah Peavy missed Layup.
Curtis Williams Jr. missed Three Point Jumper.
Caleb Williams missed Layup.
Curtis Williams Jr. missed Layup.
Malik Mack missed Jumper.
Malik Mack missed Jumper.
Kayvaun Mulready missed Jumper.
Drew Fielder missed Three Point Jumper.
Drew Fielder missed Jumper.
Malik Mack missed Jumper.
Drew Fielder missed Three Point Jumper.

Of these 12 missed shots, only 3 qualify as "layups". Maybe you don't throw away your gameplan 8 minutes into the game and you trust your overall offensive philosophy (despite, again, not having your two best offensive players). Here are the Hoyas missed shots the rest of the first half:

Malik Mack missed Three Point Jumper.
Micah Peavy missed Three Point Jumper.
Curtis Williams Jr. missed Jumper.
Micah Peavy missed Jumper.
Micah Peavy missed Three Point Jumper.
Curtis Williams Jr. missed Three Point Jumper.
Drew Fielder missed Layup.
Micah Peavy missed Layup.

The Hoyas didn't fare much better in the second half on this front, as evidenced by being outshot, at home, by DePaul, by seventeen free throw attempts (8-11 vs 22-28 in a 5 point game). More on the refs in a bit, but the takeaway here is that the Hoyas simply did not attack the rim enough. Micah Peavy in particular did not attack the rim enough. Fielder was not given the ball in opportunities close to the basket. Mack did not attack the rim enough. No one attacked the rim enough. It was such a concerted, coherent, consistent effort to not attack the rim that one has to believe it was a purposeful coaching decision. We only need to look back at the second half St. John's put together against Georgetown to see the effectiveness of attacking the rim, which results in both seeing the ball go through the basket (good) and more open 3 point shots (also good).

Another coaching concern was around the Hoyas defensive effort. The effort was consistently fine throughout the game, with the DePaul lead mostly coming from extremely hot shooting. The pressure was only increased the very end of the game. Once the effort kicked up a notch, the whistle started to become a bit more favorable and DePaul was visibly shaken as the Hoyas cut into the lead, drawing as close as 2. On one hand, it is great to see that the Hoyas have another gear to affect the game on the defensive side of things. On the other hand, Marquette and St. John's had defensive-fueled second half comebacks against the Hoyas in the last 10 days. Both those teams were down double digits at halftime to the Hoyas, and both teams used increased defensive intensity directly out of the halftime break to immediately cut into the Hoyas lead. Once the game became close, both teams had to relent on their defensive pressure, but the goal was accomplished - the game stayed connected and they were both able to eke out close wins. The fact that the Hoyas did not do similar to DePaul is a real missed opportunity, to say the least.

Finally, the Hoyas rotations are just not going to result in a competitive team if they continue as is. Drew McKenna and Kayvaun Mulready played 4 and 5 minutes each, including basically none in the second half. Micah Peavy only came out when he fouled out with seconds remaining in the game. Malick Mack played 38 minutes. If you are not going to play McKenna and Mulready when down 2 key rotation players at home against DePaul, well, what are we doing here? Peavy and Mack are being ground into dust and their ineffectiveness at the end of games is only going to be more pronounced if these rotations remain 6-man instead of growing to proper 8-man rotations.

A few other notes:

• The refereeing was inconsistent and generally not very good. Uncle Dad pointed out many times that we cannot rely on blaming the refs for losing given all the reasons covered in the 1000 previous words, but the refs missed at least 3 traveling calls very late in the game that could have swung the result, and were more willing to call fouls on Georgetown contact than they were on DePaul contact. Georgetown should have continued to force the issue and get that whistle to be a bit more even, but the tilt was undeniable in the first 35 minutes of the game.
• The boys got a really nice upgrade to baseline on the court for this game, including access to the Monumental Sports Lounge. It is a real whiff to not just give this access away to long-time season ticket holders, especially since the alcohol in the lounge is not complimentary (food and non-alcoholic beverages are). The program has such an opportunity by playing in an alum-owned NBA arena with NBA-level amenities. Said alum and the program just on every level do not seem able to take advantage of this opportunity.
• DePaul broke a 39-game BIG EAST losing streak. Credit where due - this DePaul team looks better than any in recent memory, and their effort and poise were both great. There were certainly miscues, including calling a couple horrible timeouts, and the basket felt a little bigger for them in the way it felt a little smaller for us, but being on the same journey as DePaul in trying to get back to the top of the mountain, we have to tip our collective hats to them for breaking that losing streak.

The Hoyas are at Villanova on Monday. Hopefully Jayden and Thomas are both available for a full shift, and it will be interesting to see how the team responds.