2017-18 Big East Men’s Basketball Summer Check-In: Georgetown Hoyas

Team: Georgetown Hoyas

2016-17 Record: 14-18, 5-13 Big East

2016-17 Big East Finish: Ninth; two games behind eighth place, three games ahead of last place.

Final 2016-17 KenPom Ranking: #69

Postseason? Noooooooooooope.

Key Departures: Rodney Pryor (18.0 points, 4.9 rebounds, 1.3 assists); L.J. Peak (16.5 points, 4.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists);

Key Returners: Jessie Govan (10.3 points, 4.9 rebounds, 1.4 assists); Marcus Derrickson (8.3 points, 4.1 rebounds, 1.5 assists)

Key Arrivals: Trey Dickerson (6’1”, 180 lb., graduate transfer from South Dakota, averaged 10.4 points, 2.2 rebounds, 2.8 assists); 247 Sports’ #75 recruiting class, #9 in the Big East; no top 200 recruits.

Coach: Patrick Ewing, in his first season as a head coach of anything ever.

Outlook: Poor!

Let’s see if we’re following this correctly: A bad team is losing their two best only two notable players and replacing them with almost absolutely no one that will provide an immediate impact. On top of that, the bad team fired their coach because they were bad, and replaced him with a man who has never been a head coach of anything and has never worked in college basketball.

Well played, Hoyas. Well played. Have fun finishing last this season.

I’m probably selling Patrick Ewing a little short. He’s been kicking around NBA coaching staffs since 2002 with his last stop coming in Charlotte where he was the associate head coach. In terms of basketball knowledge, Ewing is a completely unassailable choice for Georgetown.

The problem comes up with the fact that he’s never had to recruit players before. We have no idea how good he’ll be at closing the deal, especially with high school players who were born after his glory years with the Knicks came to an end. Parents and grandparents will know who he is, of course, so hopefully that will tide Ewing and the Hoyas over long enough to get some winning underneath them.

There’s a bigger, perhaps more ominous problem with Georgetown hiring Ewing, and that’s the spectre of John Thompson, Jr., aka Big John. His name is still on the 1-year-old Georgetown practice facility, and athletic director Lee Reed followed up firing Big John’s son by hiring Big John’s most famous and most successful player. What happens if Ewing’s bad at this? It took Georgetown four seasons after the Florida Gulf Coast NCAA tournament loss, the last two with under .500 records, to finally show John Thompson III the door. This is probably not a one year turnaround project, so how much patience will the Hoya faithful have with the literal walking, talking representation of the Georgetown glory years?