The Georgetown Hoyas were named a two seed, as the 68-team NCAA tournament field was announced yesterday. Though fans in Charlottesville, College Park, and Lexington may be irate with the decisions of the tournament committee, everything looks just fine here on the Hilltop. Georgetown is firmly on the two-line, seeded seventh overall with their first matchup on Friday against upstart Florida Gulf Coast.
Big East compatriot Louisville, riding their ten-game winning streak, grabbed the top overall seed, playing in the Midwest region. The other one seeds were Indiana, Kansas, and Gonzaga. The Hoyas are in the South region, Kansas’s section of the draw, along with three and four-seeds Florida and Michigan. This region has its share of quality matchups, the most notable being a pair of first round meetings between powerhouse programs. In an eight-nine matchup, North Carolina plays Villanova for a shot at either Kansas or Western Kentucky. UCLA plays Minnesota, who comes into the tournament underseeded on the eleven-line.
Head Coach John Thompson III said, “I don’t go into it worrying about what we’re going to be seeded, it’s the opposition.”
The Hoyas first opponent, FGCU, is no pushover. FGCU is dangerous for a fifteen seed, having beaten ACC Champion Miami earlier this year. Lurking in the Hoyas half of the region is the third-seeded Florida Gators, the favorite in Vegas to advance to the Final Four from the South. If both teams advance to the sweet sixteen, this would provide a rematch of the season-opener on the USS Bataan, which was cancelled at halftime due to condensation while Florida held a 4-point lead.
Earlier today, the Georgetown Hoyas website released the schedule for the men’s basketball team’s upcoming 2011-2012 season.
Included in the schedule is yet another trip across the ocean, only this time to a different place with likely fewer vice-presidential visits and hopefully less violent results. This trip is for the 2011 Maui Invitational, hosted in scenic Lahaiana, Hawaii, by Chaminade University of Honolulu. The tournament begins on Monday, November 21, with Georgetown going up against Kansas, who made it to the Elite Eight in the 2011 NCAA Championship.
Outside of this tropical trip, the regular season is slated with 16 home games, including the first two of the season, the first on November 12 against Savannah State and the second two days later against UNC Greensboro.
And after those two, the season is stacked with a few good match-ups at the Verizon Center, including one against 2011 NCAA champion Connecticut on February 1, and one against Big East rival Villanova on February 25.
Unfortunately, a lot of the other excitingpairings that we’ve enjoyed at the Verizon Center in seasons past aren’t happening in the 2011-2012 season. After rumors of the Hoyas no longer playing Duke during the season, this year features no match-ups between the Hoyas and the Blue Devils. And unless you want to hop a bus all the way to upstate New York, you won’t be able to watch our boys try once again to juice the orange, because the only Syracuse matching is on their home turf on February 8.
“We’ve done the easy things,” Colby Howard, vice president of Georgetown University Student Veterans of America, said. “The harder steps are next. The harder steps are institutionalizing the veterans’ presence on campus, and that’s going to require the school to step up.”
The honor comes after the women’s soccer team’s historic upset against the University of Maryland in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, where Trujillo scored a tie-breaking goal in the 51st minute of the game.
Trujillo, who was previously named to the All-Big East second team, has already set Georgetown’s single-season record with 13 goals this year. She has also tied the program’s single-season scoring record with 28 points. Last Friday, her two goals against Siena helped carry the Hoyas to their first-ever NCAA Tournament win.
The Lady Hoyas (14-6-2), who advanced to the Sweet 16 for the first time in program history, play their next game on Saturday afternoon at the University of Minnesota.
For this year’s March Madness, Vox has assembled the most eclectic group of tournament brackets Georgetown’s ever seen. Famous and “famous” Hoyas alike opted to fill out a bracket for our pool—and while characters like President John DeGioia, Provost Jim O’Donnell, and Professor Madeleine Albright declined to participate, don’t follow basketball very closely, and didn’t respond, respectively, we’re pumped to share the responses we did get.
Our pool pits alums like First Lady of South Carolina Jenny Sanford (MSB ’84), comedian Mike Birbiglia (COL ’00), and Washington City Paper’s Mike DeBonis (COL ’04), against professor Sen. Chuck Hagel, Dean of the College Chester Gillis, and Director of Student Programs Erika Cohen-Derr.
Students Nick Troiano (COL ’11) of GUSA, Corp CEO Brad Glasser (COL ’11), and ANC Commissioner Aaron Golds (COL ’11) are playing, as are CAG President Jennifer Altemus (COL ’88), Casual Hoya, and nodak89 (Chris Tiongson (COL ’89)), of musicalfame.
