WASHINGTON — Big John Thompson rose to his feet.

He hoisted himself, all 6 feet, 10 inches and roughly 300 pounds, up and out of the wooden chair he occupied on press row, planted his black Air Jordan sneakers on the floor of the Verizon Center and added one more unforgettable moment to a rivalry chock full of them.

With less than a minute remaining and his archrival Syracuse wobbling like a boxer on the verge of collapse, Thompson, the former Hoyas coach, held high a Georgetown scarf — navy blue background, gray letters — for the entirety of the crowd to see. Then he lowered the scarf, brought his hand to his neck and made a throat-slashing motion that signified both the end of the rivalry and the ruthlessness with which the Hoyas closed it out.

Three decades of vicious counterpunching, and sometimes real punching, ended with a brutal 22-point knockout that gave the Hoyas a share of the Big East regular-season title and left the Orange searching for answers in a season that has denigrated into a tailspin. A record crowd stormed the court following a 61-39 beatdown that bordered on embarrassing and straddled pathetic, capping one of college basketball’s greatest rivalries in dominating fashion.

“It’s been pretty competitive,” Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. “This is probably one of the least competitive games.”

With some of its most famous legends in attendance — Thompson, Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, John Duren — Georgetown simply bullied Syracuse into submission. And the Hoyas of old, the ones who brawled during the 1980s when Boeheim and Thompson sat atop the league, rejoiced.

Georgetown’s defense was stifling, and Syracuse posted its lowest point total since 1962. Georgetown’s offense was precise, and its two best guards combined for 34 points.

Saturday was a matchup of two teams heading in opposite directions, and the gap between them only widened. One is equipped to make a run to the Final Four. The other isn’t equipped at all.

“You never want to get beat, and then you get beat by 20 points,” Syracuse forward C.J. Fair said. “That’s not good.”

Three weeks ago, it was the Otto Porter show that elevated the Hoyas to an impressive win. He poured in 33 points with masterful efficiency, splashing home shots from beyond the 3-point line and owning the middle of Boeheim’s 2-3 zone.

It was a loss written off to a magnificent individual performance, a rare moment so spectacular that it simply cannot be stopped.

But this game was different, the antithesis of Feb. 23 in the Carrier Dome. Porter did not attempt a shot until the 7:46 mark of the first half, and he scored only two points in the opening 20 minutes.

Yet even without greatness from the presumed Big East Player of the Year, and a player Boeheim said is worthy of national player of the year honors, Syracuse fell flat. The Orange jumped out to a 3-0 lead and was never in front again.

“Our offense just wasn’t there,” Fair said.

Instead, Brandon Triche and James Southerland plunged deeper and deeper into their respective slumps. They shot 1-for-17 combined from the field on Saturday, missed everything from beyond the arc and threw up enough bricks to build a house.

The result was a 39-point performance that ranks among the all-time worst in SU history and the lowest output since 1962 — the same year Boeheim was a freshman at Syracuse. The result was only six more points than Porter scored by himself in the Carrier Dome last month. The result was humiliation at the hands of a hated rival.

“I thought the Georgetown defense was just way better than our offense,” Boeheim said. “We just didn’t handle their defense.”

Syracuse didn’t handle the Georgetown offense, either. Boeheim said the last two days of practice were devoted to limiting Hoya guards Markel Starks and D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera, who both shot poorly in the Carrier Dome but are more-than-capable from outside.

Let Porter score — “I would just assume he’d get 30,” Boeheim said — and stop the rest.

But despite the specialized instruction, those hours of practice and that tweak in the zone, Starks and Smith-Rivera lit it up. They nearly outscored the Orange by themselves (39-34) and combined to make eight 3-pointers. They made Porter’s pedestrian scoring numbers (10 points, zero 3s) irrelevant.

In a game for all the bragging rights, only one side showed up.

“These guys understand the history and tradition of Georgetown basketball, and they were ready to play,” Thompson III said.

And that made Big John Thompson happy as he sat atop a counter in the back corner of the interview room. He interrupted his son at one point during the press conference, unable to resist issuing one final jab in a rivalry that has seen hundreds.

The Hoyas had demolished Syracuse, and he was going to make sure everybody knew it.

“It’s special because the Big East, as we have known, it is ending,” Thompson III said. “Georgetown won the first one, and now Georgetown has won the last.”

At which point his father chimed in, ending another chapter of the rivalry with words that are sure to be remembered for years to come.

Said Thompson: “And kiss Syracuse goodbye.”

Michael Cohen is a staff writer at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at mjcohe02@syr.edu or on Twitter at @Michael_Cohen13. 

Published on March 9, 2013 at 7:46 pm