Georgetown Basketball

Former Georgetown center and current Charlotte Hornets associate head coach Patrick Ewing is being considered for the Hoyas' head coaching vacancy.

Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical reported the situation is "complicated" because of Ewing's close relationship with John Thompson, the father of former Georgetown coach John Thompson III. The elder Thompson was Ewing's coach when he played at Georgetown in the 1980s.

Ewing, 54, has been an NBA assistant since 2002 but has never received a head coaching job. Resistant to college jobs in the past, Ewing could be tempted by the allure of bringing his alma mater back to prominence.

Thompson III was fired Thursday after a 13-year run as head coach. The Hoyas went 14-18 this past season, their second straight losing campaign. They had not been under .500 in consecutive years since 1972-73 and 1973-74, the elder Thompson's first two seasons at the university.

Wojnarowski reported Ewing was "emotional" regarding Thompson III's firing. While respect ran high for the younger Thompson within Georgetown circles, it was Big John's presence that really has caused some hesitation.

"Everyone knows a change needs to be made," one former player told ESPN's Jeff Goodman. "But no one will dare stand up and say it."

Goodman highlighted Thompson's presence as something that could "scare" potential coaches away from taking the vacancy. He has remained close to the program in the nearly two decades since leaving the school and only expanded his relationship with the university during his son's tenure.

Georgetown fired head basketball coach John Thompson III on Thursday, ending a successful 13-year run in which he became the school's second-winningest head coach.

Nicole Auerbach of USA Today provided a statement:

https://twitter.com/NicoleAuerbach/status/844972002058342400

Thompson, the son of legendary Hoyas coach John Thompson, went 278–151 during his tenure. The Hoyas made eight NCAA tournaments, including the 2007 Final Four, but had fallen off since the inception of the new Big East conference.

Georgetown went 14-18 in 2016-17, its second straight losing season. The Hoyas have missed the tournament in three of the four years since the dissolution of the original Big East.

"First and foremost, our fans are terrific and have been terrific," Thompson III told Goodman. "They've experienced some good times with us, and now, with the stretch we are having, I understand their frustration. There is no one more frustrated than I am. We are accustomed to winning. I know that our players and staff are working hard and playing hard. No one cares more about this program and its tradition than I do."

Discord reached its apex during this past season, when former Hoyas and people close to the university began ripping Thompson in the media.

"Everyone knows a change needs to be made," one former player told Goodman. "But no one will dare stand up and say it."

Uneasiness abounds within the program because of the continued presence of John Thompson, the legend colloquially known as Big John who still has close ties to the team. Big John, who built the program from obscurity into national prominence in the 1980s, was a fixture during his son's tenure and has massive influence behind the scenes.

Goodman noted Big John's presence could "scare" potential coaches who have interest in the job. That could lead to someone with Thompson family ties being favored in the search, perhaps to not alienate anyone involved.

Patrick Ewing, a former Thompson protege who is perhaps the greatest player in school history, could be a fit. The current Charlotte Hornets assistant has rebuffed college opportunities in the past, but Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical noted the Georgetown opening could give him "pause."

Either way, this will be anything but a straightforward hiring process.

Barring an improbable championship run in the Big East men's basketball tournament, the Georgetown Hoyas will miss the NCAA tournament for the second time in as many seasons and third time since the 2013-14 campaign. 

Those facts would figure to put head coach John Thompson III on the hot seat.

However, four former Georgetown players told ESPN.com's Jeff Goodman the program has been resistant to change because his father's presence still looms large.

"Everyone knows a change needs to be made," a former player told Goodman. "But no one will dare stand up and say it."

Another ex-Hoya told Goodman his request for anonymity was borne out of "loyalty and fear." Specifically, the player said, "Fear of Big John and where you stand. You don't mess with him."

Thompson III owns a .651 winning percentage over 13 seasons with the Hoyas, but the program hasn't produced up to its high standards over the past four years. 

