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Burton, Bad Brandon, and Hoya Bands
By John Hawkes

I figure that over the past four seasons, I've written close to 50 recaps of Georgetown basketball games on the Hoyatalk message boards. And, if you're reading this, I've now published the seventh piece in the "Generation Burton" column series I started last summer.

There are any number of reasons why I've spent so much of my free time writing about and discussing Hoya basketball. First and foremost, it's my passion. To use a famous phrase-one which I hope never goes out of style, T-shirts or no T-Shirts-I Bleed Hoya Blue. After four years of college, a year of grad school, tens of thousands of dollars in tuition money and student loan debt-all in all, I'd rather just go to the MCI Center and write recaps of Jeff Green for a living. Sadly, it appears that neither HoyaSaxa.com, the Hoya Hoop Club, nor Georgetown University are prepared to endow a full-time columnist/recapper position. So I guess I'm stuck with my International History degree and that Nevils Medal. That's life.

I also enjoy sharing the experience of attending games with other alumni and fans that aren't fortunate enough to live a Metro fare away from Chinatown. I can still remember the time I sat down at my laptop in Village B during my sophomore year and started what became my first game recap. What was originally going to be just a brief response to another fan slowly but surely turned into several pages of observations and comments. After all, how was a Hoya fan in Connecticut who couldn't see the game on TV (or listen to Rich Chvotkin on Sportstalk 980) going to know what it was really like unless they knew how Grambling defended Mike Sweetney? Or how our fast break offense looked? Or, most important of all, which child won the "Fan of the Game" contest during the second half? If there's one thing I try to do with every recap, it's to replicate as closely as possible the experience of being in the student section at the MCI Center.

Well, maybe there's one other thing I try to do with the recaps. As far as student fans go, I'm relatively low-key. I don't like sitting in the front row, I'm afraid of being on the Jumbotron, I compulsively cross my arms out of nervousness during games-in general, it would be almost impossible to notice me in the student section during games unless you knew me. I do have a personality as a fan-it just tends to come across better in print. So I'm always secretly wondering how many people "notice" my "personality". That doesn't just mean who's reading the recaps-although I'm thankful for all of the positive feedback I get from Georgetown fans. I've also been curious whether it was possible that a joke, a comment, a description of a player, or even the name "Generation Burton" would catch on and become part of the "lexicon" of Georgetown basketball on campus.

Well, after about three and a half years, I finally got my answer. Standing in the student section at a mid-season game this season, I heard a student a few rows behind me yell out after an offensive foul: "BAD BRANDON!!"

Yeah!!!

Most of the responses and comments my recaps receive relate to the final section: "Non-Game Observations". That doesn't really surprise me. After all, if there's one thing that gets every Hoya fan fired up, it's Dr. Vincent Kelly's rendition of the National Anthem.

One of the most common responses I've gotten from fans is something along the lines of "you made me feel like I was there in the arena". When it comes right down to it, only non-game observations can do that. I can describe how the Hoyas ran the "Princetown" offense in a game-but most fans have seen Princeton do that on TV many times (fans of the 1989 Georgetown Hoyas would probably rather forget that, actually). I can rave about Ray Reed's defensive awareness-and that's great for a certain type of conversation-but years from now, most fans won't remember a steady defensive effort against Marcus Williams. Chances are if the game featured an exciting play or heartbreaking moment, fans will remember that-admit it, you're still mad at Ashanti Cook for not passing the ball to Jeff Green at the end of that UConn game, aren't you?

On the other hand though, I've found over the past five years that I remember individual games as much for the "Non-Game Observations" I "observed" as any important play or individual performance on the court.

When I think of the home finale of the 2001-2002 season against UConn, the first thing that comes to mind isn't Ben Gordon's dagger of a jump shot, or Craig Esherick's infamous "no-foul" decision in the game's waning seconds. Instead, I remember the kid who sank a half-court shot at halftime and won a car in the Chevy Scholarship Challenge.

When it comes to the first game I attended at the MCI Center as a student-December 16, 2000 against Howard-I won't be able to tell you how exactly Georgetown got to 123 points. But I do have a story about why I attended the game with a 12-hour-old severely sprained ankle and wearing only one shoe. I'll tell it to you sometime, I promise.

And I can't for the life of me tell you much about the February 18, 2003 game against #9 Pittsburgh. After all, I was in the back row of the lower section of student seats, which weren't on an incline, making it impossible to see. But my friends and I can at least now tell our own version of the classic "I walked 15 miles in a blizzard" story about how we risked life and limb to go and yell stuff at Julius Page.

These are the experiences, the stories, the observations that I'll always remember about being a Georgetown student fan. And I'm certainly not alone. For every one of my stories, there are hundreds of others from students like me. Students who have slept on the pavement on F Street overnight in sub-freezing weather to be the first in line to see Georgetown play Duke. Students who have rented cars and vans or bought tickets on the Chinatown Bus to see Georgetown play in other arenas with three letter abbreviations like RAC, MSG, and PEC. Students who will never forget what the view looks like from the big G in the middle of the court at the MCI Center after a last-second victory.

(To be continued.)