March 9 - Georgetown Lowlights

With Georgetown teetering on the brink of elimination, I began wondering the other day how this collapse would rank on the all-time list of bad moments in Hoya history. After some reflection, I decided it probably makes the top-10 list, but it pales in comparison to some truly historic lows. With that said, I present the ten worst moments in Georgetown Basketball History.

10) The day in 1984 when Golden Glover Perry McDonald realized he was not the next Tommy Hearns and decided to sign with Georgetown. No player in the 1980’s, other then perhaps Michael Graham, did more to further the program’s thuggish image than this Middleweight from New Orleans.
9) The collapse of 2005 culminates in an inexplicable 68-65 loss to lowly Providnce in the MCI Center. Having started the season 8-3 in league play, the Hoya’s end up dropping five in a row and end up playing themselves right out of the NCAA tournament – something they haven’t played in since 2001.
8) Victor Page signs a letter of intent in April of 1995 to play basketball at Georgetown. Victor arguably had the worst shot selection in the history of the conference and his arrival at Georgetown marked the beginning of the dark ages. Page was one of those guys who never saw a shot he didn’t like and as a result he would frequently have 6 for 22 nights. God only knows what Thompson saw in this kid.
7) CBS interrupts a couple of regional games during the second round of the 1986 NCAA Tournament to broadcast the damage that Michigan State guard Scott Skiles was doing to the Hoyas. Georgetown guard Michael Jackson still can’t bring himself to watch the film of his raping that day.
6) The 1987 Regional Final in Louisville where the number one seeded Hoyas had their lunch handed to them by Billy Donovan and a very average bunch of Providnce Friars. The final was 88-73, but it wasn’t that close. This was the final game of Reggie Williams college career and it wasn’t pretty.
5) The hiring of Craig Esherick in 1999. Esherick was a poor choice to be the guy who was going to arrest Georgetown’s slide into the abyss. He proved to be an ineffective recruiter and a challenged game coach.
4) The 1996 loss to Massachusetts in the Regional Final down in Atlanta. While this was not an upset, Georgetown went into that game with super high expectations. The team had Alan Iverson, Jerome Williams and Othella Harrington, but they ended getting slammed by Marcus Camby. This was the last relevant game that Georgetown has played.
3) Reggie Williams speaks after 1984 NCAA Championship game. Williams, a freshman at the time, went on CBS and shocked the nation with some of the worst verbal skills ever broadcast over the airwaves. At that moment, most viewers thought Georgetown had turned itself into a vocational school. This was a stigmatizing moment. It later turned out that the only reason Williams was eligible as a freshman was because he got a “English as a second language” special dispensation.
2) Fred Brown inexplicably throws the ball to UNC’s James Worthy in the closing moments of the 1982 National Championship. There is no saying Georgetown would have hit a winning shot without the turnover, but that was a heartbreaker for Hoya fans.
1) Two minutes into the 1985 NCAA final, Villanova coach Rollie Massimino takes out Dwight Wilbur and replaces him with Harold Jensen. Jensen ends up scoring 14 points on 5-5 shooting and Nova ends up pulling off one of the two or three biggest upsets in NCAA Championship game history.