NCAA March Madness: A Glass Half-Full View of the Georgetown Hoyas

Despite dropping four of their past five games, the Georgetown Hoyas still have the talent to beat any team in the country.  

They've proven that against Pittsburgh, Villanova, Duke, Butler, and Temple this season.  They've scared the life out of Syracuse, nearly erasing a 23-point deficit against the now-No. 1 team in the country.

The Hoyas can also lose to any (decent) team in the country.  They proved that against Old Dominion, South Florida, and recently Rutgers.

What part of that didn't we know back in January?

Right after Georgetown opened up a 20-point lead against Duke at home en route to an 89-77 win (in front of President Barack Obama), Hoyas coach John Thompson III admitted this very flaw about his team.

"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."

Now that we've hit March, there's a lot of hullabullo about "momentum" and "chemistry" and "athleticism" and a whole group of non-tangential adjectives that usually end up amounting to nothingness.

The fact that Georgetown has lost four of their last five, plummeting from seven to 20th in the AP poll in three weeks, would be cause for concern in a typical year. And admittedly, the loss to Rutgers certainly dampened some spirits (mine included).

But the Hoyas were missing Austin Freeman, their leading scorer, for two of those games. They played the now-No. 1 team in the country, and again, came within a point of erasing a 23-point deficit . The Hoyas' second half will be the tape that NCAA coaches reference when they're trying to figure out how in the hell they're going to crack Syracuse's 2-3 zone.

The fact Georgetown hasn't won three straight Big East games since 2007-08 should be setting off alarms.  Or the fact that they couldn't string together three straight this year after feasting on a cupcake trio of Harvard, St. John's, and DePaul; in a normal year, I'd probably be crying myself to sleep thinking about that from now until Selection Sunday.

Georgetown fans seem unusually tense around March this year (myself not included); that NIT bid last year was a cold splash of water in the face after a Final Four two years prior.  The stakes feel higher for G'town and its fanbase—perhaps the subconscious concern of wasting Greg Monroe's talent came into play?

That kind of tenseness won't help the Hoyas if they come into the NCAA tournament as a five seed , as predicted in ESPN's latest Bracketology.

So instead, the Hoyas should loosen up, and make sure they're having fun playing basketball these final few weeks.

After all, they're still 18, 19, 20, and 21-year-old kids. 

If these are Greg Monroe's final few weeks in a Hoya uniform, then they should enjoy the time they have with Monroe and his offensive bag of tricks.

If they lose to Marquette in the first round of the Big East Tournament, the Earth will still stay on its axis. 

I don't want to hear reports of Chris Wright and Greg Monroe sniping at each other on the court during games. Either the Hoyas are being forced to Tweet with each other constantly, or they've got legitimate off-court chemistry; aka, they actually like each other. 

They shouldn't let a few losses in basketball get in the way of these potentially-lifelong friendships. 

Instead, they should be playing the loosest, most stress-free basketball they've played this season in March.  

Every player in Georgetown's starting lineup has shown flashes of greatness this season—be it Freeman's 28 points against UConn, Monroe's 12 assists against Providence, Jason Clark's six three-pointers against Villanova, Wright's never-say-die attitude, or Julian Vaughn transformation from clumsy last season to clutch this season.

And when each player was feeling it, they were showing it on the court, too.  (Besides Freeman, who gets IVs of ice-water before each game.)  Jason Clark's scream after his sixth three against 'Nova will go down as one of many Hoyas' fans favorite moments of the season.

The Hoyas have the talent.

They need Freeman to get healthy, first and foremost.

They need to play loose and unrestrained.  And JTIII needs to have a quick hook, if a player is hurting the team on both ends of the court.

If they piece everything together, they've shown that they can beat the NCAA's one and two seeds.  Not only that, they can blow them out.

In a win-or-go-home tournament with no clearly-defined favorite, the Hoyas aren't a bad horse to be backing going into March Madness.

And I apologize, in advance, for causing them to lose in the first round of the NCAA's because I jinxed them with this column.