The good news for the Georgetown men’s basketball team is that the 2022-23 campaign can’t be any worse than last season. Right?
The Hoyas went 6-25 last season, failed to win a Big East contest and ended the year on a 21-game losing streak. It was one of the worst men’s basketball seasons — if not the worst — in Georgetown history.
But with nine new players, coach Patrick Ewing and the Hoyas hope to bounce back from the treacherous 2021-22 campaign, starting Tuesday with their season opener against Coppin State.
“I don’t think you ever flush it. It’s always there,” Ewing said Monday about the disappointment of last season. “I have to take ownership of it, just like the guys who are coming back. It is what it is. We did not perform the way we needed to [win]. The great thing about now is that it’s a new year. We’re starting out fresh.”
Last season was a surprise for a Hoyas program that seemed to have turned a corner. The team went on a late-season run in 2020-21, winning the Big East tournament and making the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2015. It was Ewing’s first NCAA Tournament berth — something that fans thought could be the start of returning the program to its once-prominent stature.
Georgetown started last season at 6-4, including an impressive win over Syracuse. But then the team had a two-week hiatus in late December/early January due to COVID-19. The Hoyas didn’t win again once they returned to the floor.
Ewing said it’s important to start this year strong to not allow the miserable end to last season bleed into this one.
“It’s all about getting the taste of winning again and just keep on building on that,” he said.
Rumors spread that Ewing would be fired after the season ended. But after the team lost its 18th straight game, athletic director Lee Reed released a statement of support for Ewing, the former New York Knicks superstar. Through five years, Ewing has a 68-84 record and a dismal 26-63 mark in regular-season Big East contests.
“In this ever-evolving landscape of college athletics we are committed to Coach Ewing, and we are working with him to evaluate every aspect of the men’s basketball program and to make the necessary changes for him to put us back on the path to success for next year,” Reed said in his statement.
Those changes, so far, have mostly come through the transfer portal.
Ewing brought in seven new faces from other programs to turn around his team’s misfortunes. The top incoming transfer is Brandon Murray, who left LSU despite a solid freshman season after the Tigers fired coach Will Wade. Murray, a 6-foot-5 guard from Germantown, Maryland, was considered one of the top players in the transfer portal after scoring 10 points per game and starting as a freshman for a squad that made the NCAA tournament.
“I’m expecting (Murray) to have a great year for us this year,” Ewing said. “He can score, he can facilitate, he can play defense. I think he’s an all-around player. As the stakes get bigger, that’s when he’s going to shine the brightest.”
“I’m just thankful that coach has enough trust in me just to say words like that,” Murray said Monday. “For him to put all that trust in me…I think that makes things a lot easier. I feel as though coach is just putting me in a good position and all the work is going to show.”
The other top transfer, meanwhile, is a familiar face. Qudus Wahab, who transferred out of Georgetown following the 2020-21 season, is back with the Hoyas after a shaky one-year stint with Maryland. Wahab, a 6-foot-11 center, averaged just 7.7 points and 5.6 rebounds per game last season with the Terrapins — less than the 12.7 points and 8.2 boards he put up the year before with the Hoyas.
The other incoming transfers are: Akok Akok (UConn), Bryson Mozone (USC Upstate), Jay Heath (Arizona State), Primo Spears (Duquesne) and Wayne Bristol (Howard). The top returner for the Hoyas is junior guard Dante Harris, who scored 11.9 points per game last season.
However, as the transfer portal giveth, it also taketh. Ewing lost starters Donald Carey (13.5 points per game) and Collin Holloway (9.2) to other programs. Carey is now with Maryland, while Holloway is with Tulane. The Hoyas will also be without Aminu Mohammed (13.7), who is now playing in the NBA’s G League, and Kaiden Rice (11.0), who graduated.
The Hoyas were picked to finish second to last, ahead of only DePaul, in the Big East’s preseason coaches poll for the second straight season. Georgetown’s season begins at Capital One Arena at 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday against Coppin State. Its first contest against a Power Five school is Nov. 15 versus Northwestern, while the Hoyas’ first ranked contest is at preseason No. 25 Texas Tech on Nov. 30.
• Jacob Calvin Meyer can be reached at jmeyer@washingtontimes.com.
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