Little to Draw On for These Hoyas

Top-ranked Duke helped unranked Georgetown attract a sellout crowd of 20,193 to a nonconference game in the MCI Center at Washington.

Times -- and arenas -- have changed since Georgetown’s last sellout, when Allen Iverson was a standout player, John Thompson was the coach and the Hoyas filled the now-demolished U.S. Airways Arena in March 1996.

Until Saturday, Georgetown’s largest home crowd this season was 8,194 for a game against Rutgers. The Hoyas drew only 7,203 fans to a game earlier in the week against traditional rival St. John’s, a matchup that used to define the Big East Conference.

Lately, the conference’s power base has shifted away from Georgetown and St. John’s to Connecticut and Syracuse.

Most of the fans in the upper deck Saturday were rooting for Duke. They had plenty to cheer about as the Blue Devils raced away from the Hoyas with a 27-5 run over a seven-minute span that gave Duke a 48-24 halftime lead.

Duke (16-1) went on to rout the Hoyas, 85-66, winning its 13th consecutive game. Georgetown, a national power under Thompson, who recruited players such as Iverson, Patrick Ewing and Alonzo Mourning, is 11-4 after a 10-0 start.

Duke won with 61% shooting in the first half and 56% shooting for the game. The Blue Devils trailed only once -- at 12-10. Their average margin of victory during their winning streak is 23.4 points.

Shelden Williams had 26 points on 12-for-15 shooting, and Chris Duhon had 17 on seven-for-nine shooting for the Blue Devils.

“Williams was very effective down in the post,” Georgetown Coach Craig Esherick said. “We had no answer for him, absolutely none. That game was over early. But for some substitutions by Mike [Krzyzewski, Duke coach], it could have gotten a little uglier than that.”

No. 700 Denied

Temple erased a 23-point deficit in the second half against Massachusetts, but failed to give Coach John Chaney his 700th victory. A 66-65 Atlantic 10 loss kept Chaney from joining Bob Knight, Lou Henson, Eddie Sutton and Lute Olson as the only active coaches with 700 or more victories.

Chaney’s legacy extends beyond mere wins and losses, making his mark with 6 a.m. practices so his players can be free to spend the rest of the day on their studies. He also has instituted a policy of collecting his players’ cellphones and computer games after 10 p.m. when the team is on the road, with an assistant coach stuffing them in a bag.

The telephone bag was ringing the other night, with Chaney trying to reach one his players. He had forgotten his policy and pitched a fit.

“You were trying to trick us,” an unnamed player complained to Chaney the next day.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I tried to trick you,” the coach said.

Shaky Handles

Auburn’s poor ballhandling against Florida’s full-court press cost the Tigers against the No. 17 Gators at Gainesville, Fla.

At one point late in the first half, the Tigers had more turnovers (15) than shots (14) and trailed the Gators by 10 points.

Matters improved only marginally in the second half for the Tigers, who dropped a 68-52 Southeastern Conference victory into the laps of the Gators.

“I was shocked when I heard the news,” Auburn forward Marco Killingsworth said of the Tigers’ first-half woes. “I thought we’d have been down by 19 or something.”

Florida forced 22 turnovers, many with its full-court press. When Gator Coach Billy Donovan chucked the press after his players tired in the second half, Auburn cut the deficit to two points twice.

But the Tigers got no closer.

“Some guys had never been here before,” said Killingsworth, who led Auburn with 17 points and 11 rebounds. “They’re not used to this kind of environment, and we were just turning it over, turning it over, left and right.”

Wild Blue Yonder

See Air Force, but think Princeton.

Coach Joe Scott brought to Air Force the motion offense that Pete Carril made famous at Princeton. Scott spent eight seasons as an assistant to Carril after playing for him, then left for Air Force in 2000.

It’s taken a while, but success has taken root at a school that last had a winning season in 1977-78. A 74-52 victory over Brigham Young in a Mountain West game gave the Falcons a 13-2 record, the best start in school history.

