Week 11 Thoughts

Some very brief thoughts following the worst second half in my 38 years of following Georgetown football:

1. This Was Bad: Bad on so many levels--coaching, strategy, individual effort-- that if there was any modicum of interest in the general Georgetown fan base, there would be some serious brickbats lobbed at the Sgarlata staff for letting this get away. But it's November, basketball season is underway, and it's like the state of Cooper Field--not much to see, so not much to get worked up over.

It's the single biggest collapse in a Georgetown football game dating back to losing a 27 point lead to Davidson in 1999, 28-27,  back when Davidson was a pretty good opponent and Georgetown finished that season 9-2. (Yes, a 10-1 season was that close.) Come December, no one will be talking about this one. Good thing, too. If this had happened in basketball, Patrick Ewing would be getting the JT III treatment.

2. Brad Hurst. There's a special place in Georgetown purgatory for kickers whose plays on the field really let the team down. Years ago, it was reserved for Michael Gillman, who once stood by while a Bucknell returner raced past him along the Georgetown sidelines. From the game recap, Oct. 2, 2004:

"Bucknell opened the second half with an encore for [Dante] Ross, this time an 85 yard return, the first time a PL player has returned not only two kicks for TD in a game, but in a season. As Ross raced down the field, kicker Michael Gillman stood in Ross' way, but, owing to an arm injury suffered in the second quarter, Gillman stood still at the 30 and made no effort to obstruct Ross' run to the end zone. Gillman was replaced by punter Brad Scoffern on remaining kicks."

Hurst's efforts Saturday were awful, but they were altogether preventable, and to this let's not leave blame solely on the kicker. His kicking trajectory was at risk in teh Lehigh game, was noticeably horizontal in the Bucknell game a week ago, and no solution was apparently made to fix it in either case.

This is why you have backups. This is why you don't rely on one person all season. This is why Georgetown lost Saturday.

3. Lessons Learned: The 2018 season was a successful one despite the loss, but speaks to a larger issue: the bar is set incredibly low on expectations for this team. The Hoyas benefited from a weak Patriot League- one that has likely regressed since adding scholarships-- but have to build from this, lest 2018 look like 2011--a hiccup on a string of noncompetitive PL finishes since 2001.

The three lessons:

1. Defenses win championships, as they say, but offenses win games, and Georgetown's offense remains an underperforming group. How do you fix that without scholarships? It;s not clear.

2. There are three phases of football: offense, defense, and special teams. The Hoyas learned that lesson the hard way, but need to start treating recruiting for special teams, particularly, kickers, with some more attention.

3. Better times are ahead. We need more students, alumni, and friends of Georgetown to pay attention to football. Fan support is not a zero sum game.

Were that a few thousand of us could gather in the first week of September in the shadow of the shiny new Cooper Field, glistening in the late summer sky and completed ahead of schedule.

OK, enough dreaming for now. See you next year.

Week 10 Thoughts

Some thoughts following Georgetown's 14-3 win over Bucknell:

Things That Don't Change: This series is unique among the PL games in that defense always seems to predominate. In the last seven games, the average score of this game rarely tops 20 points. Getting up early is essential, and that's exactly what Georgetown did.

Georgetown held Bucknell to 23 yards in the first quarter and the 7-0 lead set the tempo for the entire game. Granted, Bucknell isn't Boise State, but Georgetown's ability to  limit Bucknell on the ground was vital to its success.

Defense saved the Hoyas late in the second and saved it again late in the fourth. Were that Georgetown could recruit some offensive firepower (and the offensive line to match).

Things That Did Change: With the exception of the Brown game, which was a one-off of sorts, Saturday's run output was some of the best of the year and certainly a strong effort in PL play coming off a grim offensive effort versus Colgate.

What was especially encouraging, now and going forward, was youth. A freshman (Moultrie) and a sophomore (Tolliver) accounted for 195 of 199 yards. That's a solid step forward given the state of the offensive line and that Georgetown lost Carl Thomas in week one.

Georgetown isn't going to win any league awards for rushing but these are hopeful signs for the future.

Punting Concerns?  Little things matter. At the start of the season, Brad Hurst's punting was among the best weapons the Georgetown offense had. Averaging 47 yards against Dartmouth, 45 versus Columbia, 44 versus Fordham, and 46 versus Lehigh made a demonstrable difference in field position--not a big difference in the outcome with Dartmouth, but you could see it in PL play.

Against Bucknell, not so much. Hurst's kicks averaged 36 yards and two were nearly blocked.

The difference over the course of a series might be four or five yards, an extra play, maybe 30 to 40 seconds. You can't underestimate what an extra five yards could do to stall or repel a drive, so that's why punting average doesn't get the attention but can be powerful within a game.

 The Mini-Cooper Experience: Saturday was my first and only home game in attendance for the 2018 season. It would be easy, perhaps, to complain about the circumstances, but given the construction (or surprising lack of) it's not surprising that a one-sided stands  setup would not provide much in the way of fan experience.

But it wasn't just the seating, which to no surprise no one seemed to know where to sit or where the Georgetown section was versus the Bucknell partisans. For a game where there was no conflict with men's basketball and the weather was great  for November, there were a lot of missing pieces from the experience:

• No band. While fans got a taste of the enthusiasm of the Eastern High marching band, there's no good excuse that Georgetown's band took a pass on this game, ostensibly to prepare for the game with Central Connecticut. I've long felt the band has taken stapes backward in recent years and hasn't been as productive as it should, but for a school of almost 7,000, the fact that 20 or 25 kids can't make it all the way to Cooper Field on a Saturday afternoon is a point of concern.

• No cheerleaders. Take everything said above for "band" and substitute "cheerleaders".  A program needs cheerleaders as a measure of support. Cheerleading doesn't get a lot of support at Georgetown and its shows on the final product, which despite its best efforts seems to be eight or ten young women standing at the 10 yard line.  Can they do more? Of course.

• No dance team. Georgetown was the only Big East school not to use a dance team during basketball season, and doesn't utilize one in football season.

• No pre-game activity.

• No post game activity.

Finally,

•  No students. Where were they? Or, better said, where are they? By the turnstiles at Capital One Arena, they weren't camped out for that game either.

It harkens back to a quote in a Georgetown Voice article last year. Two generations ago, 99 percent of the turnout was students. In 2018? Maybe a third. Saturday? Even less.

More to talk about in the off-season, I'm sure.