Season	W-L	NCAA Tournament Finish
2010-11	21-11	Lost to No. 11 seed VCU in Round of 64
2011-12	24-9	Lost to No. 11 seed N.C. State in Round of 32
2012-13	25-7	Lost to No. 15 seed Florida Gulf Coast in Round of 64
2013-14	18-15	------
2014-15	22-11	Lost to No. 5 seed Utah in Round of 32
2015-16	15-18	------
2016-17	14-16	To Be Determined

Dating back to the start of the 2013-14 season, Georgetown is 69-60 overall. And with just one game remaining this season—Saturday against the second-ranked Villanova Wildcats—Georgetown has locked up a losing record in the regular season for the second year in a row. 

There's also the matter of the Hoyas' repeated failures in the NCAA tournament under Thompson III. 

Although the Hoyas reached the Final Four in 2007 with Roy Hibbert and Jeff Green leading the charge, they haven't won more than a single tournament game in a given year since that run. 

"I love the school, and he's a really, really good man," another former player said of Thompson III. "But he's just not getting it done."

Now locked into a ninth-place finish in the Big East and a daunting road ahead in the conference tournament, Thompson III will try to rip off an upset or two in order to provide a small silver lining to look back on following another disappointing season in the nation's capital. 

Stats courtesy of Sports Reference. 

Georgetown Hoyas forward Isaac Copeland has decided to transfer.

Jeff Goodman of ESPN passed along the news Monday and pointed to Copeland's decreased role.

Copeland, who was averaging 19.6 minutes per game this season after playing 32 minutes a night in 2015-16, arrived at Georgetown as a highly touted recruit. He was a 4-star prospect and the No. 6 power forward in the class of 2014, per Scout, and was seen as someone who could stretch the floor with his three-point shooting and battle for rebounds down low.

He isn't the only transfer from Georgetown's 2014 class. Forward Paul White transferred to Oregon before the 2016-17 season as a former 4-star prospect, per Scout.

Copeland largely lived up to the hype that surrounded his game last season and averaged a career-high 11.1 points and 5.4 rebounds per game. He wasn't lights out from behind the three-point line at 27.2 percent, but he posed enough of a risk that defenses had to account for him on the perimeter.

However, the production has been lacking this season, and he missed all 10 of his three-point attempts before deciding to transfer. He also shot an abysmal 27.5 percent from the field after hitting nearly 43 percent of his shots in 2015-16 and 45.1 percent of his field-goal attempts as a freshman:

Season	Minutes	Points	Rebounds	Field-Goal Percentage	Three-Point Percentage
2014-15	20.0	6.8	3.8	45.1	38.9
2015-16	32.0	11.1	5.4	42.9	27.2
2016-17	19.6	5.4	3.3	27.5	0.0

Gene Wang of the Washington Post noted the decreased playing time was about more than just a straight decrease in production.

According to Wang, injuries and "an influx of new players" led to fewer minutes for Copeland. He didn't even play in the Hoyas' 93-78 victory over La Salle on Saturday and appeared for just five minutes in the prior game against Elon.

Wang pointed to the presence of graduate transfer Rodney Pryor and increased playing time for Marcus Derrickson and Kaleb Johnson as reasons for Copeland's diminished role.

Seeing how he wasn't nearly as significantly involved in the rotation this season, Georgetown should still have enough pieces to survive Copeland's transfer. It is riding a four-game winning streak after a 2-4 start but hits the road to face rival Syracuse on Saturday, where it will rely even more on Pryor, Derrickson and Johnson to carry the load without its former highly regarded recruit.

The Georgetown Hoyas found the floor general to lead the offense a few years from now, securing the commitment of 4-star point guard Tremont Waters on Wednesday.

