Georgetown-Duke: Hoyas Must Keep Guard Up after Blowing Out Blue Devils

On Saturday, in front of 20,000 screaming "gray-ed out" fans, President Obama and the national viewing audience on CBS saw the No. 7 Georgetown Hoyas hand No. 8 Duke their worst defeat of the season.

While the Hoyas may naturally puff their chests out after this game, now is truly not the time to boast.

If the Hoyas plan on making noise deep into March, this week will be a critical week to remain humble.

Make no mistake, Georgetown's win over Duke was a huge, signature win that should come into play for NCAA seeding in March for the Hoyas.  The Hoyas shot 33-for-46 (71.7 percent), which was the best shooting percentage for Georgetown since 1980, and the first time a team has rung up 70 percent shooting on Duke since 1984.  

Georgetown opened a 20-point lead on Duke, handing the Blue Devils their largest deficit of the season in the waning moments of the second half.  Duke scored the last seven points of the game in the final minute to make the blowout look slightly less embarrassing on the surface, but make no mistake, Georgetown owned Duke on Saturday.  

(P.S. Mason Plumlee?  When you're down 89-72 with 30 seconds left in a game, don't try and bring the house down with a massive dunk.  You just got whipped.   Act like it.)

With that said...playing in the Big East means putting your last game completely behind you when its over and devoting your focus to your next opponent.  If the Hoyas fail to do that, they could be staring at a devastating 0-2 week that would take all the wind out of the sails of the Duke stomping.

First, the Hoyas welcome USF to the Verizon Center on Wednesday.  While the V-Center was rocking on Saturday with a sponsored "Gray Out," something tells me the atmosphere won't be quite as electric on a Wednesday night against an unranked team.

As No. 21 Pittsburgh can attest,  USF may be unranked, but they're no pushover.  In fact, USF is on its first three-game winning streak in the Big East in school history.  

USF guard Dominique Jones has only managed a 37 point-per-game average in those three games...and if the Hoyas don't remember how much damage a single guard on a seemingly inferior team can do, maybe they should think back to Stephen Curry and the second round of the 2008 NCAA Tournament? 

I'm not the first to note the danger this game poses: Georgetown blog site Casual Hoya dubs the USF game as "the classic trap game"  in their latest always-amusing recap.

The question posed at the end of the awards article, "Elite teams don't lose this game.  Is Georgetown elite?", speaks largely to the ultimate problem with this year's Hoya squad.

Namely, can Georgetown build upon this signature win and generate March momentum in the latter half of their Big East schedule?

Blame the bench (although 10 points against Duke was a great first step in the right direction), blame Chris Wright not scoring 10 points (Georgetown is now 16-0...aka undefeated when CW4 posts double-digit points), or blame the team's inability to crack a zone...but this team hasn't shaken the Jekyll-and-Hyde dynamic that they've displayed recently.

This team has displayed the talent to soundly beat most any team in the country when they execute their offense efficiently, similarly to the 2006-07 Final Four team.  While the Hoyas pieced together a complete 40-minute effort against Duke, they have also struggled in long one-sided scoring runs by Syracuse, Villanova, and UConn earlier this season.   

Georgetown coach John Thompson III attested to this problem, right after holding a 20-point lead over top-10 Duke.

"I think that this group can beat any team in the country if we do what we're supposed to do," Thompson said . "And if we don't, we can lose to everyone else on our schedule. That's not the plan. But I think we can beat anyone in the country, and they know that."

Assuming the Hoyas manage to dispatch the feisty South Florida team at home on Wednesday, they welcome No.2 Villanova to the Verizon Center on Saturday for a matchup that could catapult the Hoyas into the top five of the polls next week.  

While there's no word about whether or not the President/Vice President will be attending  the 'Nova game, understand that this game is more important to the Hoyas than the Duke win.  (Even if watching Coach K writhe is undeniably sweet.)

Villanova will come in as the No. 2 team in the country—possibly the de-facto No. 1 if Kansas loses before Saturday.  The Hoyas just suffered a heartbreaking loss on the road to them 14 days ago, where they battled back from a(nother) 15-point deficit to tie the game at 69, only to end up losing by five.

Hoya fans are hungry for revenge, and one can only hope that Wright, Freeman, and Monroe are gearing up for owning potential Big East Player of the Year Scottie Reynolds.

The press has been nothing but glowing for Georgetown following the Duke game...granted, it's hard to criticize a team that shot 71.7 percent against a top-10 team .

If the Hoyas buy into these press clippings, talking about "thinking about No. 1 overall seeds" (thank you, ESPN's Joe Lunardi) or being a "great" team, they only set themselves up for failure.  (Ask Texas and Kentucky.)

Instead, while Coach K sounded like a sore loser for saying this after watching his team get blown out, they should buy into his post-game comments:

"We're not a powerhouse," said Krzyzewski . "I don't think Georgetown's a powerhouse, either. We're both really good teams."

If Coach K doesn't think the Hoyas are a powerhouse after watching them thoroughly dismantle his team for 40 minutes, luckily, this week they have the chance to further prove their mettle.

If the Hoyas keep their cool, stay hungry, remain humble, and beat USF, they have as good of shot as any to take down Villanova at home on Saturday and move into their first top-5 ranking since the beginning of the 2007-08 season.

But it all starts with the guys in the locker room turning off ESPN and putting down the Washington Post this week.