2010 Georgetown Hoyas Basketball: Georgetown vs Louisville

Fans of the Kentucky Wildcats can breathe a little easier. The backers of Big Blue aren't the only diehards in the Commonwealth of Kentucky who have been stunned by a second-half surge from the Georgetown Hoyas.

The Kentucky-Louisville hoops rivalry consumes the land of Bluegrass, a place where college basketball is king. If one side in that local holy war has triumphed to a marked degree, the other side of the Blue-Red divide wants an equal piece of prestige in the near future. If one family in a bitter backyard feud has been victimized to a considerable extent, it will hope with all its might that the rival clan will experience the same nasty fate.

Tuesday night at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ky., an ancient score was settled as far as UK fans are concerned. Wildcat Nation surely rejoiced as the hated Cardinals got crushed by a runaway force from Washington, D.C. To understand all of this, one must first travel 26 years into the past.

The date was March 31, 1984. In Seattle, a Kentucky colossus came up against a Georgetown juggernaut in a five-star national semifinal matchup at the Final Four. A collision in the Kingdome witnessed three of the best big men to play college basketball in the first half of the 1980s, Hoya center Patrick Ewing and Kentucky's primo pivot pair of Sam Bowie and Mel Turpin. With 3:04 left in the first half, Kentucky owned a 27-15 lead. Since the sport didn't have a shot clock or a 3-point shot at the time, a 12-point advantage was a lot more imposing in that era. Today, a 12-point lead can and will evaporate in the face of the 3-point shot and the 35-second shot clock, but in 1984, a double-digit deficit was a much more paralyzing position for elite teams and their coaching staffs. As Georgetown dug itself a hole in the Pacific Northwest, it appeared that Kentucky would march on to the national championship game for a dream date with Houston.

But then came the most pronounced scoring drought in the history of the Final Four.

In the next 13 minutes of game time, Kentucky scored two points. In the first 9:56 of the second half, the Wildcats got shut out, as a combination of rugged Georgetown defense and anemic shooting left UK coach Joe B. Hall in a state of disbelief. A crisis of shooting confidence doomed Kentucky in a battle of No. 1 seeds (Georgetown from the West Region, Kentucky from the Mideast), as UK went just 3 of 33 from the field after halftime and tallied just 11 second-half points. The same Georgetown team that looked dead in the water with three minutes left in the first half had used a 23-3 run to produce a 53-40 victory en route to its only national championship. When the subject of great college basketball runs comes up for discussion, "23-3" and "Georgetown-Kentucky 1984" always emerge in the top three.

Well, now the Louisville Cardinals and their fans know the feeling, too. That's why Kentucky partisans must be so delighted.

Coach Rick Pitino's UL lineup started solidly enough on Tuesday night. The Cards gained a 35-29 lead on the strength of 13 points by point guard Edgar Sosa. With Georgetown in the midst of a two-game losing streak and UL having won five of its last six, the smart money suggested that momentum would carry the home team to the finish line first.

Instead, a major run felled the residents of Freedom Hall.

In the first 10 minutes of the second half - virtually the same span of time in which the 1984 Hoyas blanked Kentucky - the 2010 Georgetown team threw down a 24-3 run against a shellshocked assemblage of confounded Cardinals. Hoya guard Austin Freeman poured in 18 points during that 24-3 surge, singlehandedly burning Pitino's pupils and landing Louisville back on the NCAA Tournament bubble (the good side of the bubble, but the bubble nevertheless). UL - trailing 53-38 at the end of that Hoya joyride - shaved a 15-point deficit down to nine with 7:20 left, but could never truly threaten Coach John Thompson III and his victorious visiting team.

Yes, one great Georgetown run over Kentucky has finally been complemented by a "Hoya Destroya" rampage over Louisville. Both programs in a college hoops Commonwealth can trade Georgetown stories and insist that the other team's failure was worse. Nothing like a little history on a late-February Tuesday.

Georgetown Hoyas vs Louisville Cardinals Basketball Recap