There’s no prize for winning—just bragging rights. The entries are below, and you can click each image to make it bigger.
Jenny Sanford
Sanford has Kentucky winning it all. In her bracket, Georgetown loses to Ohio State in the Sweet Sixteen.
Chuck Hagel
Hagel has Kansas beating Georgetown in the Elite Eight. But there’s no shame in being beaten by the best, right?
Mike Birbiglia
Birbiglia’s true blue. He’s got Georgetown going all the way, beating Kentucky in the championship game.
The Georgetown Hoyas are scheduled to play Ohio tomorrow night at 7:25 sharp for their inaugural NCAA Tournament game. They’re ready to go. The Bobcats are going down. What’s left for you to do, besides order more Wingo’s than you can possibly fit in your stomach and hunker down in front of a television?
Rinse out your shot glasses. Because the Voice staff has thought up a Hoya-centric drinking game for this year’s March Madness tournament. Here are the rules:
Take a drink …
Whenever an announcer mentions Jason Clark’s phenomenal wingspan or preternatural jumping ability
When a Georgetown play earns a slow-mo replay—twice if one of Monroe’s does
Every time Greg Monroe pops his mouthguard in and out of his mouth
Anytime an announcer references the correlation between the team’s success and Chris Wright scoring in double digits
If an announcer complains about what a shitty job the committee did seeding the tournament.
Every year the National Collegiate Athletics Association compiles data about graduation rates for student athletes. In this year’s data, which looks at students who started college in 2002, Georgetown student-athletes had a graduation rate of 86 percent—well above the Division I average of 63 percent.
The graduation rate for student athletes at Georgetown is slightly lower than the overall graduation rate, 94 percent.
The report also gives graduation rates for specific sports. Several teams had 100 percent graduation rates, including Men’s Golf and Women’s Crew, Field Hockey, Golf, Swimming and Tennis. Other teams with graduation rates above 85 percent were Men’s Baseball and Lacrosse and Women’s Lacrosse, Soccer and Volleyball.
The team with the lowest graduation rate was Men’s Basketball, which had a graduation rate of 60 percent. The graduation rate for Georgetown’s Basketball team is still higher than the Division I average for the sport of 48 percent.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association has put Georgetown on a three-year probation due to major rules violations related to work-study payments to 26 baseball players between 2000 and 2007. The NCAA is also vacating all records of games from that period that implicated players participated in.
According to a letter from University President John DeGioia, the Department of Athletics paid an excess $61,522 in work-study compensation. DeGioia writes that this is Georgetown’s first major NCAA rules infraction, and it was self-reported.
The NCAA released a press release today explaining the punishments for the violation:
Public reprimand and censure.
Three years of probation (September 2, 2009, to September 1, 2012).
Limit of five equivalency scholarships for baseball for 2007-08 and 2008-09 academic years (self-imposed by the university). The committee extended this restriction to the 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12 academic years. If the institution has already obligated more than five equivalencies in baseball for the 2009-10 academic year, it may delay the initiation of this limit to 2010-11, in which case this penalty will end with the 2012-13 academic year.
Financial penalty of $61,000.
Vacation of all wins in which any of the involved 26 baseball student-athletes competed while ineligible during the 2000-01 through 2006-07 baseball seasons.
Expect more information in tomorrow’s edition of the Voice.
The Cinderella ad featuring JT III may have been tempting fate, but at least it doesn’t make me feel a little uncomfortable. That’s more than this Sheraton ad, specifically the Georgetown/Syracuse section (0:23-0:29), can say. I can’t imagine what the Sheraton executives were thinking when the approved this. Putting aside the bizarre nature of having someone you just met wipe away dressing from the side of your mouth, the Georgetown fan’s whole face was covered with dressing, so it’s not like there was any real purpose to the ‘Cuse fan’s tender action. Vaguely homoerotic, 100% disturbing, this ad never fails to give me the creeps when it comes on during timeouts in the NCAA tourney. Georgetown needs to do a better job of controlling how its image is used, specifically when it comes to ads like this one.
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, Georgetown University's weekly newsmagazine. Opinions expressed in posts are those of their author alone unless otherwise stated.
The Georgetown Hoyas were named a two seed, as the 68-team NCAA tournament field was announced yesterday. Though fans in Charlottesville, College Park, and Lexington may be irate with the decisions of the tournament committee, everything looks just fine here on the Hilltop. Georgetown is firmly on the two-line, seeded seventh overall with their first matchup on Friday against upstart Florida Gulf Coast.
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