Georgetown Is a Team That Has a Lot in Reserve

WASHINGTON — Go into a team’s locker room 10 minutes after it has finished playing Georgetown, and after the gasping is over and the last drops of perspiration wiped away, the opponents almost always will talk about how the Hoyas “come at you in waves.”

Translation: Georgetown has 12 players going against an opponent’s seven or eight. It means Providence guard Billy Donovan nearly falls on the floor from having to go against four different Georgetown guards. It means Georgetown’s non-starters, in three games this season, could outscore Syracuse’s non-starters, 79-3. It means the opposing team has to play people who aren’t accustomed to playing very much, or run the risk of the starters being numb by game’s end.

“It means,” Seton Hall Coach P.J. Carlesimo said earlier this season, “that the other team is at a tremendous psychological disadvantage, knowing they may have to play 35 minutes, the last 10 increasingly tired, while Georgetown keeps putting fresh, alert players in for the entire game.”

Indeed, Georgetown comes at you in waves. Tidal waves. And it’s been that way for the last seven or eight seasons, at least.

“That’s how I punish the television commentators; I put so many guys in the game so fast, they can’t keep up and they don’t know who’s on the court,” Thompson said jokingly earlier this week.

Actually, it’s the opposing teams who get punished. Georgetown is one of the best illustrations in sports that there is strength in numbers.

Of the 64 teams in the NCAA championship tournament, which began Thursday and today in eight cities, it’s virtually impossible that any team has more players getting as many minutes of playing time as seventh-ranked Georgetown.

Not surprisingly, only two players -- Reggie Williams and Perry McDonald -- average at least 30 minutes per game. Nine average between 10.5 minutes and 21 minutes per game; four are between 18.5 and 21. The only ones who aren’t averaging 10 minutes are 7-foot-1 center Ben Gillery (7.9) and Tom Lang (3.0), who started the season as a walk-on before Thompson gave him a scholarship.

In the first half against Syracuse, Thompson -- by this unofficial count -- made 19 substitutions. That’s nearly one per minute. “I’ve always felt you’re better off having a kid play as hard as he can for a short period of time than trying to play him a long period of time and rest out on the floor,” Thompson said.

There is no typical substitution pattern in a Georgetown game. Too many factors determine which players (excluding Williams or McDonald) will play how many minutes, a primary one being the type of defense employed by Georgetown or its opponent.

“I try to get a feel for what I have and what I need, or what I’m uncertain about,” Thompson said. “I don’t have a set of cards that say, ‘I’m going to play this kid two minutes or this kid three minutes.’ I do it by feel. I like to get a feel for how people are going.”

It would be difficult for anyone not on the Georgetown coaching staff to figure out why a specific player is coming in at a specific moment. Thompson isn’t overly concerned with which players start and which don’t. Bobby Winston is the team’s best point guard at the moment; Ronnie Highsmith has played better in most situations than any of the big men, and Jaren Jackson has been the team’s second-best outside shooter. But none of them starts.

“I only have one starter and that’s Reggie,” Thompson said. “You might be able to say that Perry is a starter. That’s it. The most important thing is who’s playing at specific times of the game.”

One certainly could make a case for the Hoyas being fresh. Against Syracuse, Gillery came out of the game after two minutes (as he usually does after trying to win the center tap) for Highsmith. After two more minutes, Jackson and Winston replaced Dwayne Bryant and Mark Tillmon -- the “starting” guards.

In less than five minutes, three Georgetown guards had been assigned to guard Syracuse’s Sherman Douglas. On the third substitution of the game, Charles Smith, a 6-foot shooting guard, replaced McDonald, who has been playing center.

Williams got a rare rest after picking up his second foul, but not right away. He was out of the lineup, replaced by freshman Sam Jefferson, twice in the first half.

Sub No. 12 was Jackson, for Tillmon. Sub No. 17 was Williams, who entered at the last second, took the inbounds pass and hit a three-pointer.

Thompson said he is “sometimes surprised” when he reviews film of a game the next day and sees how much he has substituted. “Sometimes I look at the film and say to myself, ‘Maybe I should have left that kid in a little longer.’ ”

But that is not to suggest it is haphazard. Asked why Tillmon or Smith, for example, might be in the game in a certain situation, Thompson said, “Mark is better (offensively) against man-to-man defense. He’s stronger. But Smitty is better against a zone. So, if I see a team shift and go man-to-man, I’ll tap Mark and tell him to get in there for Smitty.”

Not all of his substituting is that scientific. Anthony Allen, a 6-7 freshman forward who has improved dramatically this season, had been playing about 17 minutes per game over the seven games leading up to the Big East tournament final against Syracuse. In the title game, Thompson waited until the second half to nudge Allen.

“Rony Seikaly and Derrick Coleman are strong kids,” Thompson said. “I thought Anthony might get pushed around, so I needed power out there.”

With Seikaly too tired to push and Coleman about to foul out, Allen got in for the final six minutes and blocked two shots, one by Seikaly.

One byproduct is that an opposing team never knows which Hoya (besides Williams) will help win a game. “You don’t really know exactly when you’re going in, so you better be alert and ready to go in,” Jackson said of the reserves. “During a game is not the time to ask why.”