We walked into the game after an embarrassing collapse against Louisville, decked 2 spots in the rankings, and blessed with a 13.5 point spread. What did we do? We needed a gift from the referees in the last second to pull out a win.

Thats not to say we wouldn’t have pulled it out in overtime - I think we would have. But, man, am I grateful we got that call.

Was Wallace hit? Yes. Definitely. But even a die-hard Hoya fan has to admit a call 70 fet from the hoop with .1 on the clock is ridiculious. Still, I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Roy eventually got hot in the 2nd half and scored his customary 13 points, but I think the guys need to play with more consistency. We don’t have the luxury of having Jeff Green to step it up in crunch time. However, across the board, this team is more talented than last year’s model. The catch is we need to be consistent to make up for not having the go-to guy in the clutch. We have 5 starters capable of making that shot, but all five need to be more reliable in that role.

Next Up - Saturday at ‘Cuse.

• ESPN Covers the win

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Well, we have a chance tonight at home against Villanova to make up for Saturday’s loss to Louisville, and we better make a statement. Though the Hoyas are sitting as 13.5 point favorites against ‘Nova, there are a lot of question marks about this team as we make the final push into the Big East tournament and the NCAAs.

ESPN’s Andy Glockner sums it up in his numerical analysis of the most likely #1 seeds in the tourney (of which, at this point, I think we are a longshot for):

The Hoyas’ numbers might have been the most shocking thing in this exercise, but in thinking about them, they make sense. Georgetown beat UConn on a last-second 3, beat West Virginia on a last-second block and beat Syracuse by two in OT. Toss in the Memphis loss, and you have a team that’s 5-2 against the top 100 (actually the top 50) with a median performance on offense that’s actually worse than their defense. The Hoyas will have more chances down the stretch to improve, but right now these numbers suggest that they are indeed a vulnerable team against comparable opposition. That shouldn’t be totally surprising, since they were all but eliminated in the Sweet 16 last season by Vanderbilt. Right now, their numbers suggest that kind of ceiling this season, even though their overall field goal percentage differential is outstanding.

This is a long way from my undergrad days, when making the NIT was a big deal, but most Hoya fans were hoping for the team to challenge for the title. While we can certainly be competitive in that regard, I would love to see the team step it up a notch in the next 3 weeks to show we can really hang with the big boys.

In brighter news, it is always nice to see such flattering profiles of the Hoyas - in this case, Roy Hibbert and John Thompson III - in the papers of the opposing team. It is nice a sign of respect - especially coming from Philly, which is famous for not giving an inch when it comes to attacking their opponents in the press (see their recent coverage of the Mets acquisition of Johan Santana).

Later, we will take a look at the ‘Nova Matchup tonight.

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