Notre Dame High School shared a clip of Waters making his decision:

Congratulations Tremont Waters on picking Georgetown today. ND Nation looking forward to watching you play this winter. #ctbb pic.twitter.com/ZBNKaCiZXM

— Notre Dame HSWH (@notredamewh) October 19, 2016

"The feeling I had when I went to Georgetown, everyone pretty much welcomed me into the family," Waters said, according to College Basketball Talk's Travis Hines. "I feel like they’re saying I won’t be there for four years, but I’ll be a part of the family the rest of my life."

Waters is the No. 10 point guard and No. 36 player overall in the 2017 recruiting class on Scout.

Scout's Evan Daniels thinks Waters is a big addition for Georgetown:

Tremont Waters is a significant pledge for John Thompson III. Crafty, good facilitator & high-level shot maker from 3.

— Evan Daniels (@EvanDaniels) October 19, 2016

The overall trend is for point guards to not only run the offense, but also be high-volume scorers. Whereas John Stockton and Jason Kidd once set the gold standard at the position, Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard and Kyrie Irving represent the new generation.

The West Haven, Connecticut, native should fit into the latter mold. He's a good ball-handler and passer, as well as a relatively strong shooter. In 20 games with his AAU team, Expressions Elite, Waters shot 41.4 percent from the field, including 34.3 percent from beyond the arc, according to D1 Circuit.

Ideally, Waters can improve to a point where he is able to pose a greater threat from three-point range. While he can keep opposing defenses honest by hitting the occasional three, the shot isn't a major part of his offensive arsenal.

Even if that doesn't happen, though, Waters has more than enough talent to make an impact on a major power at the college level.

Expressions Elite shared a highlight tape of Waters on Twitter, and his passing ability and dribbling stand out in a big way:

https://twitter.com/XEliteBasketbal/status/758108420545318912

Size is one concern that Waters can do little to fix. According to Scout, he measures in at 5'11", 155 pounds. While he'll likely put on some more weight as he gets older, it's doubtful he'll get much taller.

Waters won't let his frame be a major hindrance in terms of his impact. He's not afraid to get into the paint, and when he's not scoring himself, he has the intelligence to find an open teammate when the defense collapses on him.

Waters will be Georgetown's primary ball-handler when he's on the floor, because he can be somewhat anonymous otherwise. Playing him anywhere other than point guard—where he can control the offense—isn't maximizing his skill set.

The 18-year-old is a great addition for the Hoyas, and he should make an immediate impact when he arrives in Washington, D.C.

Gheorghe Muresan's son, George, will join the Georgetown Hoyas basketball program as a walk-on. 

Rob Dauster of NBCSports.com reported the news of Muresan's commitment Wednesday, indicating the young forward's high school, St. Andrew's, announced his next step.

Muresan stands at 6'9" and has more of a finessed skill set than his father, who towers at 7'7" and enjoyed a solid NBA career, primarily with the Washington Bullets.

In addition to boasting a shooting range that extends to the three-point arc, the younger Muresan plays strong with the ball. He more often than not gets his offense with his back to the basket and makes quick, decisive moves in the post.

The teenager also shows a knack for blocking shots on the defensive end, with excellent timing on his jumps and a penchant for crashing the glass. His tenacity and evident competitiveness should serve him well at Georgetown.

Muresan's father offered an evaluation of his son as a player in January, per the Washington Post's Brandon Parker: “He trust shot a lot more better than last year. I'm very proud of him. When I miss game, I feel bad. I tell him all the time, most important is not basketball; just have fun. I don't want him to be me. He's way more smarter than I was."

George Muresan may have a hard time carving out minutes with the Hoyas, but he will be close to his current home of Potomac, Maryland, by going to the nation's capital. Should he acquit himself well there, Muresan may have the opportunity to transfer down the road if he desires additional minutes.

The fact Muresan was able to stand out enough on a strong St. Andrew's team—despite averaging 5.8 points as of late January, per Parker—to be given a priority walk-on spot at a big-time program in Georgetown bodes well for his basketball future.

