Georgetown hoops no longer a hot ticket

WASHINGTON — After popping up on F Street from the Gallery Place Metro stop, I walked past the man selling Georgetown ski caps for $10 and directly into the Capital One Arena box office. I pulled out my D.C. driver’s license, handed it to the nice woman behind the glass, and when she returned it to me, her hand also held four tickets: Siena at Georgetown, Section 118, Row W, Seats 17, 18, 19 and 20.

I only needed one. But what a deal.

It’s tough right now to be a Georgetown player, administrator, fan or student. The men’s basketball program once transformed the private, Jesuit school with just more than 3,500 undergraduate students into a national power and a national brand. Four decades later, the man at the centerpiece of that rise — because he was the dominant center on John Thompson’s teams — oversees that program from the sidelines.

The Georgetown Hoyas are Patrick Ewing’s to coach and develop, and the Georgetown Hoyas who Patrick Ewing coaches and develops aren’t remotely related to the teams on which Ewing played. Not in results. Not in reputation. Not in experience. Try to find a ticket to a Georgetown game in the mid-1980s out at the old Capital Centre in Prince George’s County. Now — on a Wednesday night in December — they’re giving them away.

“You talk about what the buzz is,” said Aidan Curran, a 2018 Georgetown alum who helped found the blog Hilltop Hoops, which covers the program. “I would argue there is no buzz — whether it’s positive or negative. The relationship between the men’s basketball program and both the student body and the alumni base is broken.

“There’s a lot of angry feelings amongst alumni and students and fans. I don’t think a lot of people care to follow this team. That desire kind of left a while ago.”

There’s so much evidence of that. The latest data point: On the night the Hoyas gave away tickets to an arena that seats 20,356 people for basketball, 3,526 folks showed up. I settled into Row W, Seat 19 — and stretched out. No one joined me.

This is sad, and nothing short of it. When the pep band launched into Ozzy

Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” the director’s cry of “Ay! Ay! Ay!” rang through the empty building. When the public address announcer introduced the Siena starters, the fans in the student section turned their back on the court and chanted, “Let’s go, Hoyas!” — a mock disrespect that is tradition. There were 19 of them.

“It’s finals,” said Elliot Landolt, a sophomore from Chicago who’s on the board of Hoya Blue, a student spirit organization that sells T-shirts on the concourse before games and encourages student attendance - regardless of the results. “Me trying to encourage people to go to a game, it’s hard. But we’re here to support the team no matter what. We’re students supporting students, and to us, that’s what matters . . . .

“It’s always about positivity. We’re trying to create the best culture we can. It takes buy-in.”

That there’s so little to buy-in on is hardly the students’ fault. The realities about the program are stark: In Ewing’s first five seasons trying to resurrect his alma mater, he posted a winning record once. During that time, the Hoyas went 26-63 in regular season Big East games — including an unimaginable 0-19 a year ago. They entered Wednesday night’s game at 4-5. The victories: Coppin State (in overtime), Wisconsin Green Bay, Maryland Baltimore County and La Salle. Among the losses: Loyola Marymount and American.

Thompson’s old teams stocked the nonconference schedule with sure wins. Ewing’s program knows no sure wins. By almost any measure, the Hoyas are one of the worst teams in the six most prominent basketball conferences. In the NCAA’s NET rankings — which factor heavily in selection for the NCAA tournament — they rank 229th, just behind Jacksonville State and Mercer, barely ahead of Texas State and Wagner. In analyst Ken Pomeroy’s widely respected rankings at Kenpom.com, they rank 154th, just behind Hawaii and Florida Gulf Coast and just ahead of Vermont and Longwood.

That’s not the company Georgetown once kept, nor is it the company Georgetown should keep. And so, on a given night at Capital One Arena — a bus ride from campus, far too big for a school with a small student body and an alumni base scattered around the world — the Hoyas keep very little company. At halftime, Warren Holmes waited with his 10-year-old son, also named Warren, to get a picture with the Hoyas mascot. The Holmeses have had season tickets for years, and the elder Warren grew up rooting for the Hoyas back when he went to high school at Georgetown Prep. Young Warren came from his CYO basketball practice and sported an Allen Iverson No. 3 Hoyas jersey.

“We love it for the basketball,” the elder Holmes said. “He can see plays, see how it works, get an idea of how to play.”

Do the results matter? “I don’t get into that with any sport,” Holmes said. “That’s how you get emotional.”

What about the crowd size?

“I like it smaller,” young Warren said.

So the truth is, by now, that the people who show up to Georgetown basketball games want to be there. There just aren’t that many of them. Before tip, the student section filled in a bit more. And by the time Primo Spears found Akok Akok on the break for an alley-oop dunk that put the Hoyas up eight in the final minutes of a 75-68 victory, those who came — by paying or for free — stood and cheered.

“At the end of the day, we do the best with what we get, and we’re all going to have fun with it,” said Landolt, the current sophomore. “I don’t come here to be depressed.”

It should, though, be more automatically uplifting. Ewing gave up a career as an NBA assistant to try to resurrect his alma mater — a risk and a task a basketball Hall of Famer didn’t have to take on. It isn’t working out, and arguing otherwise at this point borders on nonsensical. John Thompson III, his predecessor, was fired after going 29-36 overall and 12-24 in the Big East over his final two seasons. Ewing would have to go on quite a run to match those marks.

“Those of us that still follow the team closely, it’s almost like a train wreck you can’t look away from,” said Curran, the young alum who covers the program. “We’ve invested so much time now, you’re just kind of waiting to see when things are going to change.”

The Georgetown for which Ewing coaches has changed completely from the Georgetown for which Ewing played. Someone else must be tasked with making the Hoyas a hot ticket again. Because right now, they can give them away — and not many will take them.