According to multiple reports, Georgetown forward Otto Porter Jr. will announce his intention to leave school early and enter his name for the 2013 NBA Draft this afternoon at McDonough Gymnasium.

“I mean it was hard,” Porter said in his opening statement. “It was a tough decision. I love Georgetown.  I love my coaches.  I love my teammates.  I would like to come back and finish my degree [at some point].”

With head coach John Thompson III by his side, the sophomore is expected to announce what many draft experts have been speculating for some time now, as the versatile forward is projected to fall in the top-10 of the draft. If he decides to sign with an agent, he automatically forgoes his final two years of collegiate eligibility. CBS Sports’s Jeff Goodman was the first to report his decision.

“I think he is ready as much mentally, emotionally, as it relates to basketball,” Thompson said. “I thought he went about the process in an educated manner.  He didn’t make a rushed decision one way or the other.  He had two good choices.  It is a process.  He is prepared.”

Porter’s stock escalated rapidly this past season, since he started off as a probable lottery pick and is now firmly entrenched near the top five selections this June.  He raised his play over the course of the year and has been deemed an ideal NBA small forward for his versatility.

“A lot of people come into this, young players, with the attitude that they will leave as soon as possible,” Thompson said. “They walk in the door thinking about walking out the door.  That has never been the case with him.”

“What has been consistent with him and what he will take with him to the NBA, and once those days are over, is his caring, his work ethic, his commitment to what he is a part of,” Thompson said. “He is completely committed to this institution, to our program, to our team.”

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On Thursday, sophomore forward Otto Porter Jr. continued to rack up post-season awards as he was named a First Team All-American by The National Association of Basketball Coaches. The last Hoya to be named to the First All-American was Allen Iverson during 1995-1996 season.

Michigan’s Trey Burke, Creighton’s Doug McDermott, Indiana’s Victor Oladipo, and Gonzaga’s Kelly Olynyk round out the First Team All-America Team.

Porter is also a finalist for the Naismith Trophy and Wooden Award.  You can vote for him for the Naismith Award here.

He has also been awarded the Big East Player of the Year and was the only unanimous selection to the All-Big East First Team.

Porter emerged as one of the most versatile players in college basketball this year. The sophomore forward led Georgetown in scoring (16.2 points per game), rebounding (7.5 rebounds per game), and steals (1.8 steal per game). He was second on the team in blocks and steals as well. Porter was even better in Big East play posting 18.1 points per game and 7.3 rebounds per game.

He was amazingly consistent, scoring in double figures in every game he played in but three. The versatile forward scored over 20 points in 8 games.  Porter also recorded seven double-doubles.

On February 23, he had his most memorable game of the year in the last Big East game against Syracuse in the Carrier Dome.   He totaled a career-high of 33 points to go along with 8 rebounds and 5 steals. It remains unknown if Porter will declare for the NBA Draft. In every mock draft, he is projected to be taken early in first round and is likely to be a top-five pick.

Photo: Abigail Greene/Georgetown Voice

Davidson, Baylor (NIT), Ohio, Virginia Commonwealth, North Carolina State, and now, Florida Gulf Coast. The list is damning, an indisputable condemnation of John Thompson III’s postseason failures since that astounding run to the 2007 Final Four.

Just one week after taking home Big East Coach of the Year honors for leading his young Hoyas to a share of the Big East regular season title, Thompson’s team crumbled when it mattered most, as they were summarily undressed by No. 15 Florida Gulf Coast 78-68.

All of a sudden, Georgetown’s stalwart leader was a shell-shocked version of himself. “More than anyone on this earth I’ve tried to analyze it, think about it, look at it, think about what we should do differently, and I don’t know,” he said of the recent postseason failure.

Thompson won the award for instilling a sense of toughness unparalleled in the Big East this year. The old school Hoya defense of his father’s day was on full display this season. Until Friday.

A team composed mainly of sophomores and freshmen, with just two juniors and no seniors, played beyond their years. A great deal of the time, we forgot there was a supposed youth void on this team. Until Friday.

A national player of the year candidate in sophomore Otto Porter Jr. looked close to unstoppable and the pieces around him looked to be perfect complements to his all-around game. Until Friday.

