For Georgetown, Things Are Not All Wright Without Senior Star

WASHINGTON -- The difference between a Georgetown team with Chris Wright and without him, might be the difference between Georgetown getting a high seed in the NCAA tournament, as well as the Big East tournament, and getting a lower one.

That's not perception. That's the reality of the two games the Hoyas have lost with Wright injured. The senior guard and floor leader broke a bone in his left hand in the first half of Wednesday's game against Cincinnati, and the Hoyas lost. He was on the Verizon Center floor Saturday afternoon only for the pre-game ceremony honoring the seniors, gingerly embracing the coaches with the hand, the non-shooting one, wrapped after surgery two days ago.

Georgetown lost that game, too, to No. 17 Syracuse, 58-51, before 20,276, the largest crowd for a Georgetown game in the arena -- albeit one liberally populated with Syracuse fans.

The best-case scenario for Georgetown, ranked 11th as the week began, had Wright not been injured -- two wins at home against one sure NCAA tournament team and a contender -- was a double-bye in the conference tournament, as they came into the Cincinnati game with five league losses; just two teams have fewer right now. Syracuse (24-6, 11-6) is now on that path, with another impressive road win following the one on Monday over Villanova. It's in the double-bye mix now; Georgetown, 21-8 and 10-7 with only the season finale at Cincinnati next Saturday remaining, has to have things break right to get any bye at all.

The Hoyas, to the surprise of absolutely no one, are a different team without Wright, who still hopes to play again before Georgetown's season ends, whenever that is.

"Obviously, Chris Wright not playing is huge; I hope he's all right,'' Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said after the game. "I hope he can come back, because Georgetown is obviously one of the best teams in our league with him playing, and that's a huge loss.''

It will frustrate Georgetown to no end that even without Wright, the quarterback and the initiator of the offense, it almost won. Down by 10 at halftime after another dreadful display of turnovers and an unusually bad shooting performance, the Hoyas caught and passed Syracuse in the second half, 45-43 with 9:59 left. With 1:21 left, they trailed 54-51 after a pair of Austin Freeman free throws, and needed some stops and some big plays at the other end.

They got not enough of the former and none of the latter. They never scored again, and couldn't capitalize on a pair of breaks right after Freeman's foul shots. They let Kris Joseph snare the rebound of a Scoop Jardine missed jumper, then, when Jardine missed the front end of a one-and-one with 40.8 seconds left, saw Joseph deflect a Jason Clark 3-pointer with 26 seconds left. A Freeman 3-point miss was sandwiched between two pairs of Brandon Triche free throws that sealed the deal.

That's how close they were to surviving without Wright.

"I'm not trying to look for something good, but we responded,'' Hoyas coach John Thompson III said. "It's not like we packed it in and took a 'woe is me' attitude. We fought, we scrapped, and we got back in it. We came out on the losing end, but we're gonna figure this out.''

Syracuse, though, figured out what would twist a Wright-less Georgetown team in knots: the same thing that has tied so many other offenses in knots, the matchup zone. Give it most of the credit for the Hoyas' 16 turnovers (converted to 21 points) and their 7-for-25 three-point shooting, 2-for-12 in the first half while falling behind by double digits. Each Hoyas possession was excruciating, often dragged out until the final seconds of the shot clock and often ending in a wayward three-pointer or a blocked or altered shot inside.

"At points, we were holding the ball a bit too long looking for something,'' admitted Freeman, who led Georgetown with 16 points in his last home game. "We were just looking for each other and holding the ball too long.'' It went without saying that even on patient possessions, Wright likely would have made something happen for himself or for a teammate, on a drive, an entry pass or anything that could create a shot for someone.

Just as important to the Orange was how, in a low-scoring, physical game, it got enough scoring in a few key spots. The most surprising came from little-used swingman James Southerland, who did not score in the previous five games but who scored nine in the first half Saturday. Five came on back-to-back jumpers, a two and a three, in the final minute of the half, pushing a five-point lead to 10 at the break.

Jardine scored a game-high 17 points, but none were bigger than the ones he hit on consecutive possessions after Georgetown closed to within one -- he rattled one in from the left side, then, after a Georgetown miss and a Syracuse timeout, cranked a three-pointer from the top. That bumped the lead to 52-46, and it eventually was stretched to eight with just under four minutes left before Georgetown made a final run.

"Scoop made two plays that were tough plays -- almost 'no, no, yes' plays,'' Boeheim said. "But that was the difference in the game.''

It was, at least, the difference in a game in which arguably the best and most important player on either team never took off his warmups.