If he continues to grow and comes closer to his father's height, Muresan's ceiling as a player may well increase.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Radford 82, Georgetown 80.

It felt like some kind of egregious misprint. How does the team projected by CBS Sports to finish in second place in the Big East lose its home opener to the team projected by Mid-Major Madness to finish in ninth place in the Big South?

There are a handful of shocking results on the first weekend of every college basketball season, but this one was particularly unfathomable.

Shortly thereafter, the Hoyas were 1-3.

Out of sight.

Out of mind.

They weren't nearly out of hope or talent, though.

The loss to Radford will no doubt be the biggest blemish tarnishing Georgetown's projected NCAA tournament seed and AP rank for the next several months, but keep in mind this team lost four seniors who played a combined 85.6 minutes per game last season. The Hoyas were still figuring out who fit into which roles, while Radford had five seniors—four of which have been with that program for all four years—log at least 28 minutes in the game.

It happens.

Much more importantly, they immediately bounced back by pushing projected Big Ten champion Maryland to the limit on its home court, beating Wisconsin on a neutral court by a double-digit margin and coming within a few inches of beating a Duke team with legitimate aspirations of back-to-back national championships.

If that type of November effort isn't a sign of a team that's going to make some noise in March, what is?

Head coach John Thompson III is already seeing the dividends from his team's very difficult early schedule.

"You hope as a coach and as a team that those experiences help prepare you going forward," he said after Saturday's win over former Big East rival Syracuse. "We had a lot of discussions in the last couple weeks on the key point in the game. It's not necessarily the last minute of the game. It's, 'OK, right now, they've hit two baskets in a row. We have to get a stop right now.'"

He drove his point home by forcefully tapping his hand on the table.

"'We have to get a rebound right now. We have to get a good possession right now.' And I think just in talking through that and watching that, that focus I think was there today. In the middle of the second half when they could have gained energy, we did a good job of making sure they didn't."

That November experience led to some December dominance against then-No. 14 Syracuse, as the Hoyas looked the part of a team on a meteoric rise.

For some reason, though, the Hoyas aren't surging in the national polls.

Despite impressive wins over Wisconsin and Syracuse, Georgetown received exactly four votes in the AP Top 25 for a third consecutive week on Monday, all from Graham Couch of the Lansing State Journal. It seems he's the only voter who gets how talented the Hoyas are:

Most of Georgetown's losses are better than half of the @AP_Top25's wins. Georgetown shouldn't be your complaint. https://t.co/BzBjG8I2e7

— Graham Couch (@Graham_Couch) December 2, 2015

If Syracuse interim head coach Mike Hopkins had a vote, things might be a bit different. He had nothing but praise for the Hoyas in the aftermath of his team's loss Saturday.

"I give Georgetown a lot of credit," said Hopkins in the postgame press conference. "They played great defense. I thought they were really active; played tough and aggressive. ... Georgetown's a good basketball team."

The funny thing is what Hopkins saw wasn't even close to the best version of the Hoyas that we'll see this year. L.J. Peak, Paul White and D'Vauntes Smith-Rivera were all expected to be huge contributors for Georgetown this season, but they each had a pretty uneventful afternoon.

Rather, against the program that has become synonymous with the 2-3 zone—a defense designed to frustrate the heck out of opposing big men—the Georgetown fans in the Verizon Center were once again treated to the Bradley Hayes and Marcus Derrickson show.

Not familiar with those names?

You're certainly not alone.

Derrickson is a 4-star freshman, according to 247Sports, evaluated as the 83rd-best recruit in the country. ESPN's scouts had him in the same ballpark at No. 89 in the 2015 ESPN 100. Both sites had teammate Jessie Govan ranked as the freshman more likely to make an immediate frontcourt impact.

Instead, Derrickson is the one who has started all eight games, the one who has two double-doubles and the one who had several folks in Saturday's media room professing that the freshman is already the best player on the entire roster.

