Incredible feats keep the Hoyas winning

Jessie Sapp had six of Georgetown's record-17 three pointers in the Hoyas' 82-63 win over Villanova. Mark Goldman/Icon SMI

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NEW YORK -- It seems the Big East's "luckiest" team has done it again, folks.

Yep, that's right. The Georgetown Hoyas, two-time defending league champion, returning Final Four team and, if you believe Rick Pitino, the East Coast's nightly equivalent to Josh Shipp shooting it over the backboard, pulled another rabbit out of its hat here Thursday. You would hardly believe this latest stunt.

Here's what they did in their quarterfinal matchup with Villanova at Madison Square Garden: Allowed their all-everything center to sit nearly the entire second half with foul trouble and go the entire game without scoring, manage to make a tourney-record 17 three-pointers and run away from the Wildcats with a 30-8 second-half scoring surge to win 82-63.

Honestly. Who do they think they're fooling?

"People can call us lucky if they want," Jessie Sapp said after pacing this so-called miracle with 23 points on 6-of-9 three-point shooting. "We're just going to keep doing what we do and see what happens. Maybe the 'luck' will run out."

Despite repeating as Big East champion, sporting both a better overall record (26-4) and conference record (15-3) than they did prior to their Final Four run a year ago, despite sitting in line for the same exact NCAA tournament seed (No. 2) in the same exact region (the East) as did that team, this year's Hoyas haven't generated nearly as much buzz nationally. Frankly, the main sentiment they seem to inspire is lack-of-confidence.

After all, is it really asking so much for a team that returned the nation's most touted center, Roy Hibbert, and fellow Final Four cogs Sapp, Jonathan Wallace and DaJuan Summers to not live so dangerously on a seemingly nightly basis? Yes, the Hoyas went 7-3 against the Big East's top eight teams during the regular season, but amazingly, six of those seven wins came by three points or less, two of them in overtime.

Pitino, coach of the Louisville team that finished a game behind the Hoyas in the final standings obviously thinks so. Following Georgetown's 55-52 title-clinching win over the Cardinals in last weekend's regular-season finale, Pitino felt the need to point out the Hoyas' suspicious bounty of favorable finishes -- a potential Patrick Ewing, Jr. goaltending call at West Virginia that went uncalled, the questionable touch foul against Villanova that allowed the Hoyas to shoot game-winning free throws, Hibbert's improbable game-winning three-pointer against Connecticut.

"They've been lucky," said Pitino. "And obviously good teams get luck, but on a goaltending call, on a push out-of-bounds, on a Hibbert three. ... God bless them, they're closer to heaven than we are."

You'll have to excuse Pitino if he sounds a little bitter. Unlike Georgetown, his team -- which many believe is a much more viable Final Four threat than the Hoyas -- hasn't been nearly as fortunate when it comes to late-game heroics. Louisville played nine conference games that got decided by five points or less or in overtime but won only four of them.

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