March 30, 2007
ONCE AND FOR ALL, HOPEFULLY
It's no secret. I'm a Georgetown fan. By all measures and by the number of hours I spent on a bus heading to the now unused Cap-Center so I could get a front-row seat for every single game no matter how inconsequential, I could be considered a superfan. Although those days are long gone and my street cred as a true fan has waned (I'll admit I am a bandwagon-hopping fair-weather fan), I am hopeful about one thing, regardless of any Final Four outcome: the death of two college sports euphemisms.
The euphemisms are intertwined and more fully loaded than the latest Mercedes S-Class. Princeton Offense and Georgetown Defense.
The Princeton Offense was made famous by long-time coach Pete Carill, who championed an offensive style that employed brisk passing and designed plays rather than a free-wheeling attack. It's effectiveness was most displayed when #16 Princeton nearly upset #1 seed Georgetown in the NCAA tournament in 1990. When people talk about the Princeton Offense, they use words like disciplined, practiced, and cerebral.
The opposite words would be used for what is described as the Georgetown Defense: swarming, physical, intimidating. The two styles have, I hate to say, become racially loaded code words in the lexicon of college basketball, the same way "athleticism" and "discipline" are code words. Black players are tall, built, high-jumpers, who happen upon excellence by chance. White players practice endlessly and prove themselves against all odds.
The terms gained such traction because of that long-ago matchup and also because the two institutions were so emblematic at a certain time: Princeton is always going to be a lily-white institution, athletically, and a symbol of privelege. Georgetown had the audacity to shatter that mold and hire an unapolagetic "angry black man", who would only recruit african american students and require them to stay in school all four years. John Thompson Jr.'s success was one of the more unlikely successes in sports, but it was what it was. The upside/downside was that Thompson's Hoya teams were 1) almost exclusively black 2) defensively fierce 3) successful. Put the three together and you have Hoya Paranoia, which unfortunately entailed thinly veiled racist characterisations of thugishness.
Almost 20 years later, we arrive at the situation where John Thompson, Jr.'s son, JT III, has coached his way to the Final Four. All the cliches would be intact except that Thompson's son didn't got to Georgetown, he went to Princeton, joined the basketball team, became an assistant coach, and then became the head coach, all under the guidance of Princeton guru Pete Carill. Now he's coaching a Princeton Offense, that the coach likes to identify as a Georgetown offense.
JTIII calls one man 'Coach', and it isn't his dad. The Hoyas have got to the Final Four by incredible team performances that involve set plays and come-from-behind-wins that, frankly, defy regular explanations. This weekend you can watch one, hopefully two, games bya team that's defined itself by crisp passing and unselfish play––also an indefatigable win to win.
As you watch Saturday's game, a lot of wasted airtime will be devoted to blatherings about JTIII's debt to Princeton and Pete Carill. I am going out on a limb and saying that I don't give a shit if G'town beats Ohio State or not; I would really prefer that people stop referring to disciplined and skilled offenses that win conference championships as some type of proprretary gameplan that is unavailable to black players. Yeah! Georgetown's players are black. Yeah! Their coach went to Princeton. Yeah! They're in the Final Four. A puzzled Vanderbilt player described Georgetown's offense as "perfect" as he tried to explain the unstoppable half he just met. Regardless of how far the team goes, if Georgetown's unselfish team-oriented offense that gives up nothing on ferocious defense puts an end to the lamest euphemistic clichés of all time, I can't be too disappointed.
Tagged: college basketball, georgetown, racism
Posted by Lexiphane at March 30, 2007 10:37 AM
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