Wednesday, April 21, 2004

No surprise

When Craig Esherick was fired by Georgetown as its head basketball coach, I told some friends that the next coach should and would be John Thompson III -- son of John Thompson Jr., Hall of Fame former coach of Georgetown. Yesterday Georgetown hired JT3 as its new head coach. This is a good hire on a number of levels: first, it restores the Thompson dynasty and that will help re-connect Georgetown to the fertile recruiting grounds in the DC area; second, Thompson has won with minimal athletic talent as Princeton's head coach; third Thompson brings a precise, disciplined offensive system -- the Princeton offense, which maximizes marginal talent -- to a program that has not had any good offensive coaching in years. Offense was always the weak suit for the original John Thompson, but JT3 had the Princeton tutelage. I hated Georgetown back in the day as the good Syracuse fan I am. Once again, Georgetown will be a program to be reckoned with.

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