CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — It was worth wondering, as Georgetown and Illinois traded leads Tuesday in front of a screeching crowd of 14,656 at State Farm Center, if the Hoyas and Fighting Illini had caught highlights of last week’s thrashing of Kentucky by Duke. Surely they must have at least seen the outcome. Maybe they even studied the box score.
How else could they have gotten the message so quickly? The credo is simple: This college basketball season belongs to the youths.
Okay, that’s every college basketball season. But this one has been rather pronounced.
In a thrilling 88-80 win over Illinois, Hoyas freshmen James Akinjo, Mac McClung and Josh LeBlanc carried Georgetown in what could be considered one of Coach Patrick Ewing’s signature victories in his young tenure. He earned it with a white towel draped over his shoulder — the trademark look of his college coach, John Thompson Jr.
“I’m still sweating,” Ewing said after the game, running the towel through his hands. “I pulled out my Coach Thompson with the towel.”
Ewing may have sweat, stamped and shouted through the tense final minutes Tuesday, but his youngest players executed his game plan to fruition.
Akinjo had 19 points on 6-for-11 shooting and seven assists, and he made all his seven of his free throws. With the Hoyas nursing a one-point lead with just under two minutes to play, the freshman point guard’s floater in the lane followed by an and-one sealed a lead for Georgetown.
“Give Georgetown credit. They made every play when they needed to make it,” Illinois Coach Brad Underwood said.
LeBlanc added 14 points and a team-high seven rebounds. McClung, who was heckled all night from a boisterous Illini student section, had 12 points and four assists. Sophomore Jahvon Blair had 11 points. Senior center Jessie Govan, who hasn’t played at his usual energy level in two out of three games this season, added 11 points as well.
Georgetown (3-0) took a slim lead with just under four minutes to play — the eighth lead change of the night — on a three-pointer from transfer Greg Malinowski off an assist from McClung that put the Hoyas up 73-72. A steal at midcourt and a breakaway for a reverse dunk from McClung made it 75-72.
The freshman from Virginia clenched his fists at his side and roared after that one. Ewing mopped his head with the towel, and not for the last time Tuesday.
“Heart. We have heart. That was a hard-fought game,” Ewing said. “We could have easily given up, but they kept on fighting. . . .
“I thought that [the freshmen] showed a lot of heart to be able to, one, take on the traps when they trapped us, and made it a helter-skelter game in the passing lane. Both James and Mac did an outstanding job of not only scoring, but also making plays.”
The Georgetown freshmen did not appear in a postgame news conference because they aren’t permitted to speak to the media until their second semester. They did their talking on the court instead.
McClung’s steal and breakaway dunk exemplified the type of flashy, electrifying plays the young players — on both sides of the court — came up with all night. Blair did his part with a trio of long three-pointers. At one point in the first half, Akinjo snatched the ball out of an Illinois player’s hands and sent it to McClung for a slick reverse layup, displaying a chemistry they fostered during the summer. McClung fit in his requisite dunk, a two-hand reverse. LeBlanc had a one-handed dunk of his own.
Illinois (1-1) is also a young team, with six new players and two transfers this season. Its youth challenged Georgetown until the final minutes despite missing sophomore starting guard Trent Frazier, who was out with a concussion. Ayo Dosunmu, the Illinois native whom Ewing recruited out of high school, went up against Akinjo and came away with a game-high 25 points. Freshman forward Giorgi Bezhanishvili added 12 for the Illini.
Illini fans went wild all night for their youngsters. It was easily the most hostile environment the Hoyas have faced in a nonconference matchup in Ewing’s two years as coach. The Illini student section, just a few paces back from the court, heckled lustily throughout the game, and Malinowski noted how important it was that Georgetown upped its energy accordingly.
“I think coming into the hostile environment this early on this season is critical, especially going on the road, coming up on Jamaica then going on the road at Syracuse,” Malinowski said, referencing Georgetown’s tournament in Jamaica this week. “This is going to help us tremendously. This environment is something you don’t get very often. For the young guys, it’s something we’ll be able to take advantage of.
“It’s tough to do what they’re doing right now. This crowd is crazy loud . . . so to come in here and play as freshmen, starting, and do this well, it’s very good to see.”
