Why these Hoyas may be the most talented of the John Thompson III era

Rejoice, the college basketball season is upon us again! After the win against Wisconsin yesterday, our Hoyas will take to the court against Duke at Madison Square Garden on Sunday at 1 pm.

The good news is that this year’s team might be one of the most talented of the John Thompson III era.

We have a top-25 recruiting class brought about by the arrivals of Jessie Govan, Marcus Derrickson, and Kaleb Johnson. Ideally, we’d want two of these guys to become some combination of Jahlil Okafor and Justice Winslow – and they could surprise us – but realistically JTIII will probably consider simply above-average production from any and all of them a win.

And let’s not forget our faithful DSR who is sticking it out with us, and who was named the 30th-best college basketball player in the nation, according to SB Nation.

But if we’re looking for someone to have a breakout campaign, it should be none other than Isaac Copeland, who got an Honorable Mention in that same ranking, and is most remembered for making the biggest shots of last season’s campaign against Marquette and Butler.

Also noteworthy is L.J. Peak, the man who soared into our hearts right out of the gate when he had 23 points in 26 minutes in his first game.

The bad news is that we already have a player, Akoy Agau, who’s out for the season with a torn ACL. That leaves us with only two big men: Bradley Hayes, a senior with very little on-court experience who’s most impressive moments came in a single game against Eastern Washington in the NCAA Tournament, and Jessie Govan, an unproven rookie who’s actually getting some hype, though part of it is probably because he doesn’t weigh 350 pounds like Josh Smith.

The other bad news is that Georgetown has gotten past the third round of the NCAA Tournament only once since 2006-2007. In fact, we’ve missed the tournament entirely twice in that span, the same number of times we’ve actually gotten to the third round.

Many people might tend to blame the players for our commonly disappointing seasons, but the truth is that much of the blame probably lies with our coach, JTIII.

It’s not so much that he’s a bad recruiter, and in fact we’ve gotten some pretty decent players over the years under him – Otto Porter Jr., Greg Monroe, Roy Hibbert to name a few.

And it’s not even that he’s a bad coach, he’s just a stubborn coach. He holds his sacred – but rigid, and hard to master – Princeton offense above the skill sets of his players, who don’t always fit with the necessities of the offense (namely passing, shooting and cutting hard), and the team often struggles to score as a result.

Some might think that our teams really weren’t that good, but the truth is, we’ve actually been decent most of the time. Of course, that’s nothing to hang our hat on, and we’re always striving to go back to the glory days of the 1980s, but that’s tough.

That being said, every season brings with it the standard brand of Hoya delusion, so we’re definitely going to be in the Elite Eight this season.

I think.

I hope.

We’ve been down this rollercoaster before though, and it’s really kind of emotionally exhausting. Would it be too much to ask for a season of quiet consistency, with the obvious required destruction of Syracuse, which launches us into the longest win streak of the season since we’re undefeated?  And by then we’re so confident that we steamroll everyone on our way to the championship.

March Freakin’ Madness.

Yeah, I know. It’s probably going to be another second round exit, and JTIII will stay for eons to haunt our blue and gray dreams of another banner in the Verizon Center.

Hoya Saxa.