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.
Let’s hope, at least for John McCain’s sake, that being able to fill out a halfway-decent bracket isn’t a reliable indicator of presidential ability. According to an article from the Canadian Press, McCain has Kansas, Memphis, UNC and Connecticut in the Final Four, with UNC winning it all. For those who haven’t been keeping up with March Madness, the fourth-seeded Huskies were upset yesterday by a tenacious San Diego team, one of the two thirteen seeds to score a big upset yesterday. (Siena also knocked off a four seed in Vanderbilt.) Sorry, John.
Obama also made the safe (and boring, if you ask me) choice of UNC to win it all, with Kansas, UCLA, and Pittsburgh rounding out his Final Four. A fairly balanced slate—three one seeds and a four seed to spice things up. I think Obama’s onto something choosing Pitt, too. If the Fields-Young-Blair trio keeps playing like it has been in the past few games, I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama’s prediction of some Final Four Panther-action turns out to be right.
Lastly, we have Bill Clinton, who sees Georgetown making it to the Final Four but no further. Clinton also chose North Carolina, Memphis and UCLA for the Final Four. “My heart’s with Georgetown,” he said, according to the Canadian Press article, “but my head tells me it’s going to be Carolina or Memphis.” A fair number of Hoya fans seem to share Clinton’s attitude, at least from what I’ve seen. They want Georgetown to win, but don’t believe it’s going to happen.
I’m not going to argue with those fans—Tyler Hansborough is indisputably a beast, Memphis is a squad to be reckoned with, etc.—but I will say this. Watching some of Georgetown’s sub-par performances (Big East final, anyone?), your head might be telling you that the Hoyas can’t go all the way. But if there was a time when you need to abandon the logic of your right brain for the fanhood of your left brain, now would be that time. And if the first round taught us anything (two 12-13 match-ups in the round of 32? really?), it’s that the most obvious choices aren’t always the right ones.
According to a study released on Monday, Georgetown graduates 82% of its basketball players, clocking in at thirteenth among the 65 teams in the NCAA tournament. The report, released by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, was based upon 2000-01 graduation (six-year) statistics released by the NCAA.
The main fact that jumps out of the study is the disparity between African-American and white basketball player graduation rates, an average of 33% among all the teams (22% for Georgetown). The problem isn’t just among basketball players, though. Dr. Richard Lapchick, the primary author of the study, pointed out. “African-American basketball players graduate at a higher rate than African-American males who are not student-athletes,” he said in the study. “Too many of our predominantly white campuses are not welcoming places for students of color, whether or not they are athletes.”
Some other notes:
The Final Four according to graduation rates would be Butler, Notre Dame, Purdue and Western Kentucky.
Among the eight Big East teams in the study, Georgetown ranks fourth after Marquette, Notre Dame and ‘Nova.
American University, our D.C. neighbor playing in its first NCAA tourney, has the second worst graduation rate with an abysmal 18%.
Among all the 1 and 2 seeds, Georgetown has the second highest graduation rate after UNC, which has a graduation rate of 86%. (Unfortunately for UNC, Graduation rates don’t win championships; 2007 Elite Eight, anyone?) Tennessee and Texas, clocking in at 33%, are tied for last place.
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, a weekly newsmagazine at Georgetown University. Opinions expressed in posts are those of their author alone unless otherwise stated.
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