Big East 2024 Offseason

[DFW HOYA]

Georgetown is a bad bad team.

Bigger problems than that.

[Uncle Rico]

Georgetown is a bad bad team.

Huge win for Villanova. 

[MuggsyB]

Bigger problems than that.

You have a good recruiting class. 

[DFW HOYA]

You have a good recruiting class.

Structural problems, ones that Cooley did not expect. Bad for Georgetown and indirectly bad for the conference.

[Scoop Snoop]

Structural problems, ones that Cooley did not expect. Bad for Georgetown and indirectly bad for the conference.

Please explain "structural problems".

[MuggsyB]

Structural problems, ones that Cooley did not expect. Bad for Georgetown and indirectly bad for the conference.

Are you writing about the basketball program or University?

[Herman Cain]

Excellent win for Nova.

[DFW HOYA]

Are you writing about the basketball program or University?

Basketball program.

[El Guerrero 2]

I don’t see how Cooley can blame the administration for this team. He had a clean slate, plenty of NIL, and whoever he wanted to hire as staff.

I’m honestly hoping he hits with this next recruiting class. The Big East needs GTown to at least not be an embarrassment.

[DFW HOYA]

I don’t see how Cooley can blame the administration for this team. He had a clean slate, plenty of NIL, and whoever he wanted to hire as staff.

I’m honestly hoping he hits with this next recruiting class. The Big East needs GTown to at least not be an embarrassment.

Cooley is not blaming anyone--credit to him for steering clear of this. The NIL talk is a little premature (lots of "sources" from bloggers and not much else), but there's more institutional rot than he probably envisioned: the fan base is visibly shrinking (down by half in the past decade), local support isn't there including DC recruits; student interest, even less so. The Washington Post no longer covers games. Its last sellout was 11 years ago.

In its first 110 years of basketball, Georgetown had just one 20-loss season. With its next loss, Georgetown will have its third consecutive 20-loss season. It cannot continue to spend like a Top 25 program with the revenue base it does not have without reaching a point where such spending is unsustainable.

[Galway Eagle]

Cooley is not blaming anyone--credit to him for steering clear of this. The NIL talk is a little premature (lots of "sources" from bloggers and not much else), but there's more institutional rot than he probably envisioned: the fan base is visibly shrinking (down by half in the past decade), local support isn't there including DC recruits; student interest, even less so. The Washington Post no longer covers games. Its last sellout was 11 years ago.

In its first 110 years of basketball, Georgetown had just one 20-loss season. With its next loss, Georgetown will have its third consecutive 20-loss season. It cannot continue to spend like a Top 25 program with the revenue base it does not have without reaching a point where such spending is unsustainable.

If you had to go back in time would you still fire JT3?

[BallBoy]

Cooley is not blaming anyone--credit to him for steering clear of this. The NIL talk is a little premature (lots of "sources" from bloggers and not much else), but there's more institutional rot than he probably envisioned: the fan base is visibly shrinking (down by half in the past decade), local support isn't there including DC recruits; student interest, even less so. The Washington Post no longer covers games. Its last sellout was 11 years ago.

In its first 110 years of basketball, Georgetown had just one 20-loss season. With its next loss, Georgetown will have its third consecutive 20-loss season. It cannot continue to spend like a Top 25 program with the revenue base it does not have without reaching a point where such spending is unsustainable.

Oh, and by the way, it may not have a home arena in four more years, but that's another topic.

11years ago they were a perennial Top 25 team and finished regularly in the top quarter of the best basketball conference in the country. They had some bad beats in the NCAA tourney including FGCU.


They fired GTIII and have sucked since. The sellout has more to do with the fact it has been nearly a decade since they were good. Not that GTIII’s last seasons were any good but they followed him up with a horrible coach. They had a remarkable run in the BET but that didn’t change anything when they followed it up with a blowout loss. During Ewing’s tenure he had very high recruiting classes which significantly underperformed.

If Cooley can turn it around, get some momentum, and recruit a good player or two they will sellout again.  Local players and coaches will open up to the school. Whether he has it is another thing. They need someone like Crean when he took over for MU. 

[MU82]

My wife and I went to the MU at GU game in January 2020. It wasn't sold out, but there were more than 12K fans. It was a close game that went back and forth, and the atmosphere was really good.

