In case you missed it

We participated in a Big East bloggers round table along with a select group of just about every other Big East blogger.

xkcd.com (h/t fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com)

Pico Dulce over at Rumble in the Garden was kind enough to herd us cats into providing answers to five burning questions during the off season:

1.  Which player's loss will be felt the most by the team?
Our answer:  Chris Wright

2.  Which returning player needs to step their game up?
Our answer:  Henry Sims

3.  Which returning/ incoming player will surprise (positively)?
Our answer:  Jabril Trawick

4.  Who are you most excited to see on campus?
Our answer:  Otto Porter

5.  Who is the future of the program, whether on campus, verbally committed, or not-yet-committed?
Our answer:  It's complicated


I'm proud to say that Alan and I provided the most verbose answers, if nothing else.

Now if we'd only provide some actual content here . . .

The ship be sinking

Pittsburgh and Syracuse have chosen to leave the Big East for the ACC, and Connecticut and Villanova (at least) are also pursuing this path. 

The end of the Big East as we've known it the past 30+ years is upon us.  Georgetown finds itself in a precarious and fluid situation right now.

However, this blog is certainly not the place to turn for late-breaking news and collected rumors around the web - we don't have much time in the off-sason for posts (if you haven't noticed), and specialize in grossly overanalyzing statistics, not digesting political/financial events.

Your best sources of Hoya-centric information during the end-of-days would by HoyaSaxa.com, CasualHoya and HoyaTalk.

Good night and good luck.

Hoyas win again, wrapping up China trip

Image courtesy GUHoyas.com

Your Georgetown Hoyas completed their road trip to China with an 83-64 win against the men's national team of Chinese Taipei (aka Taiwan).

As per Google, this generated ~250 hits just within the past 24 hours for the search phrase "Georgetown basketball 'without incident.'"

A cursory comparison of the box score versus the Taiwanese team's roster indicates that the Hoyas did play the national team, not a junior-version or a second string.  The crack staff over at Casual Hoya tells us that Taiwan was ranked 41st in the world by FIBA - for context, Villanova beat the #27 team (Israel) but lost twice to the #35 team (Senegal).


Let's run the numbers:

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE
 
.                Visitor           Home   
.               Georgetown       Chinese Taipei        
 
Pace               66

Score              83                 64

Eff.             126.3               97.4

eFG%              48.1               40.2
TO%               10.7               13.7
OR%               51.2               27.8
FTA/FGA           16.9               87.0
FTM/FGA           11.7               58.7

Assist Rate       58.8               26.7
Block Rate        17.2                0.0
Steal Rate         7.6                1.5

2FG%              50.9               27.6
3FG%              27.3               41.2
FT%               69.2               67.5

Attempts/Poss.
2FG               0.84               0.44
3FG               0.33               0.26
FT                0.20               0.61

Today's game was the slowest paced of the three that were completed on the trip - much more in line with last season's pace than the first two up-and-down affairs.

The biggest factor in today's game was the huge advantage the Hoyas had on the offensive glass - Georgetown gathered more than half of their own missed shots [22/43] while keeping Taiwan from gathering many of their own.

Taiwan also couldn't make many shots inside, thanks largely to the 17% block rate [blocks / 2FGA].  Georgetown finished the trip blocking 17.5% of their opponents' two point attempts, which would be a very high rate for a collegiate season.

The Hoyas shot poorly from behind the arc today [6/22], but also made more than 2/3 of their free throw attempts for the first time on the trip.  Speaking of free throws, the Hoyas were once again at a big disadvantage on free throw attempts [13 to 40].  It's not clear to me if the officials were "biased" once again towards Georgetown's opponent, but the Hoyas ended the trip with a split of 54 to 172 (FT taken to opp FT taken), including the reported 15/57 fiasco in the aborted second game.

And with that, the Hoyas wrap up a most eventful 10-day goodwill tour of China and fly home tomorrow, just a few days ahead of the start of the academic year.

