Georgetown athletic director Lee Reed said Wednesday that the university is standing behind men’s basketball head coach Patrick Ewing, despite a disastrous 2021-22 season for the Hoyas.
“As a university with high standards and expectations for both academic and athletic excellence, we all share the disappointment of a difficult season,” read a statement from Reed.
“In this ever evolving landscape of college athletics we are committed to Coach Ewing, and we are working with him to evaluate every aspect of the men’s basketball program and to make the necessary changes for him to put us back on the path to success for next year.”
Losers of 18 straight games, the Hoyas are 6-22 on the season, 0-17 in Big East play. They have two regular-season games remaining — Wednesday night at Seton Hall and Saturday night at Xavier.
Should the Hoyas lose those two games, they would enter the record books at 0-19, the worst season in Big East history. Miami (1994) and DePaul (2009) each finished 0-18.
Reed cited Ewing’s “dedication” to Georgetown — his alma mater — and the team’s success in the 2021 Big East tournament as reasons for the confidence being expressed in the coach, calling the latter “a testament to his leadership.”
Georgetown entered the conference tournament last season as the No. 8 seed and beat No. 9 Marquette, No. 1 Villanova, No. 5 Seton Hall and No. 2 Creighton to win the tournament — and the automatic NCAA Tournament berth that accompanied it.
A No. 12 seed, Georgetown lost to No. 5 Colorado in the first round of the tournament, 96-73.
Ewing, 59, played four seasons (1981-85) under legendary coach John Thompson and helped the team win the NCAA Tournament in 1984. He went on to a Hall of Fame NBA career and assumed the head coaching position at Georgetown before the 2017-18 season.
In five seasons at Georgetown, he has a 68-81 record as head coach.
–Field Level Media