Welp! That escalated quickly. After a dream 5-0 start (7-0 if you count the preseason exhibitions), the Hoyas’ entire season abruptly, and rudely (I might add), turned. You know the story: First, the team announces Vince is done for six to eight weeks – see you in January. Then, the Hoyas lose what remains the pivotal game of their season, dropping an OT heartbreaker to Dayton. I honestly cannot stress how massive that game was. If they just beat Dayton, the whole outlook of the season looks markedly different. They cap off losing three out of four with a deserved loss to a better UNC team.

Now at 6-3, with conference play around the corner, the Hoyas’ season is in the balance, and the question on everyone’s mind is simple: Is this team actually good?

Was the team we saw up until they made their fateful trip to Orlando the true Hoyas? It simply cannot be stressed enough that you should never go to Florida. Or is this version, with a thick fog of porous defense and an unconvincing offense, what was really hiding just under the surface the entire time?

I DON’T KNOW, OK! I am certainly…concerned, like you. BUT! I am not ready to write off the team we saw and fawned over the first few weeks of this season. I have been looking for any thread to cling to in the numbers or performances to provide a dose of hopium. Surely, you can get on board with the Hoyas top in the nation (!!) Turnover percentage. While, genuinely surprising that the Hoyas boast the lowest turnover rate in all of CBK, that’s not quite enough to predict a return to form. If for no other reason than Georgetown’s combination of 238th-ranked effective field goal percentage and 218th-ranked offensive rebound percentage amounts to a team that does get a lot of shots, but also misses a lot of those and doesn’t get many second chances.

Thankfully, king of the basketball nerds (stand and be counted among us), our own Jake Foote, has come to rescue.

We’ve talked a lot on the podcast about the center rotation and how it has not only forced Julius Halaifonua into an extended role but also impacted the roster as a whole. Well, Jake sums things up for us nicely.

With either Julius or Vince on the floor, Georgetown is a good basketball team. With Juice on the floor at Center, through 349 possessions, Georgetown has been about the 100th-best team in CBK, with a net rating of 10.5. That’s including possessions in the three games they have lost, which you would expect to drag down the metrics. Interestingly, if you isolate the 208 possessions against Georgetown’s five non-buy games – their high(ish) major opponents – Julius-centered lineups have actually performed better, about 65th in the country, boasting an excellent Defensive Rating of 98.7 (anything under 100 is good). That’s really encouraging and precisely opposite of what we expected (and predicted) going into the year. We were prepared for Julius to show out against the minnows and struggle against the whales (??? I don’t know, choose your metaphor). That the numbers indicate the exact opposite matches the eye test. Julius has looked very good against better competition, but not quite enough to clearly establish himself as the Georgetown center.

With Vince on the floor at Center, through 140 possessions, Georgetown has not only been good, but they’ve also been one of the 30 best teams in the country. Admittedly, that is a smaller sample size, but it ends with Georgetown’s best game of the season so far, a win over Clemson. It turns out, the biggest weakness we thought going into the season, Georgetown’s lack of a clear starting center, was actually one of their biggest strengths.

With either Julius or Vince on the floor, Georgetown has been a clear top-64 tournament team.

Anything other than that, for instance, having Jayden Fort play as a small-ball five has been a near disaster. Lineups with Jayden at center have been the 345th in college basketball. Those lineups actually do a bit better against more vigorous opponents, ranking 302nd in CBK. The “Big Hunk of Gouda” minutes with Seal at Center have not gone well.

Now, you may be saying, “Well, that doesn’t give me any hope at all. Vince is out, and our depth bigs are bad.”

That’s half true, but the reality is that when this team is playing as constructed, they are good. That’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation. And beyond that, as bad as Jayden Fort has been at Center, there is reason to believe that it is not a reflection of his upside. To my eye, Fort has looked best when he’s playing as a true PF slasher and being asked to be athletic and go get the ball. The numbers say that’s right! With Fort at the PF spot next to either Vince or Julius, Georgetown has a net rating of 14.8, good for about 76th in the country. That’s pretty good for a depth forward. Even more encouraging in the limited possessions (29) of Vince+Fort, Georgetown has played like the 11th-best team in the country. Those lineups are long, big, athletic and can switch everything. Good luck getting a shot within 12 feet of the basket. Honestly, the only reason those lineups haven’t been better than 11th is that they have given up a lot of offensive rebounds (33%). That’s a feature of Vince and Fort trying to block everything, and something you happily live with.

Where does that leave us? Honestly, I don’t know…

You’d expect there to be some regression in all of Vince’s numbers after sitting out a month or two, but the data matched what we were seeing: Georgetown was good when they had both Julius and Vince available. I am confident that they will be good again when Vince comes back. The question is, can they survive until then? With Vince expected to be back sometime around either the St. John’s game or at DePaul in early January, Georgetown has two NonCon buy games against and two critical conference games against teams that, unfortunately, won’t help your resume with wins, but will absolutely sink your resume if you lose.

Fortunately, both Xavier and Marquette are two of the teams that you’d most like to play without Vince, as Jake mentioned on the podcast. Ironically, that may mean you can actually get away with playing Fort at the center spot against both, more than the numbers indicate. Even so, I wouldn’t mind giving Seal a run against St. Peter’s and Coppin State to keep Fort in a more defined and consistent role. And I continued to be intrigued by what Seal can bring as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency center, which… if not now, when?

And, if you can just survive the next five to six game stretch, and beat Marquette and Xavier, your season is right back on track, with a lot of upside and a blueprint to be a very good basketball team. I won’t get too far ahead of that, but I actually really liked the center rotation before Vince went down, with Julius starting and Vince finishing. And the data shows that pairing Vince + Fort together and Julius + Caleb is extremely challenging for opponents to adapt to.

So, is Georgetown a good basketball team? Yes, I think so, even with, or perhaps particularly with, Jayden Fort and really everyone in their proper roles. Does it matter? Not in the slightest! The Hoyas need to do pretty much whatever it takes to roll out four straight wins.

If we are walking into a New Year’s Eve showdown with St. John’s 10-3, I would feel really good about the way this team is built and can play against, really, anyone.

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