After the jump, full player stats for the three official games.

Hoyas play game in China; no one bum-rushed

Image courtesy of IndiaTimes

Well, that happened on Friday.

I didn't feel the need to get into specifics of the incident, as HoyaTalk had a couple of first-hand accounts posted (link, link), the HoyaSaxa front page did the full Zapruder-treatment on the available video of the melee, and Casual Hoya had the salient media links.

But time moves on, and there was another game to be played today in Shanghai. And the Hoyas rolled easily today, whipping beating defeating the Liaoning Dinosaurs 91-69 in front of a packed house. I guess a little publicity brings them out.

Let's run the numbers:

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE
 
.                 Visitor           Home   
.                 Georgetown        Liaoning        
 
Pace                 75

Score                91              69

Eff.               121.1            91.8

eFG%                59.7            45.7
TO%                 16.0            18.6
OR%                 38.2            18.2
FTA/FGA             15.3            85.1
FTM/FGA              6.9            55.3

Assist Rate         51.3            10.5
Block Rate           9.4             5.6
Steal Rate          17.3             2.7

2FG%                57.4            43.8
3FG%                44.4            33.3
FT%                 45.5            65.0

Attempts/Poss.
2FG                 0.72            0.43
3FG                 0.24            0.20
FT                  0.15            0.53

The box score indicates that this was a 40-minute game (four 10-minute quarters), unlike the first two games which were scheduled for 48 minutes.  So those 91 points the Hoyas put up were actually more impressive than the 98 they scored against the Brave Dragons.

The game was played at a fast pace again with the Hoyas forcing a ton of steals - hard to say if this is a preview for the upcoming season, but it's something worth watching.

Once again there was a big disparity in fouls and free throws [26 fouls / 11 FTs vs. 11 fouls / 40 FTs for the Hoyas and Dinosaurs, respectively], but this report on HoyaTalk indicates that the officiating was much more even-handed than last time out.

Some simple player stats after the jump . . .

Basketball in August?

Image courtesy of Georgetown.edu

Apparently so. 

Georgetown tipped off their extended "cultural exchange" trip to China with a 48(!) minute extravaganza against the Shanxi Zhongyu Brave Dragons at Beijing’s Olympic Sports Center.  And the Hoyas started off their (exhibition) season right with a 98-81 thumping of the Dragons.

This was clearly an international spectacular, drawing such A-listers as Joe Biden, Gary Locke and Paul Tagliabue.

This is usually the point where I write "Let's run the numbers" but those numbers are a bit hard to come by for the game.  A simple box score is all that I can find in the interwebs, so there's not much for the HP Cray II^TM to process tonight (it remains idle but alert in my mom's basement).  And, after all, it was merely an exhibition.

Let's run the numbers:

TEMPO-FREE BOX SCORE
 
.                 Visitor           Home   
.                 Georgetown        Shanxi Zhongyu         
 
Pace               79

Points             98                 81

Eff.             103.1               85.2

eFG%              49.4               47.6
TO%               21.0               23.2
OR%               36.0               25.5
FTA/FGA           16.7               55.6
FTM/FGA           10.0               33.3

Assist Rate       51.2               37.0
Block Rate        23.8                1.4
Steal Rate        13.7                1.1

2FG%              47.9               50.0
3FG%              36.8               28.6
FT%               60.0               60.0

Attempts/Poss.
2FG               0.90               0.53
3FG               0.24               0.27
FT                0.19               0.44

The score of the game would lead one to believe that this was either a defense-optional affair or a ridiculously-paced game, but neither is actually true.  The game went 48 minutes over 4 quarters rather than the standard 20-minute halves, so all the counting stats were naturally inflated.

Georgetown carried over the unusually defensive-minded Kenner League playoffs into this trip, by grabbing a ton of steals and blocking nearly 1/4 of all 2FG attempts during the game.  A strong effort on the defensive glass also helped.

Some simple player stats after the jump . . .