Georgetown is done. Virginia is back

Programs in contrast on a Tuesday in January

Photo credit: Associated Press

There were a ludicrous number of capital-G, capital-M Georgetown Moments™ in the final few minutes of Tuesday night’s 86-83 overtime loss at Creighton. Any of them could function as the avatar for the Hoyas’ season, and for Ed Cooley’s wildly disappointing tenure overall.

There was the sheer raw luck of the regulation buzzer-beater that wasn’t, as close a hand-to-ball-to-glance-at-the-clock heartbreaker as any we can remember in the past decade — a raw coin flip that went the wrong way.

There was Vince Iwuchukwu, playing for the third time after a 10-game absence, and playing well, and then jumping for an overtime tipoff that the Hoyas were 0.1 seconds away from snuffing out of existence in the first place before landing awkwardly and limping off the floor. There were some promising flashes of offensive skill from a team whose defense and toughness was supposed to be its thing — K.J. Lewis stepbacks here, Julius Halaifonua reads there. There were 83 points in 64 trips. There was fight. There was real visible effort, despite it all.

But, in the end, there was one perfect symbolic candidate, one sequence that crystallized it all.

Overtime. Nine seconds left. Georgetown trailing by two. Creighton shooting free throws. (Why there were just nine seconds left — and not, say, 20, if Ed Cooley’s team hadn’t let the Bluejays burn time for no obvious reason — is anyone’s guess.) Creighton guard Josh Dix needed to make two to more or less seal the game. Dix hit the first. He missed the second.

Lewis skied for an uncontested rebound. Creighton sprinted back. A potent transition player, at least in a past life, Lewis flew up the floor. He picked up a ballscreen a few feet below the half court line. He swerved it. The Creighton defenders were scrambling, on their back heels. Lewis arrived in the middle of the floor and looked up. He saw a wide open, potentially game-tying, top-of-the-key 3 — about as good a look as you could hope in this situation.

Five seconds left. Lewis lifted. Whistle. Ed Cooley called timeout.

Lewis airballed that shot. Maybe he airballed it because the timeout was called and he felt it coming and that’s what players do when someone whistles during their release; they just sort of chuck it up. Maybe Lewis was always going to airball it. Maybe the attempt looked more open than it would have without the timeout. Maybe if Georgetown beats the regulation buzzer Iwuchukwu plays the rest of the season healthy. Maybe. There’s no way to know.

What we do know is that Cooley saw that promising final possession developing and immediately snuffed it out. He huddled with his players. (Though, it should be said, not until he had thoroughly harangued the referees over a correct non-call on a Lewis drive like three trips earlier, where Lewis could have just as easily been called for a push-off, and which Georgetown absolutely should have forgotten about by that point.) When Cooley broke the huddle and the Hoyas walked into their set, Greg McDermott called his own timeout, giving Cooley even more time to think things over.

This is the possession that ensued:

Yes, that is another K.J. Lewis 3 from basically the exact same spot, only this time from a dead ball SLOB, featuring exactly one pass, in front of a totally prepared defense! That was the play Ed Cooley drew up.

So, yeah: That was the moment, more than any other, that summed up Georgetown’s 2025-26 season — and frankly Cooley’s entire time on the Hilltop to date.

Context matters. Tough breaks happen. But at some point the coach is just doing a bad job.