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A No. 2 seed, while a significant honor, does not mean all that much for these Georgetown Hoyas. Their unceremonious exits to double-digit seeds over the past three seasons have made sure of that.

But rather than discouraging the Hoyas, the past results have lit a fire under them, indicating just how difficult it is to get past that first weekend.

“We on a mission,” sophomore guard Jabril Trawick said. “We definitely thought we should have won the Big East but now we trying to make a deep run in the tournament, starting with Florida Gulf Coast. We got to handle business.”

Needless to say, they will not be taking this evening’s opponent—Florida Gulf Coast—lightly, despite their limited résumé. The Fort Myers school is entering just its second year of postseason eligibility and won the Atlantic Sun conference to qualify for the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history.

They’re so small that their media contingent for the tournament featured just one beat reporter on Thursday: Naples Daily News’s Adam Fisher. “This is a huge deal for this school that didn’t exist 17 years ago,” Fisher told Vox.

The majority of Georgetown’s attention will be on senior forward Sherwood Brown, this season’s Atlantic Sun Player of the Year. In some respects, he is similar to Otto Porter Jr. with his do-everything style. But Brown, of course, is nowhere near the talent level of Georgetown’s Wooden Award candidate.

According to Fisher, the Eagles are balanced, with a number of players leading a balanced scoring attack. They do most of their damage in transition, as head coach Andy Enfield (married to a supermodel) throws a number of defensive sets at opponents to force steals.

“They don’t have a traditional big man in the middle,” Fisher said. “But they like to shoot the three and they love to run.”

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Memories of last year’s Big East Quarterfinal started to creep into the heads of Hoya fans early in the second half.  Georgetown (25-5, 14-4 Big East) trailed Cincinnati (22-11, 9-9 Big East) 33-31 at the start of the half after losing a 16-point lead. Head Coach John Thompson III even admitted he was nervous.

“Yes, [when you lose that lead] you’re worried,” Thompson said. “On the first four possessions of the second half we looked extremely flat.

The Hoyas didn’t panic, though.  They clamped down defensively and advanced to the semi-finals of the Big East Tournament with a 62-43 victory over Cincinnati.  The semi-finals will be a rematch with arch-rival Syracuse.

“For the most part, this group doesn’t get rattled,” Thompson said. “They went to a match-up which threw us off.  It didn’t take too many possessions for us to get settled into what we were trying to do.”

Sophomore forward Otto Porter Jr. led all scorers with 18 points and went 11-of-11 from the free throw line.  The Wooden Award candidate also recorded 6 rebounds and 2 assists.  Junior guard Markel Starks shot 6-of-10 from the field and finished with 14 points, 3 assists, and 2 steals.

Georgetown’s bench was crucial once again for the victory.  Freshman guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera added 13 points, 4 rebounds, and 2 assists.

“Otto is getting a lot of attention and he should,” Thompson said. “But we have a very good team.  During the same stretch, Otto played well, Markel, and Nate played very well.”

After struggling with his shot for much of the year, Smith-Rivera seems to have found his stroke.  He knocked down 5 of his 11 shots in the game.

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Georgetown Head Coach John Thompson III was named Big East Coach of the Year yesterday afternoon. Otto Porter Jr., his sophomore star, was named the Big East Player of the Year in a unanimous vote by league coaches.

The vote comes in Thompson’s most impressive job on the Hilltop since his arrival from Princeton University nine years ago. Thompson overcame the losses of his three top scorers from a season ago in Jason Clark, Henry Sims, and Hollis Thompson. His team also recovered from the academic suspension of second-leading scorer Greg Whittington in early January.

After a torrid start to the season that saw the Hoyas defeat national powerhouses like UCLA and take then No. 1 Indiana to overtime, Thompson’s group struggled through the beginning of the Big East slate, dropping their first two with the wheels falling completely off in a 28-point drubbing to Pittsburgh.

After a couple of more blips in the schedule, though, the Hoyas reeled off 11-straight wins and rose from an unranked afterthought to No. 5 in the nation. On Saturday, Georgetown clinched the No. 1 seed in this week’s Big East Tournament, as well as a share of the regular season title with a thorough 61-39 victory over Syracuse.