"Marcus is a basketball player," said Thompson III. "He gives us a physical presence out there that we need. He makes good basketball plays, and at the end of the day, he can shoot. He's a freshman. He's coming along. But he's going to get there."

At least Derrickson was somewhere on the radar before the year began.

Player	PPG	RPG	O-Rating	D-Rating	Double-Doubles	Misc.
Bradley Hayes	11.9	6.9	110.6	94.3	2	58.5 FG%
Marcus Derrickson	7.1	5.3	112.2	95.4	2	94.4 FT%

Hayes, on the other hand, entered the season as a completely unheralded senior. He had scored a grand total of 30 points over the previous three years, never once logging more than 13 minutes in an individual game.

That feels like a lifetime ago, though, because he's averaging just under 12 points and seven rebounds per game through his first eight contests this season.

"I'll tell ya, he's got to be one of the most improved players in the country," said Hopkins of Hayes. "He's big and he's got a great touch around the basket. ... He killed us."

With Hayes the only returning player taller than 6'9", there were some serious concerns about what Georgetown's frontcourt would look like after losing Joshua Smith and Mikael Hopkins to graduation, but Big John knew the Hoyas were in good hands.

John Thompson Jr. looked on from media row Saturday. While waiting for both Hayes and his son to finish their postgame television interviews, he smiled for a selfie with one college-aged fan before whimsically covering the face of an eight-year-old whose father wanted a picture of his boy with the legendary coach.

To say the least, the man has mellowed out a bit since his days as the cantankerous head coach of Hoya Paranoia.

But there was nothing sedated about the bear hug he gave Hayes once he was finally freed from the TV cameras. Nor the "Amen to that!" he bellowed from the back of the postgame press conference when one reporter recounted Hopkins' praise for Hayes.

"Unfortunately, I didn't get to play those last three years against Syracuse that much, and there was a lot built up aggression toward that," said Hayes. "To be able to come out here and play and show how hard I worked to this moment, it just felt good."

"And he will have a lot more moments like today before this year's over," added Thompson III, pausing for a beat before turning to look at his newfound star. "Right?"

Hayes couldn't hold back the smile. After years of tireless and anonymous effort, coach is counting on him to be the driving force behind a serious threat to win the Big East.

If you think that's crazy talk, you're putting way too much emphasis on what happened against Radford.

Hayes, Derrickson and Isaac Copeland are already playing like potential Big East all-conference stars. Imagine how good Georgetown could be when its starting shooting guard (Peak) starts shooting better than 25 percent from three-point range, when its starting point guard (Smith-Rivera) starts playing with the urgency of a senior who came back for one final year to improve his draft stock and when its most important bench player (White) is healthy enough to start contributing.

Sleep on the Hoyas at your own risk. This team has already been battle-tested and they're only going to continue to improve from here.

All quotes and information obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.

Giants once walked the land of Georgetown basketball. Not just in stature, like 7-footers Patrick Ewing and Dikembe Mutombo, but also in defensive toughness, athleticism and attitude. The Hoyas, three-time NCAA finalists and the 1984 national champions, used to be kings.

But Georgetown in recent years has gone from feared lion to paper tiger. It has become stylish, even profitable, to pick against it in the early rounds of the NCAA tournament. And for good reason. The Hoyas have just three tournament wins since 2008 and have lost to a team seeded 10th or worse in four of their last five appearances.

Their latest defeat came last Saturday, a 75-64 loss to No. 5 Utah.

How did the Hoyas fall so far? And, more importantly, how can they climb back to the top? It's mostly good news for Georgetown's alums and admirers. They don't have too far to go to restore their winning ways.

Here are a few key elements that will help.

Defense

The hallmark of Georgetown's most stalwart teams is defense. Hoya guards relentlessly pressured ball-handlers, while big men sent back anything that came to the rim. Opponents knew that, against Georgetown, a good shot would be hard to come by.

