Final Roster For 2023-24 Still TBA Classes are underway for the 2023-24 school year, but openings remain on the men's basketball roster.The late transfer of Akok Akok to West Virginia leaves three open scholarships for the 2023-24 season, which presents short-term challenges as well as longer term opportunities. Of immediate interest to fans: a bench deep enough to allow for practice time and offer selective contributions from walk-ons.Walk-ons have not been prevalent at Georgetown in modern times compared to other schools. A total of just five walk-ons saw action in the six seasons under former coach Patrick Ewing, and walk-ons contributed to just 22 minutes on the court in 17,875 total minutes over the past three seasons. A short bench will demand more from reserves, and the next question is who (and how many) there will be. Two reserves were seen on social media posted by the team this summer: 6-6 forward Donovan Grant, late of Oregon State, and Jon Kazor, a 6-3 transfer from Division III MacAlester College. Not seen this summer was 6-11 senior Victor Muresan or Hashem Asad, a 6-2 freshman from Kuwait who announced he would attend and play at Georgetown this fall; his status was posted in an Instagram account from Dubai on Monday.  Late registration ends September 1, so any arrivals must be on campus by then. Seton Hall added a late arrival of its own Thursday with the signing of 6-10 center Arda Ozdogan from the Turk Telekom in Ankara. Turkey, but unless the Georgetown staff has an international student en route or an unsigned grad transfer in its sights, it is likely to hold on to the three open scholarships in preparation for 2024-25 recruiting or offer a mid-year transfer that could be immediately eligible for the spring. Jerome Williams To Recruits: Know Your Worth A lot has changed in the nearly three decades since Jerome Williams (C'96) arrived at Georgetown. In an extensive interview with USA Today, the former NBA star offers some thoughts on the landscape for today's up and coming athletes."The NCAA signed deals with those trading card companies to be able to monetize my image, name and likeness without me getting a dime from that because I had signed my letter of intent with Georgetown," he told columnist and fellow 1996 graduate Stephen Borelli. In this area of NIL, Williams advises younger players not to wait until college to establish their brand potential."Sixth grade is when we tell kids to start getting going; some as early as fifth grade because a lot of the major sports really start scouting the sixth grade. So basketball, football, you're already being rated and ranked in these grades, and that includes tennis and other sports from volleyball to cheerleading." "Let them know, hey, in order to be a volleyball Division I athlete ... you're gonna have to do the work and you're gonna have to make yourself visible to the point where you stand out. That is learning the sport, taking time to be trained in the sport correctly. ... It's a little bit of a cheat code in terms of being able to give my son everything that I know, but it's still up to him how far he wants to take it because, at that level, it's a lot tougher competition." The parent of two daughters currently on the Georgetown volleyball team, Williams has seen the strain of competition from both sides. "There's a fine line between someone who's trying to do something as a young person and someone who's being pushed to do something by a parent... you have to make sure that there's 100 percent buy-in all the time. And that can change from week to week but you have to allow that change to take place because you can't have a child or a young athlete feeling like this is your dream because that's when you can run into problems." "Sometimes you gotta take the phone away," Williams added. "Monitor your kids' internet, monitor your kids' video games. My advice is monitor, and keep monitoring and keep setting limits...I think when parents first viewed it, it was something that gave them some time so that they could do things they wanted to do because your kid was occupied by this phone." Now, he added, "you're trying to get some of that time back." Wheel of Realignment: UConn Stays With Big East The summer of conference realignment has cratered the Pacific-12 Conference, but the Big East came through the winds untouched."I did have conversations with UConn and Gonzaga, and unfortunately, things didn't work out...so those conversations are no longer," Big 12 commissioner Yormark told the Associated Press. Although UConn had Yormark's support, other sources report that it did not yet have the support of Big 12 presidents, a cause rendered moot by the transfer of four schools from the Pac-12 to the Big 12."Even if UConn was able to spend the money needed to get facilities on par in the Big 12, they would never have the NIL for it," a source told CBS Sports.com. "People are not married to UConn football competing at this great level." Also in play for the Big 12 was Gonzaga, which has also been a subject of message board chatter about their utility as a possible Big East expansion target. "Gonzaga went radio-silent on the Big East," a source told CBS. "The geography is such a hard hump to get over for the student-athlete experience." Summer Preview: Georgetown 8th Veteran college basketball reporter Jon Rothstein weighs in with a summer preview of the 2023-24 Big East race.Rothstein's Picks