Porter has been the catalyst for much of Thompson’s success, taking on a bigger offensive role after Whittington’s untimely exodus. He led the Hoyas in points (16.4), rebounds (7.5), and steals (2.0) per game while gaining traction for national player of the year honors later in the season.

The sophomore do-everything forward’s season culminated with three Big East Player of the Week honors. He was also the only unanimous selection to the All-Big East First Team. Porter has posted 25 games this season with double figures in scoring, with 8 of those games at 20 points or higher.

Porter pulled away from other possible contenders for the Big East Player of the Year honor when he willed the Hoyas to a victory against Syracuse in front of a record-breaking crowd of over 35,000 by scoring a career-high 33 points. This performance also greatly contributed to his selection as one of 25 finalists for the Wooden Award. He would be the first Georgetown player to win the award and only the third Big East player to do so.

Porter along with the rest of Thompson’s squad will be back on the court at Madison Square Garden tomorrow at noon to take on the winner of Cincinnati and Providence, who play at noon today, in the Hoyas’ first game of the Big East Championship.

Photo: Miles Gavin Meng/Georgetown Voice

A 6-foot-10 imposing figure, John Thompson Jr. does not blend into crowds all that easily. But during his son’s reign over Georgetown’s basketball program, the legendary Thompson has done just that, disappearing in the back-right corner of the press room.

Except on this day, there was a little too much emotion seeping out of Thompson. For the man who essentially started the Georgetown-Syracuse rivalry by declaring the Orange’s former home, Manley Field House, closed in 1980, this final iteration of the team’s Big East rivalry meant a little too much.

And so after his son’s Hoyas dominated the Orange for 40 minutes—with a 61-39 final—he had to interject at the postgame press conference.

“Kiss Syracuse goodbye,” he said with a smile.

“Oh, excuse me,” he added after the laughter died down.

In the storied history of the rivalry, no team had held Jim Boeheim’s Orange to fewer than 40 points. That is, until John Thompson III took a page out of his father’s book and rode his vaunted Georgetown defense to a historic performance—holding Syracuse to just 39 points two weeks after holding them to 46 in a victory at the Carrier Dome.

On that day, Hoya sophomore Otto Porter Jr. burst on the national scene and dominated the Orange with a 33-point performance in front of 35,012 orange-clad fans.

The Verizon Center crowd did their best to counter that effort on Saturday, filing in to the tune of 20,972 people—good for the largest turnout for an indoor sporting event in DC metro area history.

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Well, Georgetown finally had to come down from wonderland. The No. 5 Hoyas (23-5, 13-4 Big East), who hadn’t lost since January 19th in the disaster at South Florida, fell to the giant-killing Villanova Wildcats (19-12, 10-8 Big East) in a scarily exposing performance.  The game got the Wildcats off the tournament bubble, greatly solidifying their tournament resume. The Hoyas, on the other hand, fell off the line for a 1 seed, and will have a lot of work to do in order to make their way back. Pertaining to the more immediate future, the Hoyas went from controlling the Big East outright, to, in all likelihood, having to win on Saturday just to finish with a share of the Big East title.

In the 67-57 loss, the Hoyas committed 23 turnovers and only got to the free throw line 8 times while Villanova got to the stripe a whopping 42 times. With the officials blowing the whistle so often, junior center Moses Ayegba, junior guard Markel Starks, and sophomore guard Jabril Trawick all fouled out of the game, while junior forward Nate Lubick, who played all 40 minutes, had 4 fouls. With these factors going so strongly against the Hoyas, Villanova did not need to shut down sophomore forward Otto Porter Jr., who scored 17 points.

Head Coach John Thompson III said, “We’re playing for a championship. That’s something just as important. We were desperate coming into this game, also.”

For the Wildcats, Darrun Hilliard scored 14 points and Ryan Arcidiacono scored 11 while JayVaughn Pinkston had 20. At least half of each player’s points were scored at the free throw line.

