Georgetown’s struggles continue in loss to Seton Hall, 72-64
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Version 0 of 1. Seton Hall looked a lot like a team poised to end a decade-long NCAA tournament drought Wednesday night. Georgetown, bedeviled once more by inconsistent play, looked like a club headed for an early offseason as its swoon continued with a 72-64 loss at Verizon Center. Isaiah Whitehead scored 22 points and Khadeen Carrington added 18 for the Pirates (18-7, 8-5), who have won five of their last six games to bolster their chances of reaching the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2006 and the first time in Kevin Willard’s six-year coaching tenure. Freshman forward Jessie Govan, starting for the second consecutive game in place of injured senior Bradley Hayes, scored a career-high 27 points for the Hoyas (14-13, 7-7 Big East), who have dropped five of their last six. [Bracketology: Who’s the overall No. 1 seed? How about Kansas?] Georgetown committed 10 first-half turnovers to help Seton Hall secure a lead it would not relinquish in the final 35 minutes. “I’m looking at 13, and I felt like we had 30 turnovers with all the deflections they got,” Georgetown Coach John Thompson III said. “Against a team that’s that good, you can’t have so many empty possessions. It set the tone early and they got some easy baskets.” Even Govan’s stellar night, an impressive display of work both around the basket and on the perimeter, doesn’t change the stark reality facing Georgetown in the season’s closing weeks. As it sinks closer to .500, its chances of re-emerging as a serious postseason contender — especially with games against Xavier, Butler and Villanova still to come — dim by the game. Seton Hall throttled Georgetown in the early stages with its play near and above the rim. Desi Rodriguez’s thunderous alley-oop from Whitehead a little more than seven minutes in offered a distinct contrast to the Hoyas’ offense, which frequently struggled to find decent when it wasn’t turning it over. The Pirates expanded their advantage to 29-18 before Georgetown scored 10 in a row, the last six supplied by sophomore guard L.J. Peak. But Whitehead offered a multifaceted response on Seton Hall’s final three trips of the half. The Pirate sophomore buried a three-pointer the possession after the Hoyas closed with one, and flipped a nifty pass in the paint to Angel Delgado for an easy finish the next time down. After another Georgetown turnover, Whitehead scored in the closing seconds to secure a 36-28 lead at the midpoint. Govan departed with a cut over his left eye in the final minute of the half and reemerged from the locker room after the break with a different jersey. And while he was effective wearing his customary No. 15 (nine points) and even moreso donning a No. 20 without a nameplate (18 points), he didn’t receive much help beyond D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera’s 18 points on 6-for-19 shooting. The Pirates delivered consecutive crushing blows after the second half’s first media stoppage, as Ismael Sanogo deposited a lob off a baseline out-of-bounds play and Whitehead connected on a three-pointer the next time down the floor to make it 51-36. “It gave us a chance to get in a nice rhythm,” Willard said. “Sometimes we’ve been getting up 15, and with five sophomores sometimes they look at the scoreboard and they don’t realize there’s 14 minutes a left. But we did a nice job.” Georgetown trimmed the deficit to six on three occasions down the stretch, but the Pirates answered each time. There were other postseason implications for the Hoyas, whose 4-1 start in Big East play feels like eons ago. The loss dropped them into a tie for fifth with Providence and Butler, a group they are collectively 0-3 against on the year. If the standings holds over the next few weeks, Georgetown would be relegated to playing on the opening day of the conference tournament, a sobering possibility for a team that harbored NCAA hopes not long ago. “We just have to fight,” Thompson said. “We’ve been fighting. The team’s still scrapping. We have to find a way to manufacture wins. The beauty of being in the best conference in the country is you still look up and have two games left against top-10 teams. We still have some good games to be played. As frustrated as we all are, we still can make some noise.” |