March 23rd, 2013
Old Georgetown motto: Hoya Saxa!
New Georgetown motto: Bibbidy, bobbidy, boo!
Matus is in Vegas, and is in nearly Leaving Las Vegas levels of despondency over Georgetown’s latest NCAA bust. In case you missed it, this year’s Hoya squad became just the sixth #2 seed to lose in the opening round of the tournament. In case you’re keeping score at home, since John Thompson III took Georgetown to the Final Four Georgetown has:
* Lost in the second round
* Lost in the first round
* Lost in the first round
* Lost in the first round
* Lost in the second round
*Lost in the first round
Which isn’t so bad except that in each case Georgetown has drastically underperformed its seed. (Get the motto now? They make Cinderellas.)
But even that isn’t so bad. The big problem for Georgetown, as I’ve mentioned before, is that they violated the management theory version of Robert DeNiro’s Ronin rule: Never walk into a relationship you don’t know how to walk out of.
Georgetown can’t fire Thompson because his father still lives in the area and has too much influence with the school and around town. As long as Old Man Thompson is around, Georgetown is stuck in the JTIII business.
Now, if you want to really revel in the rubbernecking, I suggest this thread. (Funnily enough, it seems that explicitly calling for Thompson to be fired is grounds to banning from the Hoya Saxa forum. It’s basically this:
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So, in other words, the near-cliche (from another context entirely, I grant you) is correct: “Once you go black, you [can] never go back.”
Question for JVL and other college hoops devotees: presuming that UCLA fires Ben Howland, and the Bruins’ first choice to take over, VCU’s Shaka Smart, declines (too much politics, unrealistically outsized expectations from the fan base, etc.), could Georgetown get away with buying out JTIII’s contract if Shaka Smart were the designated replacement? What about Mike Brey?
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Jonathan,
When the Big East got to big for its britches in the 1980s, changing its rules to reflect the NBA rather than the NCAA and with Rollie Massamino committing the cardinal sin of pulling Villanova out of the Big 5, the Big East was cursed for their hubris, and as a consequence hasn’t fared as well in the NCAA compared to peer conferences. When I’m picking teams, I tend to have most of my Big East teams out before the Sweet 16.
Dr. J.
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I can finally put the Jeff Green travel vs. Vanderbilt in 2007 to rest. Georgetown has paid the cosmic price. We’re even.
Besides, Vanderbilt’s a football school now (!!), a member of the rarefied 20/20/20 club: Top 20 final ranking, top 20 recruiting class, top 20 school ranking.
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Matus’s silence is deafening. Poor man.
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They’re cursed: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2013/03/27/33175/
Anonymous Mike March 25, 2013 at 8:20 am
The DeNiro quote can also be applied to the Redskins/Shanahan/Snyder situation
After a decade of wrecking the franchise, culminating in the Zorn Saga and the sad site of a franchise once with a long waiting list for season tickets ripping seats out of FedEx Field, Snyder needed the credibility that Shanhan would bring. The price wasn’t only a $35 million contract but also the hiring of his Kyle Shanahan as the OC.
The problem was that when the offense stunk for the first 2 years, you couldn’t fire the son without also cutting ties the father. Sure the offense rebounded this past year but all that success and potential is built on a QB with two major knee injuries and a tendency to juice the offense by running the ball down field
Shanahan and the OC nepotism can be directly laid at the feet of Synder’s prior decade of misrule. You can attribute the JT III hiring to a program desperate to regain credibility after the Escherick years.
Btw… I fully expect John Thompson, Sr. to solidify his son’s position by doing another midnight banner hanging at the gym.