Why Patrick Ewing would also pick his Hoyas last in the Big East originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
The basement is never a good place to be in college basketball but that is where the consensus of the Big East head coaches selected the Georgetown Hoyas to finish in the league this year.
They were picked 11th out of the possible 11 teams with Connecticut joining the conference this season to expand the league. Hoyas head coach Patrick Ewing is not surprised at all given what has happened to the team's roster over the past season.
If he could have placed his team - the Big East does not allow head coaches to rank their own program - he would have likely put it last too.
"It is what it is. I mean we lost a lot of guys. When you look at the amount of talent that we lost that should have been here, guys going into their junior year, guys going into their sophomore year, I would pick us last," Ewing told reporters on Big East media day Wednesday.
"But you know they have a song, 'Started from the bottom now we're here.' It's preseason and we'll see what happens."
From the beginning of last season, the team lost six players that were expected to be on the roster for the upcoming 2020-21 season. This includes the loss of their two biggest contributors at the end of the season, Mac McClung and Omer Yurtseven.
That means there are a ton of newcomers, including three graduate transfers and a bunch of young players without much experience. Given the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the team and Ewing have not been able to have team activities and get up to speed as they could during a normal year. Other schools in the Big East have had players on campus for workouts early in the summer, Georgetown hasn't.
"We got to campus late. You know, so we started from behind and still is trying to catch up," Ewing said. "Still my goal and our goal that we were trying to do everything possible to try to get our team to gel, become a more cohesive unit and play in play as a team, despite, you know us coming on campus like coming to campus late."
