A RivalryRenewed by Maple Street Press

A Rivalry Renewed How Syracuse and Georgetown came to hate one another by Matt Glaude

t’s a quiet Tuesday evening in the winter. You decide to call up your friend Wellington for a friendly game of Scrabble. You’ve got a big tournament coming up in a few weeks and Wellington, a fairly accomplished Scrabbler in his own right, may give you a nice tune-up before you step into the Scrabble ring with other A-level tilers. Wellington comes over and the game starts as a slaughter. You’re dumping vowels all over the place: “euouae,” “queuing,” “squeegee.” Wellington is sitting on a stack of consonants that could almost re-leg your kitchen table. Then, as if fate itself wrote The Good Book of Wellington, he starts getting hot. “Catchphrase.” “Borscht.” “Postphthisic.” You’d be “dumbstruck” with Wellington’s run, but he just played the word (eight more consonants off the board, and five of them in a row) and you know that irony isn’t the most opportune chaser for the drink you just poured. It’s coming to the end and the score is incredibly close. You’ve weathered Wellington’s storm and just played “sequoia,” leaving yourself with only two tiles: an “e” and an “s.” Things are looking good; all you’ll need to do is pluralize whatever Wellington slaps together in a last-ditch effort to salvage the game, and you’ll be able to head into your tournament confident and triumphant. You’ve played almost all of the vowels on the board and are convinced that Wellington, despite the fact that he has only seven tiles left, has no available play. Victory!

History and tradition

February 12, 1980, was intended to be a celebration of Syracuse basketball and its venerable old gym, Manley Field House. The Orange, ranked second in the country, was riding a 57-game home winning streak, the longest in the nation. Most people thought that Syracuse’s game that night against Georgetown would be nothing more than a coronation, an assured conquest, the last night to take in the sights at “the Zoo.” John Thompson Jr., the bombastic giant and head coach of the Hoyas, had other plans.

Up 14 points at the half, Syracuse was crushing Georgetown. The Orange held the Hoyas to 21% shooting in the opening stanza and the building was beyond electric. The second half, though, would be a different story: Georgetown rallied behind some hot shooting and an uncharacteristic cold spell from Syracuse. With the game coming to its sunset, the Hoyas began fouling in an effort to extend the game. On a night when the Hoyas would need all the breaks they could get, Syracuse gave them extra chance after extra chance. With the game on the line, the Orange converted on only 1-of-8 free-throw opportunities. With the game tied at 50 and only five seconds left on the clock, Georgetown’s Eric “Sleepy” Floyd buried two free throws to put the Hoyas up a bucket. On the ensuing play, Syracuse’s Louis Orr missed a 30-foot attempt at the buzzer. Georgetown had done the impossible: The Hoyas walked into Manley Field House and stole not only a game, but the aura of the most menacing gym on the East Coast. Immediately after the game, “Big John” chose not to celebrate in quiet respect but rather as an avaricious child that just located the magical jar of never-ending cookies. Grabbing a microphone, Thompson declared in full throat, “Manley Field House is officially closed.” The rivalry was born: Syracuse fans had found their enemy and it was a six-foot, ten-inch blockhead that failed to maintain the functional aspects of an inner monologue.

Derrick Coleman battles Dikembe Mutombo in one of the many great match-ups between the two schools.

122 | Orange Tip-Off 2010–2011

Unlike most rivalries, which are built on geography, Georgetown-Syracuse was built on two platforms: competitive basketball and wanting to beat the brains out of John Thompson. These two tenets, while tenuous in the abstract, led to one of the most heated contests in all of college sports. As Syracuse continued to maintain its high profile, Georgetown upped its game, becoming a hard-nosed national contender. The Georgetown-Syracuse games in the 1980s were overtly intense and helped a fledgling Big East find a foothold in the country’s consciousness as well as support the nascent years of ESPN. While Thompson’s declaration on the night of Manley Field House’s farewell may have been the tipping point in the rivalry, the 1984 Big East Tournament championship was gasoline poured on the fire. Syracuse entered the game as the tournament’s two-seed, outfitted with flashy freshman point guard Dwayne “Pearl” Washington. Georgetown, the one-seed, featured Patrick Ewing and Michael Jackson, two thorns in the Orange’s side that helped the Hoyas sweep the season series against Syracuse.

Photo on previous page: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images Photo this page: Mitchell Layton

The winged sculpture is within your grasp! Wellington stares intently at his letter tray, which you’re convinced looks like a Polish surname. He furrows his brow and then, in a moment of complete nirvana for him, it happens: “rhythms.” It’s over. You’ve lost on the treachery of the letter “y.” It’s not quite a vowel and it’s not quite a consonant, but it doesn’t really matter because it just sealed your Scrabble coffin. As you reach out to congratulate your opponent, Wellington rises from his chair, sports a smarmy grin, and proceeds to relieve himself on your brand new white carpet. You’re stunned. This is appalling! This is despicable! This is how Georgetown-Syracuse started.

