Week 11 Thoughts

 

Some thoughts following Bucknell's 24-21 win over Georgetown on Saturday.

1. Short and To The Point: Georgetown, its coaches, and its players can do better. A season's worth of platitudes about learning from mistakes and being ready to play went out the window in the fourth quarter of that game. Absent serious injury, you don't give up an 11 point lead with ten minutes in the fourth quarter to a one win team.

Especially if you're a two win team.

There are some serious and growing questions about this team heading into 2023. The soft bigotry of low expectations makes a winning season out of the realm of possibility, but is Georgetown as an institution no better than one win a year south of Poughkeepsie, NY? 

The less said for now, the better, but this team has lost seven consecutive games settled by three points or less dating to the 2016 season. That won't be a problem this week, I'm afraid.

2. GSR, FGR, and WTH: Another NCAA statistic was published today, the 2022 Graduation Success Rate; which, in true NCAA double-speak, isn't about graduation and isn't even about 2022.

As defined in a  PL release, "the graduation rates are the most recent recorded graduating class that started school in 2015," which means not the class of 2022, but the graduating class of 2019. Did it take three years to compile that data?

Also, according to the release, The Division I Board of Directors created the GSR in response to Division I college and university presidents who wanted data that more accurately reflected the mobility of college students than the federal graduation rate. The federal rate counts any student who leaves a school as an academic failure, whether they enroll at another school. The GSR formula removes from the rate student-athletes who leave school while academically eligible and includes student-athletes who transfer to a school after initially enrolling elsewhere." This allows Georgetown men's basketball to claim a 100% on the GSR while its federal rate hovers at 50 percent, and the actual graduation rates are even less. 

For those still following this, here are the PL football rates:

When it comes to GSR, it's "first in war, first in peace, first in the Patriot League." 

3. Around the PL: Last week's games brought little interest with the title race previously concluded.

Lehigh 36, Colgate 33: A surprise of sorts, given that Lehigh hasn't scored more than 28 points all season and Colgate gave up its most to any PL team this season, even Holy Cross. Lehigh travels to Lafayette for the season ender while Colgate seeks to avoid its worst finish since 1995 at Fordham.

Holy Cross 36, Bryant 29: Another surprise of sorts, given how close this game was; then again, the Northeast Conference is better than the PL thinks they are. Don't expect a repeat of this defensive performance against Georgetown on Saturday.

Fordham 45, Lafayette 10: Not a surprise. Tim DeMorat finished 32-of-45 passes for 482 yards and four touchdowns as the Rams continue to make their case for an at-large bid. Were it any other conference, they'd be in, but because it's the PL, it's probably 60-40 in their favor.

The league standings entering week 12. Barring something unusual, Georgetown is guaranteed a last place finish.

1. Holy Cross (10-0, 5-0 PL)

2. Fordham (8-2, 4-1)

3. Lafayette (3-7, 2-3)

4. Lehigh (3-7, 2-3)

5. Colgate (3-7, 2-3)

6. Bucknell (2-8, 2-4)

7. Georgetown (2-8, 1-4)

Week 10 Thoughts

Some thoughts following St. Francis' 38-24 win over Georgetown Saturday:

1. 36.7. That's the points per game allowed by Georgetown this season, most since 2007. You're not going to win games giving up that many points in a game, which is what happened Saturday. Despite an early 14-0 lead, the Hoyas could not manage its defensive sets, the offense turned the ball over on consecutive drives to open the second half (where the Hoyas are being outscored for the season 106-51), and the defense is allowing over 50 percent of third downs and an ungainly 64 percent of fourth downs to continue  drives. On the contrary, Georgetown was 1 of 6 Saturday.

By the first week of November, this cake is baked. The defense is not getting any better. It may hold its own versus Bucknell but will be battered and beaten by Holy Cross for as long as they want to before bringing in the reserves. For a program which used to shine on defense, the lack of experience in 2022 was a major factor, and perhaps, maybe, enough return in 2023 to reestablish the defense as more credible. This season has been a grind in every sense of the word. 

2. 118. That's Georgetown's ranking among 123 schools in rushing, a now common occurrence on annual statistics.  Georgetown has rushed for fewer yards as a team (762)  than Holy Cross quarterback Matthew Sluka (769). Some of this is due to a pass-first offense, but a lot of it is due to Georgetown's deficiencies in recruiting impact players in the Patriot League. Undersized backs with undersized lines are not a formula for  offensive consistency, and while Pierce Holley has done great work at quarterback, it obscures how thin the rushing game could be for Georgetown in 2023 without some significant recruiting or transfer support. 

Of the bottom six teams in rushing, Georgetown is the only one of the six with more than one win this season. The bottom five (Presbyterian, Western Illinois, VMI, Wagner, and Robert Morris) are a combined 3-43.

3. Joshua Tomas. This has not been an era for great stars at Georgetown, but let's recognize and salute the efforts of Joshua Tomas entering the final two games of his college career. 

As noted from the GUHoyas.com game recap: " Tomas had a stellar afternoon, making seven catches for a personal-best 180 yards and two touchdowns. His 180 receiving yards are the most in a game since Cameron Crayton put up 190 on Columbia in 2021. The GU wide receiver set the single-season record for receptions with 79, surpassing Chris Murphy's mark of 74.  The Illinois native also set the all-time Hoya record for most career receptions in Blue & Gray with 207, smashing the previous mark held by Murphy as well (205)."

