LINKS: Will Georgetown Hire an Assistant Coach and Hit the Portal Hard Soon?

Optimistic Hoyas fans believe a staff hire and transfer commitments are imminent.

The NCAA basketball season is over and the BIG EAST, by way of the UConn Huskies, emerged as two-time champions. Your Georgetown Hoyas look to turn the page on a dismal season after a week that included an earthquake, a solar eclipse, and several dozen derogatory April Fools jokes from a severely prejudiced Providence fanbase. With the recruiting “dead period” ending on April 11th, the next question is, when will Ed Cooley make some additions to the staff and roster? Hopefully soon, if you believe some optimistic fans.

Georgetown has been linked to several portal prospects and, reading the tea leaves from X (formerly Twitter) and friends who have been scouring the Discord channel of Trilly Donovan, the Hoyas have a chance to supplement their roster. Judgment will be reserved until more GU-target details emerge, but there hasn’t been a big national rush on the portal and recent coaching changes (Kentucky) can still shake up the transfer “market.” Keep an ear out.

The hope is that a new assistant coach, presumably a highly regarded recruiter and developer like Kenny Johnson, can quickly join the GU staff and indeed leverage local DMV relationships to have the right athletes embrace an opportunity at Georgetown. Top that off with Ed Cooley’s honesty about his plans for the program with a great incoming recruiting class, and last year’s record gets further and further in the rear view mirror. Fortifying the roster with more capable defenders should be the minimum.

But, as one famous fan puts it, “You gotta want to be a Hoya.”

Here are the links:

Answering Georgetown’s Transfer Portal FAQs | THOMPSONSTOWEL

After Michigan transfer Dug McDaniel committed to Kansas State and Penn transfer Tyler Perkins is rumored to be leaning toward Villanova, one name the Hoyas are rumored to be pursuing heavily is Harvard transfer Malik Mack.

On the surface, Mack makes a ton of sense. As the Ivy League Rookie of the Year, Mack posted a 33.3% assist rate (second among all freshmen nationally) along with a solid 35% three-point shot. He’s not undersized at 6’1” and 170lbs, and I believe would be an excellent fit next to Epps, as the two could help the other not have to shoulder the burden of running the entire offense, which both did this year at their respective schools.

Georgetown’s John Thompson, the first Black coach to win an NCAA title: He paved it so we had a better chance | Sporting News

“We played Georgetown, and Coach Thompson was on the bench. He would come put his arm around me – we just had a strange relationship, and he always remembered me from when I was in high school, for some reason.”

Cooley has risen through the business from his days on Skinner’s terrific BC staff to success at Fairfield, Providence – where he was The Sporting News Coach of the Year in 2022 – and took over Georgetown this season hoping to build the Hoyas back toward the championship contention that once had been the norm.

He sees Thompson’s legacy everywhere he looks – at the number of minorities in his business, on what is now his campus.

“… I think the Big East is half, maybe. It can always be better, but it’s way better than when you could name five coaches in the country, at the Division I level. It’s way better than that.

“Everywhere I walk on this campus, I’m reminded of Coach Thompson. His aura, I don’t know will ever leave. Every morning, I walk in, there’s a 7-3 statue of somebody who transformed the school. I don’t know that I can walk around Georgetown and not feel the presence. Will I always be under that umbrella? Sure. But I’m not going to be intimidated by that. It’s an opportunity.”

Basketball schools unite: What’s good for the Big East is good for the ACC and vice versa. | AMP.NEWSOBSERVER

They are the last conferences standing that still prioritize basketball ahead of football, men’s and women’s both, spiritually if not financially in the case of the ACC. There’s a reason the Old Big East’s football schools ended up migrating to the ACC; they are indeed kindred spirits during the winter.

With Connecticut’s latest title, an unstoppable juggernaut that was never truly threatened, the two conferences have each won eight national championships since the Big Ten or Pac-12 won a single one. (And that doesn’t count UConn’s 2014 title, during its brief exile to the American.)

Even on the margins, the ACC and Big East are asking the same questions about why the selection process didn’t break in favor of Pittsburgh or Seton Hall. It’s not that they were unjustly excluded; it’s asking whether the selection criteria identifies the most worthy teams, and why it seems to undervalue the ACC and Big East in favor of other conferences.

Hurley: UConn Would Be a Powerhouse Even Without Big East Return | FRONTOFFICESPORTS

But when Front Office Sports asked whether his program would have reached this level of dominance if it hadn’t rejoined the Big East, he leaned forward into the microphone and said, “Absolutely.” “We would be where we were regardless.” Hurley acknowledged that the move “certainly helped,” and he’s made plenty of comments suggesting he’s much happier with UConn in its current conference than its former one.

The Big East’s intense competition really kept the team sharp—Hurley likened the Huskies’ journey to that of Kelvin Sampson and Houston, who moved from the AAC to the Big 12 just this year and led the Cougars to a conference title and Sweet 16 berth. (Hurley has spent most of the postseason reiterating how he believed the conference deserved at least three more bids than it received.)

UConn dominates Purdue to make March Madness history as repeat champion | NYPOST

The Connecticut (37-3) guards, meanwhile, only got better as the game went on, having their way with their slower, smaller and less athletic Boilermaker counterparts.

It was a mismatch in the backcourt, future NBA players against nice college guards. The UConn trio of Tristen Newton, Cam Spencer and Stephon Castle outscored Fletcher Loyer, Braden Smith and Lance Jones, 46-17, overpowering them with length and explosion.