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Happy 5th Nat Burton Day
By John Hawkes

It's still good after all these years.

Five years ago today, on March 15, 2001, Nathaniel Burton hit a driving layup at the buzzer to give the Georgetown Hoyas a 63-61 victory over Arkansas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Boise, Idaho. In the seconds that followed, Victor Samnick leaped in the air, Craig Esherick pumped his fist, Nat Burton lost his shoe, students across campus hugged each other, and Rich Chvotkin screamed his lungs out in the most glorious and memorable way possible.

"My God, it's so good!!"

One of the enjoyable opportunities I am afforded with every visit back to my family's home in Florida is the chance to look through old keepsakes from my four years as a student at Georgetown. Yesterday afternoon, I found one of my favorites—a now-crusty copy of The Hoya from Friday March 16, 2001.

It isn't so much the sentimental value of the paper that I find so great—nobody who experienced that game as a student really needs an old back issue of The Hoya to refresh their memory. It's actually the cover photo that always makes me smile. On the occasion of such a dramatic victory—one could argue Georgetown's most significant in about a decade stretching from 1997 to early 2006—The Hoya ran a file photo on its cover page…from the Providence game, which the Hoyas lost by 24 points.

Some memory that was!

To be fair, at least Nat Burton is in the photo, setting up for a weak side rebound—left side of the rim, of course!

Actually, it was a different set of photos I saw yesterday that stirred up memories of that glorious two weeks in March of my freshman year. Many of you have probably seen them as well—or perhaps you were lucky enough to attend Georgetown's NCAA Selection Show viewing party in person on Sunday evening. Though I wasn't one of the lucky few hundred people who packed into Hoya Court to watch Georgetown's name be called, looking at the photos I couldn't help but recall the collective sense of nervousness, of excitement, of community on campus during our last tournament run.

I got that sense again from every picture I saw online that night. I got it from every recap I read from a student or alumnus who was there in Hoya Court when, at long last, Georgetown was the 60th of the 65 tournament teams unveiled. I got it from every friend of mine who called me or talked to me online Sunday night. From all of them, I also got the same anecdote:

You should have been there, John…they showed the Nat Burton game highlight on CBS.

It's an image—Nat Burton, left arm outstretched over Brandon Dean—that will always remind me of my generation of Hoya basketball, and one of my favorite experiences at Georgetown.

Now, at long last, the day after tomorrow a new generation of students will experience what I and so many other Georgetown alums from all generations have experienced, as the Hoyas return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since those glorious two weeks in March 2001.

As I pondered writing this column last week, I searched for an appropriate perspective to define my experience during our last tournament run. How could I capture the unbridled joy of hundreds of students' reaction to a shot that was good literally by hundredths of a second? How could I explain to my friends at Georgetown why these next five days will be both the greatest and longest of their lives? How could I manage to write the fifth version of my annual tribute to Nat Burton without plagiarizing myself?

Amazingly enough, I found the perspective to write about an epic victory in the aftermath of a devastating loss.

Last Friday night, I attended a game watch in Arlington for Georgetown's Big East semifinal game against Syracuse. Sitting next to me at my table was my friend and former roommate Jon, the same friend I'd sat next to in his dorm room in Village C almost five years before to watch Georgetown play Arkansas. As we walked dejectedly out of the Ballston Mall, so depressed that we (along with almost all of the roughly 50 other Georgetown young alums in attendance) had taken a pass on staying for the Villanova-Pitt game, we pondered why our loss that night was so devastating. After all, in the grand scheme of things, a one-point loss in the Big East semifinal seemed unlikely to affect our NCAA tournament seed in any way. Heck, in two short days, we'd be in the NCAA Tournament—something we hadn't been able to say in half a decade.

But that was just it, in a way.

What made the loss so devastating, we concluded, wasn't that we needed the win that night for a tournament berth, or even necessarily a tournament seed. It wasn't that, as in Big East Tournaments in our recent memory, we were desperate for any reason to feel good about our season.

No, we'd had plenty of reasons to feel good about this season already. When Georgetown fans remember the images of this year, they'll be able to recall a Top 15 ranking, our largest number of regular season and Big East conference wins in five seasons, a packed house at the MCI Center for a Senior Day victory over Syracuse, a double-digit comeback against then-Top 10 ranked Pitt…and, of course, a newspaper insert taped to the statue of John Carroll reading simply “WE BEAT DUKE”. I personally could add to my own list of memories two road trips to Annapolis and Hartford, a long, cold, sleepless night on F Street before the Duke game, multiple nights spent chalking various brick surfaces around Georgetown's campus, and any number of friends I've made in my final year in the newly expanded Georgetown student section thanks to a resurgent Hoya Blue.

It wasn't just that we were 10 seconds away from accomplishing something truly memorable—our first trip to the Big East Tournament final in over a decade. It was that we'd already accomplished so many truly memorable things to that point in the season. It wasn't that we'd lost the game, or even lost to our hated rival Syracuse. We were upset, Jon and I concluded, because we'd missed out on the chance to make this season, this experience, even one game longer.

It was, in fact, the same conversation I remember us having back in Village C a week after the Arkansas game, as we watched Georgetown's 2001 tournament run come to an end in Anaheim at the hands of another hated rival, the Maryland Terrapins. We weren't upset at the way the game had played out—about Demetrius Hunter's missed dunk at the end of the first half or Lonny Baxter's mammoth second half performance. We were just bummed that the experience had come to an end for that season.

This was an amazing tournament run and an amazing first season, we thought. How great it was going to be doing this again for three more seasons.

I've been reminded so many times this year of my experience during my freshman “season” at Georgetown. I'm reminded every time I spend a few minutes visiting Hoya Blue's t-shirt table in the concourse at the MCI Center prior to a game. I'm reminded every time I walk through campus and see a banner advertising the next game in Red Square…or a sign in someone's dorm window in New South advertising the fact that, yes, WE BEAT DUKE. I'm reminded every time I talk to one of the freshmen members of Hoya Blue, whose enthusiasm this year has been downright infectious.

As happy as I am to have experienced this season as a Georgetown fan, I'm even more happy that all of the students on campus right now—the post-Burton Generation, if you will—have been able to experience it. And I hope that they'll have many more experiences to remember in the seasons to come. I certainly hope it won't take five years for them to happen.

Inevitably, though, this season's tournament run, much like the one I experienced five years ago, will come to an end. I can imagine many of my friends on campus will have a similar reaction to the one Jon and I had in his dorm room after the Maryland game in 2001…or in the Ballston Mall after the Syracuse game last Friday.

That is, I've decided, how best to describe what the Nat Burton game means to me. It's not just the sort of moment that you can recall with vivid clarity—remember exactly what you yelled at the TV, exactly who you high-fived down the hall, exactly how little sleep you got that night. It's not just a story you can tell your classmates five or ten years down the road. It's not just something you can tease certain members of Hoya Blue about at games.

The Nat Burton game, for me, is the experience that makes a season so awesome…and the end of a season so painful.

So, as Georgetown fans across the country, from Dayton to the District of Columbia, from the beaches of South Florida to the blue turf of Boise, Idaho come together this Friday afternoon for the Hoyas 2006 NCAA Tournament opener, I have one piece of advice, especially for each and every student and Hoya Blue member traveling to Ohio for the game:

Enjoy the experience.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a game tape to watch.