Different Times as Georgetown Preps for Big Game with Denver

Georgetown managed to stay old the last several years, relying on a combination of home-grown talent and shrewdly identified transfer acquisitions to remain atop the Big East.

No one stays old forever, though. And considering just how much year-over-year turnover there is in the Hoyas’ lineup, carrying a 7-3 overall record into Saturday’s meeting with Denver (6-5, 1-1 Big East) qualifies as solid work.

It definitely is different, given that coaching a veteran-laden team is different from the task coach Kevin Warne and his staff have undertaken this year.

“You have to do a little bit more teaching, you have to do a little more filmwork,” Warne said. “A great mantra to live by is assume they know nothing and you have to have that mindset of ‘Hey, you have to teach them everything.’ At times, you catch yourself coaching every pass. I think if they keep growing and they go in an upward trajectory, that becomes a bonus.”

Just take a quick perusal of the Hoyas’ lineup of late. Sophomore Anderson Moore, a second-year starter, is in cage. A graduate student, a sophomore and a freshman on close defense. Two juniors and a freshman in the midfield. A pair of fifth-years and a redshirt freshman who made his college debut four games ago on attack.

That might actually overstate how much experience the Hoyas deploy. Of the three fifth-year players, only Aidan Carroll started a game before last season — and it was exactly one. Fulton Bayman scored seven goals on 26 shots in four years at Notre Dame; he’s got 19 goals (and a team-high 20 assists) on 57 shots for Georgetown.

Some of it is injury-related. The lineup probably looks different if sophomore attackman Jack Schubert and defenseman Will Tominovich are available. Faceoff ace James Ball, a grad student like Tominovich, also hasn’t played this season.

The upside of navigating the first two months with a young-ish lineup is things look much different than they did in January.

“This is the time of year you’re going to win with your seniors, you’re going to win with your upperclassmen and win with that experience,” Warne said. “For us, it’s trying to piecemeal really good plays. We’re built differently than we have been in the past. That’s OK. That happens. That doesn’t mean we’re any less of a program. We just have to find different ways to have success. I like the fact we’re getting better as we’re moving forward here in April.”

It's helped that Carroll, who has filled just about every role on offense in his five seasons with the Hoyas, was ready for even greater attention than he received a year ago, when he had 37 goals and 23 assists and scored overtime game-winners against Notre Dame in the regular season and Providence in the Big East semifinals.

He reprised that role last week at Marquette, scoring the last of his five goals late in the second overtime as the Hoyas earned a 10-9 victory to improve to 2-0 in league play.

“Your best players have to show up when it means the most,” Warne said. “There’s no doubt Aidan is the face of the program and what he’s done and his journey. He really sets the standard for us. I know that’s coach-speak but he gets after guys and says ‘This is what we need to do, let’s go.’ Sometimes, in those crunch-time moments you have to put the team on your back and say ‘I got it, follow me.’ And he’s certainly done that.”

The lineup isn’t the only thing different for Georgetown. The Hoyas earned home games in each of the last three NCAA tournaments, and in at least two of them probably could have lost in the Big East tournament and still qualified for the postseason.

This year, the Hoyas rank 25th in the RPI. That’s the best of anyone in the Big East, which means an at-large berth is almost certainly out of the question. Georgetown-Denver has been the game of the year in the league for the last several seasons; this year, it’s merely part of sorting out who gets to take part in the four-team league tournament next month.

“It's probably a one-bid league and we understand that,” Warne said. “This is the round robin to get to the tournament. The team that goes on a two-game winning streak will get some bonus time.”

Pivotal Saturday in A-10, A-Sun

The last two undefeated teams in league play in both the Atlantic 10 and the Atlantic Sun meet on Saturday, with the winners needing only a split of the final two regular-season games to earn at least a share of the league regular season title.

Richmond (8-3, 2-0 Atlantic 10) welcomes High Point (5-6, 2-0) to Robins Stadium for their 19th all-time meeting. That’s the most games for either program against another school, which isn’t all that surprising considering High Point debuted in 2013 and Richmond had its inaugural season the following year.

In the Atlantic Sun, Utah (3-7, 2-0) welcomes Jacksonville (7-3, 2-0) to Salt Lake City in a rematch of last year’s conference title game. The Utes won that matchup 16-13 to advance to the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive season.

One thing not at stake in either game is home-field advantage in the conference tournament. Both leagues have predetermined hosts; the A-10 will be at Saint Joseph’s, while Jacksonville will be the site of the A-Sun tourney.

Numbers of Note

108 or 110

All-time meetings for Cornell and Syracuse once they play Saturday in Uniondale, N.Y. (Syracuse claims 107 meetings so far, Cornell 109). That makes it the fourth- or fifth-most played series among Division I programs, trailing only Cornell-Hobart (142), Johns Hopkins-Maryland (127), Princeton-Yale (111) and (possibly) Hobart-Syracuse (109).

3

Previous meetings between the Big Red and the Orange to be played outside of Ithaca and Syracuse. Cornell earned a 10-6 victory in Garden City, N.Y., in 1979 and added an 18-15 victory in Piscataway, N.J., in the 1987 NCAA semifinals. Syracuse won the most recent neutral-site game between the schools, a 10-9 overtime triumph in the 2009 NCAA title game in Foxborough, Mass.

15

Ground balls for Cleveland State’s Robbie Stewart while winning 20 of 26 faceoffs in last Saturday’s 13-10 defeat of Mercyhurst, a new program record. Stewart had tied the previous record of 14 ground balls just a week earlier against VMI.

.606

Shooting percentage for Jacksonville freshman Daylin John-Hill, who has 20 goals on 33 shots in nine games. If he maintains that rate, he’ll be the first qualifying Division I player (three shots per game in 75 percent of his team’s games) to do so since Princeton’s Phillip Robertson shot 63.5 percent (33 goals, 52 shots) in 2018.