2. Connecticut 3. Creighton 4. Villanova 5. St. John's 6. Xavier 7. Providence 8. Georgetown 9. Seton Hall 10. DePaul 11. Butler Rothstein visited Georgetown last month and posted a Q&A with head coach Ed Cooley. "I think [the Big East] going to be the best league in the country," Cooley said. "That isn't to say that other leagues in the country aren't really good. I know that the Big 12 is really good. I know that the Big Ten is really good. But the Big East feels like it's going to be on a different level next season. "When you look at the players that the league is returning and the players that the league has added as well as the coaches, it's going to be a terrific league. It's going to be the best league in the country." Akok Transfers To West Virginia Less than 24 hours after he entered his name into the transfer portal, former Georgetown forward Akok Akok has committed to West Virginia.The transfer was reported by On3.com."Akok's name has circulated as a potential transfer candidate for months," wrote the pseudonymous Trilly Donovan, a national recruiting correspondent who posted the report under his nom de guerre, a report later picked up at The Athletic. "Speculation began again after Jose Perez returned to West Virginia following a brief stint in the transfer portal. Akok and Perez were high school teammates at Putnam Science Academy and remain close friends." Per his biography at the Georgetown Basketball History Project, Akok averaged 4.2 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 1.7 blocks in three seasons at Connecticut before transferring to Georgetown in the spring of 2022. He started all 31 games as a junior at Georgetown, leading the Big East in blocks at 2.0 per game and finishing second on the team in rebounds. A 14 point, 10 rebound effort at Xavier was a season high in conference. The basketball office has long since stopped commenting on transfers, and many are taking a last week of vacation before the arrival of freshmen next week. Head coach Ed Cooley was seen at Rehoboth Beach this week on a Facebook post, so it's not expected Georgetown will not say anything at this time. The departure would otherwise reduce Georgetown's depth to just 10 scholarship players entering the 2023-24 season and just three players up front, though Cooley has suggested on more than one occasion he could make a last moment pickup before the start of classes. With over 200 players that were left unsigned in the 2023 transfer portal, it's highly likely Georgetown has some names in its consideration set following the completion of various summer school programs nationally. Akok is the 25th (and presumably final) transfer of the Patrick Ewing era. ABL: Dawg Talk 130, Orange-8 119 Returning to action in the Alumni Basketball League, Georgetown's Dawg Talk took its second win in as many years, traveling to central New York to post an 130-119 point win over an alumni team from Syracuse at the SRC Arena and Events Center.Two weeks removed from a loss in the TBT tournament, the return of Greg Monroe was a welcome add for Dawg Talk. Monroe scored 23 points and 21 rebounds, leading the Blue and Gray back from a 91-90 deficit after three quarters and outscoring the homestanding Orange 13-10 under the rules of the Elam Ending to claim the exhibition win. Henry Sims (27 points, 16 rebounds) led all scorers.
The Dawg Talk portion of the box score:
MIN 2FG 3FG FT REB A PF PTS
Starters:
Mosely 27 6-9 0-2 6-6 5 3 3 18
Smith-Rivera 28 1-1 6-14 0-0 5 3 3 20
Clark 31 4-7 1-12 0-0 3 7 4 11
Sims 32 10-17 0-0 7-7 16 4 4 27
Monroe 28 9-13 0-0 5-7 21 8 2 23
Reserves:
Bowen 21 6-11 0-1 0-0 1 3 4 12
Wright 11 2-2 1-5 0-2 4 0 1 7
Pryor 18 0-2 4-8 0-0 6 1 2 12
Team Rebounds 7
TOTALS 200 38-62 12-42 18-22 68 29 23 130
Kenner League FinalsThe 42nd annual Kenner League is now in the books, with a 69-67 win by the team representing A. Wash & Associates. Georgetown freshman Rowan Brumbaugh was named the league MVP.
Revisited: Steady Across The Waves
In the last five days, six of the ten remaining Pac 12-schools have announced intentions to leave the Conference of Champions, while Florida State University is seeking private equity firms to buy itself out its contract with the Atlantic Coast Conference. What's next?Revisiting a column from HoyaSaxa.com, July 2022:"The waves of conference realignment are taking its toll across the nation, most recently with the announcement of a move of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten. In the last 12 months, 44 schools across 21 conferences have announced plans to move, with three major conferences (Pac-12, Big 12, and the aforementioned ACC) in panic mode. Depending on which scenarios drive your interest, any one of these three conferences could be carved up in a matter of years, if not sooner... A conference that grows to 18, 20, or more teams faces a terminal velocity of sorts: someone has to finish 20th. Schools will enjoy financial payouts but fewer ties between the schools, between the student-athletes, and ultimately less between the fans. Try as they might, USC has very little in common with Maryland, and they're not likely to act in common interest. As Big East fans learned in 2012, when schools become placeholders rather than partners, trouble follows." "There will be winners and losers as college presidents unceremoniously trip over themselves to get on board the...aircraft carriers that are poised to take over major college football. By contrast, the Big East isn't the largest ship on the seas, but it knows what it is, what it's capable of, and ultimately how to get there together. In choppy waters, that's a smart place to be." |