By George!

There are four basketball "powers" in the Washington DC area: Georgetown, George Washington University, George Mason, and University of Maryland. Until recently, the preeminent basketball power was Maryland. Georgetown was plenty good when John Thompson, Jr. was head coach, but then he stepped down, handing over the reins to his longtime assistant, Craig Esherick.

Esherick wasn't a bad coach, but he wasn't a particularly successful coach, at least, with the mantle of John Thompson on his shoulders. It's much like following John Wooden of UCLA, who had some 11 national championships as coach back in the 50s and 60s. Eventually, Esherick was fired, and John Thompson's son, John Thompson, the 3rd, became coach.

JT3 (as I'll refer to him) had played basketball at Princeton, under Pete Carril. Carril was the one who conceived of the Princeton offense, an offense borne out of necessity. Princeton was only going to have so much talent. They used precision passing, three point shots, and the backdoor cut to score easy points, with athletes that were far less talented than power conference players.

Princeton's big moment came in 1989, when Georgetown was the number 1 seed, and Princeton was 16. Georgetown managed to win the game by one point, 50-49, on a last minute shot by Alonzo Mourning. Princeton continued to flourish under Coach Bill Carmody, and usually represented the Ivy Leagues throughout the 90s.

Carmody eventually left to coach Northwestern. By then, the Princeton offense was being played in places outside Princeton. Air Force, who was coached by a player who played on Princeton, played this style of offense. So did North Carolina State.

When Esherick was fired, they brought on JT3, who brought the Princeton offense to Georgetown. JT3 had one resource that he didn't easily have at Princeton. His dad. While the offense was his own, his dad was known for knowing how to coach big men, i.e., men who were 7 feet or taller. He could lend a hand with Georgetown's big man, Roy Hibbert.

Normally, tall guys with any modicum of talent are snatched by the NBA, who are looking for players with upside. They see players like Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady, and Lebron James, who all skipped high school and are now highly successful NBA players, and wonder who the next Kobe is. This lead the Washington Wizards to draft Kwame Brown number 1 right out of high school. Several years of browbeating by his Airness, Michael Jordan, and coach Doug Collins left Brown unwilling to listen to the verbal punishment. Even the kinder hand of Eddie Jordan didn't help, and Brown was sent packing to the Lakers.

Hibbert lacked any such talent, despite size that make NBA agents and team drool. He was that bad. Mike Wilbon has written an article about the evolving talent of Hibbert, and how players that have skipped high school to the NBA might be better served with a college apprenticeship.

Who would have thought a few scant years after a national championship win, that Maryland would struggle so mightily to get into the NCAA tournament. This year marks the second year in a row that Maryland has played in the NIT. Last year, the players were willing to play in the second-place tournament, and managed to make it to the final four.

This year, coach Gary Williams wanted to bow out of the NIT before being informed by the athletic department that Maryland was contractually obligated to play. On Saturday, they proceeded to lose to Manhattan by some 5 points, perhaps reinforcing how much they didn't want to play the NIT.

In the meanwhile, the other universities in the DC area which had played second fiddle to Maryland have experience a minor resurgence. George Washington, under coach Karl Hobbs (who had himself been coached in high school by Mike Jarvis, who later coached GW as well, before heading to St. John's, and then getting fired from that job), coached GW to a 27-2 season.

This was the best record in the country, but the committee rewarded them with an 8th seed. Now, the committee gives four of every seed from 1 to 16, breaking the 64 team field into groups of 16, and seeding each group 1 to 16. This effectively meant the committee felt GW was no better than 32 teams.

The NCAA committee might pat itself on the back for its foresight, seeing how GW struggled against UNCW, a team Maryland had to beat on a last second three point shot by Drew Nicholas after John Goldsberry had knocked in 8 three pointers without a miss, a tournament recoerd. Goldsberry was on this year's team too, and it looked like UNCW would again be poised to knock out GW. Down 18 points, GW clawed and scratched, and eventually won the game.

However, that lead GW to have to face #1 seed, Duke. GW was hoping to give Duke a challenge, but sloppy play on GW's part, and Duke's precision attack lead GW struggling throughout, and lead to a loss. Still, had GW been given, say, a #3 seed, maybe they would have survived two rounds. This is true of many other teams, I think. Many teams that were #8 seeds have to face a tough #9 seed, and then get rewarded by playing the #1 seed. Even a #7 seed would have protected GW some, by playing a #2 seed instead.

The surprise of the three George's having made it this far has to be George Mason. At the time of their selection, George Mason was considered a bubble team, i.e., a team that might make it or might not. Tony Skinn had been benched for the opening game in the NCAA tournament, for punching a Hofstra player in the groin. Consider the implications.

It's true Coach Larranaga didn't have to bench his player for the game. After all, coaches are often rewarded for their wins, and often overlook bad behavior by players, especially if this keeps them winning. Worse still, by benching Skinn for a game, Larranaga was potentially preventing his team from making the NCAA tournament at all. The tournament committee has often lowered the seed of a team or decided to exclude a team altogether when a top player was not available due to injury.

George Mason was lucky. The tournament committee decided to allow George Mason to play, and then they took it from there. Their first team was Michigan State, a team that won the national championship a few years ago, and made it to the final four last year. Their reward was playing #3 seed, UNC, who won the national championship last year.

To be fair, UNC lost many of its players to the NBA, but they had beaten Duke, and had top freshman, Tyler Hansbrough, one of several white players that are making a name for themselves in the NCAA (the other two are NCAA leading scorers, Adam Morrison of Gonzaga, and J. J. Reddick of Duke). No one expected George Mason to beat a team lead by seniors from Michigan State and no one expected them to beat a young, but highly talented UNC team.

And, yet, they did.

Georgetown is now facing its chance to beat a higher seed. This time, it's #2 seed Ohio State. They are leading right now at the hald 38-25. Still, they had a big lead on Syracuse in the Big East tournament only to lose to Gerry McNamara and the Orangemen.

That makes three George's in the area, with only one out.

The funny thing is that they aren't entirely strangers to one another. Last year, the locally hosted BB&T Classic had GWU, George Mason, University of Maryland, and Michigan State. GW beat Michigan State in one group, and Maryland beat George Mason in the other. In the final, GW beat Maryland, and Michigan State managed to eke out a win over George Mason. They'd already seen each other before.

And even before that, a few years ago, George Mason, Georgetown, Maryland and Hampton (in Virginia) all flew out to Boise, Idaho to play in the year that Maryland won it all, and yet barely squeaked out past George Mason.

George Mason has been something of a bracket buster for me. I had Michigan State going deep in the tournament. Oh well, these things happen. For now, I'm still leading our brackets, but that can change as you head towards the final four. Points usually come from picking the final four well, especially one of the two winners. Upsets late tend to help because most people pick favorites such as Duke or UConn (in fact, I have both facing each other).

This weekend is always the most exciting because the upsets occur in the first weekend. Later on, the power teams do well.

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