Georgetown brought incredible defensive intensity as recently as 2013, explains Jeffrey Haley of SB Nation. At the time, the Hoyas defense was in the top five in the nation, and it earned them a No. 2 seed in that year's tournament. This season, by contrast, Georgetown ranked 140th in points per game allowed. In order to get back to its winning ways, Georgetown must make stingy defense a top priority again. If it doesn't, tournament woes like these will continue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESmEAuHQyqc

Recruiting

In any sport, talent is the biggest separator, and Georgetown has seen promise from this year's freshman class. Tre Campbell, Isaac Copeland, LJ Peak and Paul White comprised one of the more heralded freshman classes in the country, according to ESPN, and they played an increasingly larger role on the team as the season wore on.

Coach John Thompson III also received commitments in the Class of 2015 from 4-star recruits Jessie Govan, Kaleb Johnson and Marcus Derrickson. Thompson expects their length and athleticism to provide matchup problems on offense and help his defense become elite once again.

Forget About the Past

It sounds counterintuitive, but one way Georgetown can return to its illustrious past is to let it go—for now. Current Georgetown freshmen were only about 10 years old when the Hoyas made their most recent trip to the Final Four in 2007. It is barely a memory for them. And the Big East championship seasons of the 1980s and '90s may as well be on microfilm.

So when Georgetown fans stormed the court after a 20-point victory over then-fourth-ranked Villanova in January, it rankled older observers who remember the good old days. Scott Allen of The Washington Post quotes the reaction by D.C.-area radio personality Tony Kornheiser:

"What has happened to Georgetown that they stormed the court [after] beating Villanova?" Tony Kornheiser said...on his radio show. "I mean, come on. Do people not remember how great Georgetown was? Didn't that make you want to throw up?"

Recognizing who you once were while admitting that you are not that anymore is a sensible and solid first step toward figuring out how to get back to glory. If observers stop viewing Georgetown through the prism of a past long gone, that can help newer versions of the team break through as they attempt to play in deeper rounds of the NCAA tournament.

It took five years, two schools and a dietitian, but Joshua Smith is finally reminding us why he was supposed to be the next big thing in college basketball.

He just got too big.

Rated as the No. 18 overall recruit in the class of 2010 by 247Sports, Smith—then listed at 270 pounds—was the only 5-star recruit committed to play for a school west of Kansas. He was expected to be the centerpiece for a UCLA team coming off a woefully uncharacteristic 14-18 season in 2009-10.

Early on, he was every bit as good as advertised.

Five weeks into Smith's college career, he had 15 points and eight rebounds to pace the Bruins to a key win over BYU. After the game, BYU head coach Dave Rose said, "He's as difficult a matchup as we've had here and this is the sixth season I've been a head coach."

Thanks in large part to Smith's play in the post, the Bruins won 23 games and returned to the NCAA tournament. Smith averaged 10.9 points, 6.3 rebounds and 1.0 blocks in just 21.7 minutes per game and was named to the Pac-10 All-Freshman Team. 

Following his freshman year, the big man sent out "feelers with NBA teams" to gauge where he'd be drafted if he were to declare, according to NBADraft.net's Aran Smith.

The sky was the limit for a young man who could be a bona fide star with just a little more focus on conditioning. 

That's what made his fall from grace so frustratingly buzzworthy.

In its preview of UCLA's 2011-12 season, the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook alluded to the major question surrounding the big man: "The only question with Smith is how much of his immense potential he is going to actually reach this time, a question that is believed linked to his weight. Smith finished high school somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 pounds."

"The better cardio shape he's in, the better player he'll be," UCLA head coach Ben Howland said in the season preview. "At the end of the (2010-11) season, I thought he was starting to come on."

However, his playing time decreased during his sophomore season, as he averaged just 17.2 minutes per game. Smith himself put it best the following October to David Wharton of the Los Angeles Times.