This loss made the Hoyas look weak for the first time in almost two months, but will serve as a wake-up call for the team, who now have no more margin for error. Each of the upcoming games between now and the NCAA tournament will be critical in affecting both seeding and momentum for the Hoyas, who, after looking like the best team in the country, suddenly look lost. The Blue and Gray will face Syracuse on Saturday in their final Big East regular season grudge match with not only bragging rights, but also the Big East title on the line. Whether this loss was an isolated event or a turning point for the season is yet to be seen.

File Photo: Andres Rengifo/Georgetown Voice (Mar. 2, 2013, vs. Rutgers)

After an unbelievable escape at UConn and a close first half against Rutgers last week, the Hoyas (23-4, 13-3 Big East) have risen to the consensus No. 5 spot in the country. Despite their active 11-game winning streak, however, the Hoyas go into Villanova (18-12, 9-8 Big East) tonight as a 1-point underdog. This game, more than any in the season, epitomizes the phrase “trap game.”

With aspirations of winning the Big East title outright, this game may be overlooked, even though the Wildcats have been giant-killers this year, defeating Syracuse, Louisville, and Marquette.

Sophomore forward Otto Porter Jr. has been launched into the national spotlight since his jaw-dropping performance at Syracuse and has not faded since, scoring 22 points, including the game winning layup, at UConn and 28 points against Rutgers. Porter is now the clear favorite for Big East Player of the Year and is in the discussion along with Indiana’s Victor Oladipo and Michigan’s Trey Burke for National Player of the Year.

With this spotlight, Porter is clearly being guarded more closely by opponents, which has led to more foul calls; Porter shot 18 free throws against Rutgers. Freshman guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera and junior guard Markel Starks have been the other major offensive producers for the Hoyas, averaging 8.6 and 12.2 points per game, respectively. Since his big defensive performance at the Carrier Dome, junior center Moses Ayegba has been able to keep producing, scoring 4 points and pulling down 7 boards against Rutgers.

For the Wildcats, the key players will be leading scorers, freshman guard Ryan Arcidiacono, who is averaging 12.2 points per game and sophomore forward JayVaughn Pinkston, who is averaging 12.7 points per game. Arcidiacono has had the hot hand recently, averaging 17.8 points over the current five game stretch.

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The No. 7 Georgetown men’s basketball team (23-4, 13-3 Big East) took on Rutgers (13-14, 4-12 Big East) at home Saturday night, bringing in their eleventh win in a row. The first half revealed a close contest as Rutgers did not let the Hoyas pull away with a significant lead, but foul trouble in the second half for the Scarlet Knights would be their undoing. After only leading by 1 point coming into the second half, 16 made free throw attempts would allow the Hoyas to secure a final score of 64-51 over Rutgers.

The stand out performance belonged to none other than sophomore forward Otto Porter Jr., who posted 28 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 steals for the Hoyas. No other Georgetown player would break the double-figure mark in scoring but both junior guard Markel Starks and freshman guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera brought in 9 apiece while junior center Moses Ayegba pulled down 7 rebounds. Ayegba was a strong presence down low in the second half as he helped Georgetown out-rebound Rutgers 35 to 27 in the game.

“Well, I know who I’m voting for for BIG EAST Player of the Year,” said Rutgers Head Coach Mike Rice of Porter in his opening statement.

This matchup was physical throughout as it ended with a total of 51 combined personal fouls for the two teams. Porter alone was sent to the line to take 18 attempts, of which he made 15 and gave Georgetown an offensive boost that was reflected in the final score. With the Rutgers defenders prone to fouling, Porter noticeably took the ball inside more frequently instead of relying on long jumpers.

“That’s the way tonight played out. They were very physical. There were a lot of fouls made during that game at both ends. In the second half, both of us were in the 1-and-1 with 15 minutes left. It’s one of those games that puts pressure on the officials, because when there’s a foul called every possession down the court, then they start looking at the scoreboard,” said Head Coach John Thompson III.

The Hoyas effectively emulated their signature stingy defense as Rutgers struggled mightily to get the ball inside for the better part of the game. Their 54 field goal attempts were a direct effect of tough defense from Georgetown. The Hoyas managed to keep the Scarlet Knights out on the perimeter for the most part while not committing an exorbitant number of fouls. Rutgers only took 15 free throws and, luckily for the Hoyas, only made 6 of those.

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