2009-10 Season Post-Mortem: The Basics

For the third straight year, the ending sucked.

I'm not sure this really means anything; last year the definition of "ending" was a lot longer than this year or 2007-08, where the "ending" was pretty much 2-3 games.

It's a good thing for me that I'm not a fan of defining success by the results of a single-elimination tournament. It's fun for excitement, but it isn't a good method of evaluation, whether it be the highs of a BE tournament Georgetown could/should have won or the lows of getting blown out by the Hoyas' poor play and the hot shooting of Ohio.

Like last year, this will likely be a meandering series of posts hitting some of the key spots of the year. I'll start at the top and see where it leads me...

Final* Kenpom Stats

Overall Rank:  13th

Adj. Offensive Efficiency Rank:   9th
Adj. Defensive Efficiency Rank:  47th

*There's a few games to play, so these may change slightly but not materially


How good were the Hoyas this year?

Most of the data says somewhere between the 12th-20th best team in the country.

After a year in which the team didn't make the tournament, Pomeroy puts Georgetown at 13th, the NCAA Selection Committee in the 9-12 range, Sagarin at 18th, RPI rank is 12th and the polls would likely have the Hoyas in the 15-20 range.

I don't think there's a particularly strong argument that focuses on body of work that puts the Hoyas outside the Top 25.

Are people unhappy with this? I'm definitely unhappy about the way the season ended, but this is a consistently Top 20 program at this point.

Season      Pomeroy     Sagarin     AP     RPI    NCAA seed
2003-04       110         113        -     133        -
                        ----Thompson hired----
2004-05        42          54        -      70       NIT 
2005-06        14          10       23      36        7
2006-07         5           6        8       9        2
2007-08         7          10        8       8        2
2008-09        27          45        -      57       NIT
2009-10        13          18       14      12        3

Based on body of work, who can complain about this?

I bring this up only because it sets the tone for this post-mortem. It was a frustrating season because of the inconsistency, and because of the perceived brilliance of many of our players.

But it wasn't a bad season.


Offense and Defense

My big pet peeve, as I'm sure our regular reader knows, is the attribution of wins and losses to only one side of the ball. The offense tends to get credit or blame, regardless of the actual reality of the game.

So, just to set the record straight for the season: the offense got very, very good by the end of the season, and the defense fell apart, relatively.

I've posted this before, but early in the season, the big wins were defensive-driven: Temple, Butler, Washington, UConn. The loss to Old Dominion was mostly the fault of a sub-par offense.

But that shifted as the year went on, and after the Connecticut game, the worst Offensive Efficiency the Hoyas had in a win was a 112 (South Florida and Providence) while all of Georgetown's big wins were driven by offense: 120 at Pitt; 121 vs. Duke; 120 vs. Villanova; 114 at Louisville; 123 versus Cuse; 126 versus Marquette.

The losses were not as sparkling, but the team still posted good offensive efforts at Rutgers, vs. Notre Dame, versus WVU in the BE title game and versus Ohio in the NCAA.

This team was simply a better offensive team. Post-Connecticut, the team didn't win any grind-it-out games. It could play good defense for part of a game, but there's no win in the second half of the season won on the defensive side of the ball.

As the off-season progresses, I'm going to dive into the offense, the defense and individual players.