(I'm not sure 207 "smashes" 205, but you get the point.)

" I've been saying it all season, Joshua Tomas is the best receiver in the league and maybe at [the FCS]  level," said head coach Rob Sgarlata. "It was great to see his body of work credited with the records that he broke today."

Tomas enters the Bucknell game 25 yards ahead of Fordham's Fotis Kokosioulis for the national lead in receiving yards. Two more strong games offers Tomas a legitimate bid for All-America honors, with the last Georgetown receiver to do so being Chris Murphy in 1991.

4. Around The PL:

Holy Cross 42, Lehigh 14: The Crusaders are ascendant. the Engineers are not. This week: Holy Cross seeks its 10th straight versus Bryant (3-6) at Fitton Field, while Lehigh hosts Colgate.

Lafayette 21, Colgate 16: An important win for the Leopards as the John Troxell era takes hold at College Hill. Lafayette led 21-10 at the half and held the Red raiders to three punts in four second half drives. This week: While Colgate travels to Lehigh, Lafayette travels to Fordham. 

Week 9 Thoughts

Some thoughts following Georgetown's 30-20 win over Lafayette:

1. Having Their Number: Perhaps it's just preparation. Perhaps it's more likely for two teams who have not had a winning season between themselves in over a decade to be closely matched. Either way, Georgetown's win Saturday was a welcome if brief  respite against the relentlessly uphill climb which the University seems unwilling to fix. 

As noted here recently, the win-loss numbers against Patriot League teams are grim. In the last 10 years, however, a pattern is evident between Georgetown and Lafayette, (and to some extent, Bucknell), and everyone else. Since 2012, here are Georgetown's win-loss records by PL opponent:

Bucknell: 4-5

Colgate: 0-10

Fordham 1-9

Holy Cross: 2-7

Lafayette: 5-5

Lehigh: 1-9

Put another way, with a win over Bucknell in two weeks, GU would be an even 10-10 against either Lafayette or Bucknell, and a combined 4-35 versus everyone else.

What was (or is) Georgetown's secret against Lafayette? In these 10 games, three patterns follow:

1. Close, low scoring games: The "Rule of 22" is a knockout punch to Georgetown teams when the opponent can score 22 or more points, but it's a number rarely seen in the series. Georgetown's 30 points were the most scored by any team since 2015.  The Leopards have scored more than 24 points against the Hoyas just once since 2010, as compared to five such scores before 2010. 

2. Defensive control: Unlike games against Fordham or Colgate where the Hoyas cannot control the line of scrimmage, these two teams are very comparable across the lines, which helps to keep both teams in contention.

3. Key plays: Rob Sgarlata calls them "criticals" , those four or five plays that can change a game. Saturday, Georgetown connected on four of them:

1. 1st Quarter: Lafayette tries a fake punt after gaining five yards on a Georgetown offsides: Georgetown holds the Leopards and scores its first touchdown on the succeeding drive. 

2. 2nd Quarter: Score one for the Leopards for the sack and fumble recovery that led to the Leopards'  late second quarter score and a reversal of momentum entering the second half.

3. 3rd Quarter: Georgetown picks up the big turnover when Wedner Cadet gets ahead of Ah-Shaun Davis' flanker pass. This ends the Leopards' run that closed to 17-14 and sets up a Georgetown touchdown.

4. 4th quarter: Defensive Lapse: The Hoyas had been waiting to work the Lafayette secondary and it come with a flash with Jimmy Kibble's 46 yard touchdown pass, extending the lead.

5. Defensive Stop. A late two point conversion attempt would have closed the Georgetown lead to eight, but the Hoyas held and Lafayette never mounted a comeback.

2. Attendance Check. Announced attendance at Saturday's game was 3,473. This image from the broadcast begs to differ.

3. Around the PL: No one will long remember Georgetown-Lafayette, but they will remember Fordham-Holy Cross.

Holy Cross 53, Fordham 52: The game was for the nominative league championship and it delivered, with the Crusaders falling behind but tying the score in regulation on a strange official's call where a personal foul penalty was called to have taken place after  the touchdown had been caught. Fordham fans can be forgiven if that didn't reek of a homer call.

In the overtime, Tim, DeMorat needed one play to give the Rams the lead, then answered by the Crusaders. HC coach Bob Chesney opted to go for two, then pulled a reverse out of his playbook for the win--shades of Boise State taking out Oklahoma with the Statue of Liberty play from years gone by. Here's the winning play:

Chesney's star is ascendant. The Crusaders fans should enjoy it  before he gets a call from a larger program.  Holy Cross plays Lehigh this weekend, Fordham gets Bucknell. Both should be big wins for the league leaders.

Colgate 13, Bucknell 7:  For all the fireworks in Worcester, the Red Raiders got past a sleepy Bucknell outfit before just 1,164 in Lewisburg. The Bison now average less than ten points a game heading into a game with the high-powered Fordham offense, while Colgate continues its upward trajectory hosting Lafayette.