The only thing missing was the paranoia. Otherwise, there was a whole lot of Hoya going on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. There were a couple of John Thompsons and a pair of Patrick Ewings -- all sitting within earshot of each other -- and all seemed right with the basketball universe.
Georgetown is back, and they're rolling at the right time of the year again. With dads named Thompson and Ewing sitting near their bench, the Hoyas crushed a solid Pittsburgh team at the Garden to win their first Big East Conference title since
John Thompson, the father, last roamed the sidelines with his trademark towel -- and a very heavy chip -- on his shoulder.
Now
John Thompson III, a softer, gentler sans-towel Thompson, has the Hoyas -- including junior forward
Patrick Ewing Jr. -- back near the top of the rankings and poised for a national title run as a No. 2 seed in the upcoming NCAA Tournament.
We need Georgetown, especially this time of year. All of us do. Oh, it's great that traditional powers North Carolina and UCLA are also setting the national standard again. Florida going for back-to-backs is cool. And who isn't rooting for the killer frosh -- Texas freshman
Kevin Durrant and Ohio State's
Greg Oden
-- to carry their teams to San Antonio and the Final Four?
But America needs the Hoyas. From Seattle to Selma, no college basketball team (save maybe Duke) ever inspired such disparate emotions. During its run of three Final Fours during
Patrick Ewing Sr.'s wondrous four collegiate seasons (think we'll ever see that again?) Georgetown was as close to a true national team as any since John Wooden's great UCLA teams. The Hoyas were powerful and polarizing. They intimidated unapologetically. And they swaggered and raged against convention.
And no one raged more than John Thompson. He was a grizzly on the sidelines -- all claws and roar. Sure he had a soft and funny side (The day he unveiled his version of St John's coach Lou Carneseca's "lucky" sweater is for the ages). But the six-foot-eight-inch coach is best remembered for walking his own way, in his own time.
You be damned.
During the NCAA tournament, the team created an air of mystery by refusing to stay at NCAA mandated hotels and then told no one where it was hiding -- hence the paranoia. But that was the least of it.
Thompson was so forbidding that some members of the media cowered in his presence. (In fact, he likes to take credit for the early rise of many young African-American sports writers, including myself, along with guys like
Michael Wilbon. "Every time I said something outlandish, [your editors] sent ya'll down to cover it," he once told me.
And he was right.
You can see Thompson bearish, wrapping his arms around
Fred Brown like a protective father after the Hoya guard inadvertently passed the ball to North Carolina forward
James Worthy in the final seconds of a 63-62 loss to the Tar Heels in the 1982 national championship game. Later Brown said: "Coach Thompson told me after the game that I had won more games for him than I had lost. He said not to worry."
You can see Thompson hugging Ewing -- both smiling as broadly as the two men ever smiled -- during the waning seconds of their only national championship season in 1984.
Most of all you can see Thompson head bowed, ambling across the court towards the locker room just before tip-off against Boston College in 1989, a highly publicized action to protest a piece of NCAA legislation called
Proposition 42. The rule stipulated that any freshman who did not score a 700 on the SAT and maintain a 2.0 GPA was ineligible for any scholarships aid.
At the time, Thompson said he took the action, "to bring attention to something that I think is a tremendous tragedy....I'm beginning to feel like the kid from the lower socio-economic background who has been invited to dinner, had dessert and now is being asked to leave."
Thompson vowed to stay off the bench until he felt something was done to rectify the rule. A week and two games later, after the NCAA agreed to revisit the measure, Thompson returned to the sideline in triumph.
Like many of his generation, John Thompson III doesn't have to carry the rage of his father. Nor the paranoia. He's a basketball coach, not a crusader, at least not like his father was, and thats just fine.
He is much more stylish than dad ever was, and his sideline countenance speaks more teddy bear than grizzly. Like dad, he hugs players when they need a hug; and offers that unmistakable JT stare when they need that, too. Yet those who know them both say JT3 carries more of his mother's tone and temperament.
Both men command respect, and JT3 is well aware that the standards his father set could not be ignored, and would be an ever-present source of comparison -- especially with JT2 hunkered near the bench.
He stepped into some very large shoes when he arrived at Georgetown three years ago after a successful coaching tenure at Princeton. JT3 has filled them well.