GU had McClung, Yurtseven, Pickett and a couple other decent players. They were 12-6 going into the game, with wins over ranked Creighton and Texas teams, and a narrow defeat to then-#1 Duke. A good (not great) MU team had to work to win 84-80.

That was kind of the beginning of the end for Georgetown. Starting with that loss, they went 3-11 the rest of the season, and except for the fluke BET run the following year they've sucked ever since.

[1SE]

SJU-Butler likely an elimination game for the loser (barring BET title). Will be interesting to see Slick Rick's reaction if they lose.

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

If you had to go back in time would you still fire JT3?

I'm not DFW, but I think the problem wasn't firing JT3. It was staying loyal to the Thompson coaching family long after they should have. The Ewing hire was a horrendous mistake.

[StillAWarrior]

I'm not DFW, but I think the problem wasn't firing JT3. It was staying loyal to the Thompson coaching family long after they should have. The Ewing hire was a horrendous mistake.

It really was. Ewing was very knowledgeable...a perfect fit for an NBA assistant where he could just share his knowledge and teach elite players. He was not a good fit to run a college program and everything that comes with that. And they stuck with him way, way too long after it became apparent that it wasn't working -- and he didn't even seem to be overly interested in trying to pretend that he wanted it to work. For the last couple seasons, Ewing really did seem like a coach who just had a "I guess I'll keep collecting these checks as long as they keep paying me" attitude. Which eventually turned into a "I honestly can't believe they're still paying me" attitude.

[IL Warrior]

Incredibly dumb hypothetical:
If Georgetown were to somehow win the Big East Tournament, what seed do you think they would get in the NCAA tournament?

Even dumber hypothetical:
If DePaul were to somehow follow up an 0-20 Big East season with a Big East Tournament, what seed do you think they would get in the NCAA tournament?

For reference, Georgetown finished the 2020-21 regular season 9-12 (7-9 BE) and got a 12-seed.

[Jay Bee]

I don’t see how Cooley can blame the administration for this team. He had a clean slate, plenty of NIL, and whoever he wanted to hire as staff.

Source & specifics?

[MUbiz]

Source & specifics?

It was my understanding that Gtown did not have very good NIL this year - but it would be top third of conference next year. Same goes for St. John's. So am I too curious as well.

[MUbiz]

Next year $4M - $5M per a student reporter: https://twitter.com/JohnKurkjian_/status/1760726625384321092

[Uncle Rico]

It was my understanding that Gtown did not have very good NIL this year - but it would be top third of conference next year. Same goes for St. John's. So am I too curious as well.

sChOoLs CaNt UsE NIl tooooo ReCrUiT

[Dr. Blackheart]

sChOoLs CaNt UsE NIl tooooo ReCrUiT

They can in Tennessee!

[SaveOD238]

Next year $4M - $5M per a student reporter: https://twitter.com/JohnKurkjian_/status/1760726625384321092

What's Marquette's budget?

[DFW HOYA]

Next year $4M - $5M per a student reporter: https://twitter.com/JohnKurkjian_/status/1760726625384321092

He's not a reporter. He runs a blog. No serious numbers have come from any local journalist.

[StillAWarrior]

Next year $4M - $5M per a student reporter: https://twitter.com/JohnKurkjian_/status/1760726625384321092

I think that reports like this illustrate one of the questions about how NIL will work in the long-term. Will donors be willing to continue feeding the NIL beast year after year after year? Thank goodness that someone stepped up for the one-time payment to buy out Wojo. But in order to be competitive on the NIL front, that kind of money will need to keep coming in. And, even if the report of $4M is accurate, what will it take the next year? The year after that? If they've managed to find donor(s) who are willing to fund that, will they be willing to continue contributing in future years to keep things moving? If so, will they change their mind if the team is 4-16 in conference the following year?

It's been a at least a couple of decades since I shared with my father my opinion that professional athlete salaries could not continue to increase. At the time he told me that he agreed...but that he'd already felt that way for a couple of decades yet they'd continued going up.

It is in that context that I say that I just don't believe the current NIL model is sustainable and that after the newness of the concept wears off people won't keep contributing the money to feed the beast year after year. I'm fully prepared for that prediction to be as inaccurate as my decades-old prediction on professional sports.