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May 4, 2006
The NCAA approved several new guidelines Thursday in an effort to close a loophole that some believe has allowed certain academically unqualified high school athletes, including a Georgetown basketball player, to participate in collegiate sports.
In recent months, some news sources from around the country have reported that some small preparatory high schools are inflating their students’ grades so that the students can meet NCAA standards and matriculate at major universities.
The new measures passed by the NCAA’s board of directors, which will take effect this fall, permit NCAA officials to visit high schools suspected of academic fraud. The new rules also require schools to submit the academic records “of high school students who make dramatic academic improvements in a short amount of time or graduate from high schools with questionable academic profiles,” according to an NCAA press release.
Georgetown men’s basketball forward Marc Egerson (COL ’09) is among the dozens of students nationwide that NCAA officials believe attended these high schools and now play for college sports teams, according to a report printed February in The Washington Post.
Last year, Egerson played basketball for Lutheran Christian, a small preparatory school in Philadelphia, Pa., after not graduating the year before from Glasgow High School in Newark, Del., according to The Washington Post. Lutheran Christian, the subject of an in-depth Post feature in March, has sent its graduates to several universities to play basketball, including George Washington, Mississippi State, Temple and Georgetown.
The Georgetown basketball Web site, maintained by the athletic department, currently lists Egerson’s high school as Glasgow, despite the fact that Egerson reportedly did not graduate from Glasgow and most recently attended Lutheran Christian.
“I’m sure what we have listed on the Web site is correct,” Bill Shapland, Georgetown’s senior sports communications director, said.
Egerson could not be reached for comment.
Shapland said that the university will “follow the NCAA rules as we have throughout the history of the organization.”
He declined to comment further on Egerson or Lutheran Christian.
Schools suspected of rigging their student-athletes’ grades gained national attention last December, when the New York Times investigated a Miami high school where the grade point averages of football players had allegedly risen substantially.
NCAA President Myles Brand created a 23-member group to examine the alleged instances of fraud occurring at prep high schools across the nation, especially schools where little in-class instruction took place, yet students were graduating with high grades. The NCAA is still considering other measures that might be implemented in the future to curb the ability of these schools to set their students’ GPAs artificially high and thereby cheat the NCAA’s academic requirements.
Shapland said that Georgetown’s recruitment process for sports teams “varies from coach to coach.”
He added that high schools that “have seen kids go on to succeed at Georgetown are interested in having more of their students attend a prestigious university and probably encourage them that way.”
Posted at 02:36 pm by georgetown
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Mar 10, 2006
Georgetown Basketball Zone
The Georgetown Tigers advanced to the finals of the Mid-South Conference Tournament after handing the University of the Cumberlands an 80-68 loss. The Tigers improved to a 25-6 overall record after winning the regular season title with a 7-3 conference record.
Now, the No. 1 seeded Tigers will face the third seed Campbellsville University in Saturday’s championship game at 4:00 p.m. at the Southeast Exposition Center in Pikeville, Ky.
Georgetown jumped out to an early 9-0 start against the Cumberlands, but both teams struggled through the first half committing 12 and 14 turnovers respectively as each vied for position. The Tigers shot a mere 37.9 percent from the field, and went into the locker room down 33-35.
The second half saw the Tigers more aggressive from the field, hitting 15-of-28 for a much improved 53.6 field goal percentage. Georgetown battled in the paint to out rebound the Patriots 41 to 25, pulling down 26 defensive boards. The Tigers put up a season-best show from the charity stripe, hitting 25-of-30 from the line for 83.3 percent.
Junior forward Mark Surgalski (6-8, 235, Ashland, Ky.) netted his 1000th point in the effort to join the list of Georgetown scoring elite. Surgalski needed 18 points going into the contest and came away with exactly that, becoming the 45th member of the Georgetown 1,000 Point Club.
He scored his 1000th point, making the second of two free throws with 1:10 left in regulation. Entering the 2005-06 campaign Surgalski had racked up 600 points during his freshman and sophomore seasons. Surgalski fittingly finished the game as the team’s leading scorer netting the 18 points while also pulling down seven rebounds and snagging four steals.
Three more Tigers finished in double-figures with junior guard Robert Cox (6-5, 190, Macon, Ga.) adding 17 and junior guard Craig Schoen (5-11, 175, Elizabeth, Ind.) alongside freshman forward Eric Fields (6-8, 230, London, Ky.) each scoring 15. Fields led all rebounders with eight on the day.
The championship game will mark the third meeting between Georgetown and Campbellsville. GC dropped both regular season games to CU, at home (Jan. 21st) 56-62 and on the road (Feb. 11th) 64-68. Georgetown is ranked #11 in the NAIA Top 25, while Campbellsville (25-5, 5-5 Mid-South) checks in at #22.
The game will be Campbellsville’s first trip to the Mid-South Conference championship round, while Georgetown will be striving for it’s seventh MSC title.
Posted at 08:18 pm by georgetown
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Georgetown Basketball Zone
Jack The Bulldog
Georgetown's nickname is a Hoya, but its mascot is a bulldog. This bulldog is known as Jack, but many other dogs through the years have been a part of Georgetown teams.
Among the earliest mascots was a terrier named Stubby, whose name is largely unfamiliar today but was perhaps the most famous dog of his generation. According to the Associated Press, the legend of Stubby started in at the Yale Bowl in 1916, when the mongrel wandered onto the field as the Connecticut National Guard was training for war. When the 102nd Infantry Regiment went overseas to fight in World War I, Stubby was smuggled along.