Not bad for a team whose tallest player, center Nick Welch, stands 6 feet 8. Welch scored a career-high 20 points on nine-for-10 shooting against BYU.

“I got a little discouraged my first year,” said Scott, 38, who had 29 victories in his first three seasons at Air Force. “I had never been involved with a losing program and I didn’t understand how deep that could run. I didn’t change my expectations of winning, but I had to adjust to not expecting my players to do more than they could.”

Grumpy Bearcats

No. 6 Cincinnati was so upset about a 93-66 loss to No. 5 Louisville earlier in the week that an 83-47 win Saturday over Southern Mississippi did little to ease the Bearcats’ pain. In fact, Coach Bob Huggins and his players were still steaming mad.

“Wednesday night, do you know there was like 5 million people watching that game, watching us get our tails kicked,” Tony Babbitt said after scoring 19 points against Southern Mississippi. “We still got that in our mind. Like ‘Coach Hug’ said, he had never been beat like that. That was embarrassing.

“Today, we wanted to come out and get a little stress off our shoulders, but it’s still on our shoulders because that was embarrassing, man.”

Beware of Badgers

The road to the Big Ten championship would appear to go through Madison, Wis., where No. 21 Wisconsin won its 24th consecutive home game and 20th in a row in conference play. Illinois was no match for the Badgers, who won, 76-56. Devin Harris and Mike Wilkinson had career highs of 30 and 24 points, respectively.

“If Harris plays like that and Wilkinson played like that, if your best players rise up and play special games like that in big games, they’re going to be up there at the end of the year,” Illinois Coach Bruce Weber said of the Badgers, 13-3, 4-1 in the Big Ten.

*

Times wire services contributed to this report.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Patsy Decline

Georgetown, noted for beating up on weak nonconference opposition in the 1980s under John Thompson, has performed in similar fashion against non-Big East foes in November and December under current Coach Craig Esherick, going 9-0 this season. The Hoyas, however, have reached the NCAA tournament only once under Esherick, who took over for Thompson midway through the 1998-99 season. A look at Georgetown’s record against nonconference opponents in November and December, its final record and how far it advanced in the NCAA tournament for the last 10 seasons and the 1980s:

*--* LAST 1980s UNDER 10 THOMPSON SEASON S Season Nonconf. Final NCAA Season Nonconf. Final NCAA 2002-03 8-2 19-15 Didn’ 1980-81 7-5 20-12 First t round quali fy 2001-02 9-3 19-11 Didn’ 1981-82 11-2 30-7 National t final quali fy 2000-01 11-0 25-8 Round 1982-83 9-3 22-10 Second of 16 round 1999-2 8-3 19-15 Didn’ 1983-84 10-1 34-3 National 000 t champion quali fy 1998-99 7-2 15-16 Didn’ 1984-85 11-0 35-3 National t final quali fy 1997-98 6-1 16-15 Didn’ 1985-86 9-1 24-8 Second t round quali fy 1996-97 8-1 20-10 First 1986-87 9-0 29-5 Round of round eight 1995-96 10-1 29-8 Round 1987-88 9-1 20-10 Second of round eight 1994-95 7-1 21-10 Round 1988-89 9-0 29-5 Round of of 16 eight 1993-94 6-1 19-12 Secon 1989-90 9-0 24-7 Second d round round

*--*

DISHONOR ROLL

Nonconference opponents that Georgetown has compiled a 96-0 record against since the 1970s: Bethune-Cookman, Coastal Carolina, Delaware State, District of Columbia, Elon, Grambling, Hawaii Hilo, Hawaii Loa, Hawaii Pacific, Howard, Maryland Baltimore County, Maryland Eastern Shore, Morgan State, Quincy, Saint Leo (a Division II school located outside Tampa, Fla., that the Hoyas have defeated 17 consecutive times by an average score of 92-53), Shenandoah, Washburn and Wheeling.