Don't Sleep on Georgetown: The Hoyas Are College Basketball's Best-Kept Secret

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Radford 82, Georgetown 80.

It felt like some kind of egregious misprint. How does the team projected by CBS Sports to finish in second place in the Big East lose its home opener to the team projected by Mid-Major Madness to finish in ninth place in the Big South?

There are a handful of shocking results on the first weekend of every college basketball season, but this one was particularly unfathomable.

Shortly thereafter, the Hoyas were 1-3.

Out of sight.

Out of mind.

They weren't nearly out of hope or talent, though.

The loss to Radford will no doubt be the biggest blemish tarnishing Georgetown's projected NCAA tournament seed and AP rank for the next several months, but keep in mind this team lost four seniors who played a combined 85.6 minutes per game last season. The Hoyas were still figuring out who fit into which roles, while Radford had five seniors—four of which have been with that program for all four years—log at least 28 minutes in the game.

It happens.

Much more importantly, they immediately bounced back by pushing projected Big Ten champion Maryland to the limit on its home court, beating Wisconsin on a neutral court by a double-digit margin and coming within a few inches of beating a Duke team with legitimate aspirations of back-to-back national championships.

If that type of November effort isn't a sign of a team that's going to make some noise in March, what is?

Head coach John Thompson III is already seeing the dividends from his team's very difficult early schedule.

"You hope as a coach and as a team that those experiences help prepare you going forward," he said after Saturday's win over former Big East rival Syracuse. "We had a lot of discussions in the last couple weeks on the key point in the game. It's not necessarily the last minute of the game. It's, 'OK, right now, they've hit two baskets in a row. We have to get a stop right now.'"

He drove his point home by forcefully tapping his hand on the table.

"'We have to get a rebound right now. We have to get a good possession right now.' And I think just in talking through that and watching that, that focus I think was there today. In the middle of the second half when they could have gained energy, we did a good job of making sure they didn't."

That November experience led to some December dominance against then-No. 14 Syracuse, as the Hoyas looked the part of a team on a meteoric rise.

For some reason, though, the Hoyas aren't surging in the national polls.

Despite impressive wins over Wisconsin and Syracuse, Georgetown received exactly four votes in the AP Top 25 for a third consecutive week on Monday, all from Graham Couch of the Lansing State Journal. It seems he's the only voter who gets how talented the Hoyas are:

If Syracuse interim head coach Mike Hopkins had a vote, things might be a bit different. He had nothing but praise for the Hoyas in the aftermath of his team's loss Saturday.

"I give Georgetown a lot of credit," said Hopkins in the postgame press conference. "They played great defense. I thought they were really active; played tough and aggressive. ... Georgetown's a good basketball team."

The funny thing is what Hopkins saw wasn't even close to the best version of the Hoyas that we'll see this year. L.J. Peak, Paul White and D'Vauntes Smith-Rivera were all expected to be huge contributors for Georgetown this season, but they each had a pretty uneventful afternoon.

Rather, against the program that has become synonymous with the 2-3 zone—a defense designed to frustrate the heck out of opposing big men—the Georgetown fans in the Verizon Center were once again treated to the Bradley Hayes and Marcus Derrickson show.

Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

Not familiar with those names?

You're certainly not alone.

Derrickson is a 4-star freshman, according to 247Sports, evaluated as the 83rd-best recruit in the country. ESPN's scouts had him in the same ballpark at No. 89 in the 2015 ESPN 100. Both sites had teammate Jessie Govan ranked as the freshman more likely to make an immediate frontcourt impact.

Instead, Derrickson is the one who has started all eight games, the one who has two double-doubles and the one who had several folks in Saturday's media room professing that the freshman is already the best player on the entire roster.

"Marcus is a basketball player," said Thompson III. "He gives us a physical presence out there that we need. He makes good basketball plays, and at the end of the day, he can shoot. He's a freshman. He's coming along. But he's going to get there."

At least Derrickson was somewhere on the radar before the year began.

Player	PPG	RPG	O-Rating	D-Rating	Double-Doubles	Misc.
Bradley Hayes	11.9	6.9	110.6	94.3	2	58.5 FG%
Marcus Derrickson	7.1	5.3	112.2	95.4	2	94.4 FT%

Hayes, on the other hand, entered the season as a completely unheralded senior. He had scored a grand total of 30 points over the previous three years, never once logging more than 13 minutes in an individual game.

That feels like a lifetime ago, though, because he's averaging just under 12 points and seven rebounds per game through his first eight contests this season.

"I'll tell ya, he's got to be one of the most improved players in the country," said Hopkins of Hayes. "He's big and he's got a great touch around the basket. ... He killed us."

With Hayes the only returning player taller than 6'9", there were some serious concerns about what Georgetown's frontcourt would look like after losing Joshua Smith and Mikael Hopkins to graduation, but Big John knew the Hoyas were in good hands.

John Thompson Jr. looked on from media row Saturday. While waiting for both Hayes and his son to finish their postgame television interviews, he smiled for a selfie with one college-aged fan before whimsically covering the face of an eight-year-old whose father wanted a picture of his boy with the legendary coach.

To say the least, the man has mellowed out a bit since his days as the cantankerous head coach of Hoya Paranoia.

But there was nothing sedated about the bear hug he gave Hayes once he was finally freed from the TV cameras. Nor the "Amen to that!" he bellowed from the back of the postgame press conference when one reporter recounted Hopkins' praise for Hayes.

Nick Wass/Associated Press

"Unfortunately, I didn't get to play those last three years against Syracuse that much, and there was a lot built up aggression toward that," said Hayes. "To be able to come out here and play and show how hard I worked to this moment, it just felt good."

"And he will have a lot more moments like today before this year's over," added Thompson III, pausing for a beat before turning to look at his newfound star. "Right?"

Hayes couldn't hold back the smile. After years of tireless and anonymous effort, coach is counting on him to be the driving force behind a serious threat to win the Big East.

If you think that's crazy talk, you're putting way too much emphasis on what happened against Radford.

Hayes, Derrickson and Isaac Copeland are already playing like potential Big East all-conference stars. Imagine how good Georgetown could be when its starting shooting guard (Peak) starts shooting better than 25 percent from three-point range, when its starting point guard (Smith-Rivera) starts playing with the urgency of a senior who came back for one final year to improve his draft stock and when its most important bench player (White) is healthy enough to start contributing.

Sleep on the Hoyas at your own risk. This team has already been battle-tested and they're only going to continue to improve from here.

All quotes and information obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.