"I'd be out of position and reaching to the ball too late," he lamented. "The next thing I know, I've got four fouls and I'm heading to the bench."

Regardless of how many stories focused on his weight and conditioning issues, it didn't get any better. He played just 13.5 minutes per game for six contests during the 2012-13 season before deciding to leave Westwood.

He transferred to Georgetown in January 2013 and had trimmed 40 pounds by August, according to ESPN's Andy Katz.

As it turns out, he just needed to eat more frequently to lose weight.

"I had a bad rap at UCLA because I didn't eat breakfast. I didn't eat lunch. I would wait until after practice and workouts and then think I had to eat X amount of calories," Smith told Katz. "I've worked with a dietitian since I got here in January. Now I'm eating (those calories) with small meals throughout the day."

Talent was never the problem with Smith.

His problem was self-control.

His problem was commitment. 

"A committed Josh Smith, I'm not sure there is a better big man in the country," Georgetown head coach John Thompson III told Katz. "He has the instincts and the physical tools to be better than any big man I've had."

That's incredibly high praise from the man who coached Jeff Green, Greg Monroe and Roy Hibbert, but we've seen flashes of that promise all throughout his career. In his first game with the Hoyas, he scored 25 points in 27 minutes against Oregon.

Even after trimming those pounds, he's still a mountain of a man in the paint. More than just being an immovable object, though, Smith has great footwork and vision. Many centers are black holes once they get the ball, unable to get closer to the hoop and unwilling to find the open man, resulting in a low-percentage shot.

The same isn't true for Smith, though. While it doesn't show up in his assist totals (1.2 per game this season), he's a great asset in the inside-outside offense, able to reset by finding guys on the perimeter. Even if he gets the entry pass in the high post, he's nimble and assertive enough to work his way down to the low block.

He became an indispensable and reliable part of Georgetown's rotation as the Hoyas opened the 2013-14 season with a 10-3 record. Smith was averaging 19.9 minutes and 11.5 points per game while shooting 65.5 percent from the field.

In remaining committed in the kitchen and the weight room, though, Smith fell behind in the classroom and was officially ruled academically ineligible for the rest of the season in late January. Without him in the lineup, Georgetown squandered its hot start by losing 11 of its last 18 games and missing the NCAA tournament.

Though Smith was granted another two years of eligibility upon his arrival at Georgetown, we were left to wonder if we'd ever see him play college basketball for a high-major program again. After all, Greg Whittington was one of Georgetown's leading scorers when he was ruled academically ineligible in January 2013. Whittington was dismissed from the program the following November and has been something of an urban legend ever since.

But Smith did come back, and he has been better than ever for a tournament-bound team.

Smith had recorded just four double-doubles in 84 career games before this season, but he already has six this year. He also has seven games with at least 15 points, including a 20-point game against Kansas in which he made the Jayhawks look absolutely hopeless in the paint.

Playing 21.3 minutes per game might not seem like much for most 5-star players, but it's significantly better than the past three seasons for a big man who is scoring, assisting and rebounding at a career-best rate. And it has been enough for Smith to be named one of the 15 candidates for the inaugural Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year Award.

His odds of finishing ahead of Jahlil Okafor and Frank Kaminsky to actually win the award are slim to none, but to even be recognized as one of the 15 best big men in the country after all he has gone through is an incredible accomplishment.

If 2014-15 Joshua Smith had shown up three years ago, he probably would have been a lottery pick. Nowadays, he isn't even showing up as a projected draft pick on DraftExpress.com, but that hasn't stopped him from resurrecting his college career.

"I think the light's going to come on," UCLA's Tony Parker told Wharton in October 2012. "(It's) just that for some people it takes longer. When Josh wants it, he'll get it."

Nearly five years after his college career began, it looks like Smith finally wants it. Georgetown fans are hopeful the light stays on long enough for him to carry this team at least to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2007.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.