Stubby was more than a mascot. The dog served 18 months on the front with his regiment in World War I, saving his regiment from surprise mustard gas attacks, locating wounded soldiers, and even catching a German spy by the seat of his pants. Such exploits made the front page of newspapers back home, and after Stubby's last battle at Chateau-Thierry, France, he was outfitted with a blanket with the medals and honors awarded him for bravery, with flags of all the Allied Nations of the war.
Returning home, Stubby was invited to the White House by President Wilson and was personally decorated for valor by General John J. Pershing in a post-war ceremony. It was the bravery and loyalty of this dog that was instrumental in inspiring the creation of the U.S. "K9 Corps" for World War II.
In 1921, Stubby's owner, J. Robert Conroy, was headed to Georgetown for law school and took the dog along. According to a 1983 account in Georgetown Magazine, Stubby "served several terms as mascot to the football team. Between the halves, Stubby would nudge a football around the field [with his nose], much to the delight of the crowd. This trick became a standard feature of the repertoire of Georgetown mascots throughout the twenties and thirties. "
Stubby died in 1926. His mounted remains and medal-encrusted blanket were displayed for years at the National Red Cross Museum and were presented in 1956 to the Smithsonian. After forty years in moth balls (literally), Stubby is now on loan to the State of Connecticut, which featured the war hero at a recent statewide dog show.
Following Stubby, a terrier named, appropriately, "Hoya", became a fan favorite. Hoya belonged to Rev. Vincent McDonough, S.J., Moderator of Athletics and namesake of McDonough Gymnasium. This terrier was frequently seen at Georgetown football games in the 1920's and 1930's. A Great Dane named "Butch" became the team's unofficial mascot during the 1940's, but as Georgetown suspended football in 1951, the tradition of live mascots ended. Years later, the name of "Jack" and the breed of English Bulldog was formally adopted in 1962, adding the blue and gray cap once worn by freshmen onto its emblem.
Students maintained pet bulldogs as mascots into the early 1970's. By 1979, Georgetown was one of the first schools to employ a "human mascot", a student in the now familiar blue and gray bulldog suit. "Jack" now appears at major athletic and social events, and is among the most recognizable college mascots in the nation. (Jack is not to be confused with "Joe Hoya", which is a traditional campus expression for the everyday Georgetown student.)
Posted at 08:17 pm by georgetown
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Georgetown Basketball Zone
Georgetown Colors: Blue & Gray
Georgetown's colors are blue and gray. The colors were selected in 1876 by the Georgetown College Boat Club (the original crew team) in honor of Georgetown students and alumni who wore the Union blue and Confederate gray in the Civil War.
As recounted in a history of the crew by Lawrence H. Cooke, distinctive colors were important in watching crew races, since fans on shore wanted to know their team's location in the race. Harvard's crimson and Penn's red and blue were already well known, but Georgetown had no such colors to call its own. A student committee declared Blue and Gray "as appropriate colors for the [Boat] Club and expressive of the feeling of unity between the Northern and Southern boys of the College" and recommended its adoption for the team.
Soon thereafter, a banner was presented to the College by the Boat Club, sewn by the girls of the nearby Georgetown Visitation school. Half blue and half gray, it bore the inscription Ocior Auro ("Swifter Than The Wind"). The banner and its colors quickly became a part of college life. Student gatherings and formal University occasions both prominently featured the colors.
By the time intercollegiate teams were involved in varsity play, the Blue and Gray were already a Georgetown's tradition.
What's A Hoya
The origins of the word "Hoya" defy simple explanation. Over the years, some have claimed it is an Indian word, while those of a legal mind thought it related to the French word oyez, the traditional opening of judicial sessions. Still others held that with Georgetown's location along a river, Hoya might be an offshoot of the nautical "ahoy". None of these claims have held water, so to speak.
The official explanation holds that there was a baseball team at Georgetown called the "Stonewalls". It is suggested that a student, applying Greek and Latin, dubbed the team the hoia saxa-- hoia is the Greek neuter plural for "what" or "what a", while saxa is the Latin neuter plural for "rock". Substituting a "y" for an "i"; "hoya saxa" literally means "what rocks".
To this day, however, no one has proven exactly when and under what circumstances the yell originated. While there was a Stonewalls team between 1866 and 1873, an actual reference to the team is pure speculation. Some have held that hoia saxa referred not to the team but its surroundings--the team's field (the present site of Copley Lawn) was bounded by the College Walls along 37th street. One theory holds that words such as saxa (Latin for "rocks") were scribbled on the walls for years and a similar phrase may have simply been adopted by fans of the baseball team.
The Hoya yell gained additional attention in 1920. In that year, a fledgling student newspaper known as The Hilltopper petitioned Rev. Coleman Nevils, S.J., Dean of the College, to change its name to The HOYA, a name said to be more representative of the University. Nevils, who had championed naming the Holy Cross student paper "The Hoia" without success in 1916, enthusiastically approved the change.
As the college paper was often cited by sportswriters covering Georgetown sports in the 1920's, it took only a few years for a nickname to be born. By the fall of 1928, a HOYA sportswriter began to refer to the football team as the "Hoyas" rather than its contemporary nickname of the "Hilltoppers". The change was picked up by local writers as basketball season began, and Hoyas became the official Georgetown nickname within a few years.
Among all college programs, only Georgetown University holds the unique team nickname to which its students, faculty, alumni, and fans can take pride in. But the Hoya yell did find its way into the fight songs of two other Jesuit colleges: Holy Cross' "Hoiah, Holy Cross", and Marquette's "Ring Out Ahoya". Each appears to have its roots, however distant, in the yell begun on a college yard many years ago. In short, "Hoya" may be difficult to define, but its tradition endures. And that's "what" it's all about.
Posted at 08:16 pm by georgetown
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