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.
