The third leg of the GUANTLET proved similar to the first few — the Friars played pretty well in the first half, but struggled offensively only to fade late in the second.  Thankfully for some lucky fans, they did not have to witness the momentum changing Georgetown 14-1 run, or the inability to score late, thanks to the fan with the sign below.

Despite only being down as little as three in the final several minutes, Providence could not execute offensively, and continually let the Hoyas score on easy inside baskets.  The Hoyas were clearly the bigger and better team, and the Friars obviously still have some work to do in being able to execute in games down the stretch. The losing obviously sucks, but hopefully the team can look at how they were able to compete with these very good teams for 20 minutes, and start getting closer to 40 minutes of good basketball.

Read the rest of the recap after the jump!

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Why Georgetown Won: Midway through the second half, Georgetown really put the stranglehold on with their defense.  However, like ESPN announcer Len Elmore put it, “Providence was really cooperative in being strangled”, putting up countless ill-advised shots, many contested long threes, and missing a crap load of foul shots.  Georgetown didn’t play particularly well, and just couldn’t quite put the Friars away for good.  However, they really didn’t have to with the Friars shooting a dreadful 34.3% from the field (including 7-27, 25.9% from behind the arc).  Throw in the fact that the team can’t get stops when they need to, and there you have a nice tasty recipe for a 2nd half fade.  On the bright side, Bilal Dixon had a redonkulous night on the glass, getting a career high 16 rebounds (8 offensive).  Even though PC rebounded more than half of their own misses, it was not enough to overcome their third worst shooting night of the season.  Seriously though, have you ever seen more airballed threes in one game?   Greedy even BANKED one in.  Kill me now.

Turning point: There were just so many bad shots and poor decisions by Providence as the Hoyas took control of the game with a 14-1 run halfway through the second half, so it’s kinda hard to pinpoint where exactly things went wrong.  Despite playing like a$$ for a good portion of that second half, it was pretty amazing the Friars were only down 6-8 in the final few minutes.  However, trading baskets when you tail by 8 points is not going to win many games.  Georgetown was able to score quite easily and hit their freebies, and the Friars were toast.

Player of the Game: Chris Wright.  Not only did he have a team high 21 points, but I thought he was phenomenal on top of the perimeter of the zone defense.

Goat of the Game: I hate to say this, and it’s probably because he was ill, but Vincent Council probably had his worst game of the year.  He was 0-4 from the field and couldn’t get anything going.  Marshon Brooks was a close runner up — He did have 18 points, but several of his baskets came late in the game as the Friars traded buckets with the Hoyas.  Brooks just forced too many shots again, and just can’t finish when he gets to the hoop.  I hope he figures out what the eff is going wrong.  Last year he faded down the stretch in BIG EAST play, and this year doesn’t look much different.

I will now weep myself to sleep.

The folks over at the Georgetown blog “Casual Hoya” reached out for a Q and A session about the Friars Tuesday night matchup with the Hoyas.

You can read my answers to his questions over on his site.

Friarblog.com: You guys could be developing a trend of amazing wins followed with games you have no business losing (although ask me how I feel about USF after losing a 9 point lead with 46 seconds to go).  Do you foresee any letdown after a great game against Nova?

CH: The loss to USF was not surprising since everyone knew it was a trap game, nestled in between games against Syracuse, Duke, and Villanova.  The Providence game is different, however, since I highly doubt Georgetown will be looking beyond the Friars to the highly anticipated matchup against Rutgers on Valentine’s Day.  And yes, I always know what day Valentine’s Day is on my calendar because my wife constantly reminds me.

Friarblog.com: Providence struggles on defense against teams that shoot, move the ball well, and um dribble — Pretty much teams that play the sport of basketball.  What part of the Hoya’s offense can lead the team to victory (other than Greg Monroe making our undersized with a lack of depth front court his biatch of course)?

CH: Before the Nova game, the only players other than Monroe that could lead the team to victory were Austin Freeman and Chris Wright.  Freeman willed Georgetown to victory against UConn by scoring 28 of his 33 points in the second half as they overcame a 19 point deficit.  He has scored 20+ points in Georgetown’s last four games, which includes matchups against Syracuse, Duke and Nova.  Wright has been key to Georgetown’s success as Georgetown was 15-0 when Wright scores in double digits, and 1-5 when he did not.  That changed after the Nova game when Wright went 2 for 6 from the field and scored only 7 points, but the Hoyas still won.  The reason for the win was a new comer to the mix, Jason Clark.  Clark went 6-7 from beyond the arc to score a career high 24 points.  So in sum, there are a lot of offensive weapons on the Georgetown squad - but if they all go cold, it is going to be a very long night for the Hoyas.

Read the rest after the jump!

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H/T goes to Matt Price on Facebook for this one.

What does the term “hoya” really mean?  Many different things, according to Wikipedia.  The page has one of those disambiguation links at the top so you can see the term’s “other uses”.  However, that’s not important.  The following is what the great citizens of the internet thought was the most important meaning of the word “Hoya” — and since I read it on Wikipedia, it has to be true.  Oh the truthiness!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoya

Hoya is a genus of 200-300 species of tropical climbing plants in the family Apocynaceae (Dogbane), native to southern Asia (India east to southern China and southward), Australia, and Polynesia. Common names for this genus are waxplant, waxvine, waxflower or simply hoya. This genus was named by botanist Robert Brown, in honour of his friend, botanist Thomas Hoy.

So what you’re saying is that we should call them the Georgetown Flowers?  How dainty.

They are sweetly scented and produce abundant nectar

Man alive! There are…too…many…jokes. There’s about 87 Patrick Ewing jokes alone in there somewhere.  I’ll leave those for the comments :)