A Rivalry Renewed The two teams had split the regular season series and met as recently as the Sunday prior, with Georgetown smashing Syracuse 90–63. Unlike the year before, when two role players went toe to toe, this encounter would feature each team’s star getting into a brouhaha. Six minutes into the game, the Orange’s Pearl Washington was denying the Hoyas’ Patrick Ewing from getting position under the basket. Ewing, evincing the thuggery that most Syracuse fans believe is inherent in all that wear the Blue and Gray, wheeled and threw an elbow at the Orange star. Washington retaliated and Ewing countered with a short jab. Pearl responded in kind and landed a blow to Ewing’s “special region,” which felled the seven-foot behemoth to the arena’s floor. The benches emptied, with pleasantries exchanged from both sides. Georgetown would eventually win the game, but, more importantly, the Syracuse-Georgetown rivalry moved from the competitively impersonal to the personally competitive.

Photo at bottom: Marc Squire Photo at top: Mitchell Layton

Billy Owens takes his shot at Mutombo during one of their showdowns. The game was physical from the start. Ewing and Syracuse’s Andre Hawkins battled inside from the opening tip, with Ewing exhibiting dominance, despite the brutal struggle. Pearl Washington was at his best that night in his hometown, dropping in 27 points and making Georgetown’s backcourt look downright silly. With just under four minutes remaining and the Orange holding a three-point advantage, the Hoyas’ designated goon, Michael Graham, shoved Hawkins to the ground and flailed a left-handed punch at his face. Graham missed his target, but an official quickly ran to the scene and started shouting, “Out! Out!”, apparently insisting that Graham was ejected. After a discussion with Big John, however, the officials reversed their call, keeping Graham in the game and assessing only a common foul. Without the four free throws and possession of the basketball that would have followed the ejection, Syracuse eventually lost the game in the overtime, 82–71. So incensed was Jim Boeheim over Graham’s dastardly behavior, that he knocked over a chair in the post-game press conference and shouted, “Today, the best team didn’t win.” Four years prior, a mere declaration put a target on the back of Georgetown. Now, the Hoyas had resorted to physical violence. The temperature of the rivalry had moved up a tick, and in 1985 it would move up several more. In the 1985 Big East Tournament semifinals, Georgetown met Syracuse in a game that is simply known as “the Brawl.”

While the remainder of the ’80s and ’90s would continue to exhibit the ruthless desire each team had to literally and figuratively maim one another, the rivalry cooled when Thompson stepped away from the game and his longtime assistant coach, Craig Esherick, took over the reins of the Hoya program.

John Thompson III not only coaches in his father’s shadow, but he does it against his dad’s rival.

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History and tradition

Gerry McNamara knows a thing or two about beating Georgetown.

124 | Orange Tip-Off 2010–2011

The Orange stand united inside the United Center. John Thompson Jr. progeny search to find its new head coach. The result was John Thompson III, a man that not only grew up in the Georgetown tradition, but bears a striking resemblance to the university’s mascot. Thompson quickly resurrected the Hoya program, leading Georgetown to the 2007 Final Four. With the Hoyas’ competitiveness renewed, so too was Syracuse’s disdain for the Blue and Gray. The last five years have seen more than their share of great Georgetown-Syracuse moments: Gerry McNamara dropping a dagger three at the buzzer in the Verizon Center; Syracuse’s Kristof Ongenaet and Georgetown’s DaJuan Summers exchanging elbows and then expletive-laced screams at each other; the Hoyas’ Greg Monroe eviscerating Arinze Onuaku’s knee in the Big East Tournament last season, thereby ending the center’s Syracuse career and any hope the Orange had for a national championship. Most telling, however, was the January 2010 edition of the series that took place in the Carrier Dome. Mere hours after Syracuse had dispatched Marquette, members of Otto’s Army (the Orange’s student section) began camping outside the Carrier Dome for the Georgetown game. Syracuse wouldn’t meet the Hoyas for 48 hours, but the students endured the snow and wind and rain and chilly temperatures in order to pour into the Dome hours before the OrangeHoya showdown. The building was electric that night, with students and fans overflowing the seats. It was an atmosphere reminiscent of old: a Thompson and a Boeheim squaring off, two top-ten teams, and a national television audience glued to the action. It didn’t hurt that Syracuse won the game, sending all those Orange fans home happy. The rivalry is back, and let’s all hope it never fades again. MSP Matt Glaude is a 2002 Syracuse University graduate and writes Hoya Suxa, a blog his mother refuses to read.

Photo at top: Mitchell Layton Photo at bottom: Jim McIsaac

Esherick maintained all the necessaries Syracuse fans required in an antagonist: a mustache presumably borrowed from a 1970s primetime police drama, Hoya blood stemming from his time not only as a Georgetown assistant but also as a player, and the incontrovertible fact that he willingly chose to affiliate himself with a basketball program that had reared some of the most villainous players in college basketball history. There was one problem, though: Craig Esherick was an imbecile. The late 1990s and early 2000s were a sad period for Georgetown. The Hoyas faded from the national spotlight and took up residence in the mediocre middle of the Big East. Georgetown was no longer competing for NCAA bids, but rather hoping for secondary invitations to the NIT. The Hoyas were sporadically competitive, and with Syracuse still playing at a high level, the rivalry waned. New candidates emerged to occupy the Orange’s attention: Pittsburgh, Connecticut, and Villanova. Georgetown became an afterthought. A rivalry, no matter its force, cannot sustain itself unless each team can fight and potentially win. At that point, Georgetown could do neither. Finally, in 2004, the flame was lit again. The Hoyas ditched the G. Gordon Liddy lookalike and started a complete