The Georgetown Hoyas had one of the most disappointing seasons in all of college basketball this season, going 6-25 on the season including a laughable 0-19 in Big East conference play.
This poor season led to serious questions about the job security of head coach Patrick Ewing. It appears that Ewing will be back next season, however. Georgetown athletic director Lee Reid publicly backed Ewing and said that he feels that Ewing (seen above coaching against Creighton in February) is the best candidate moving forward for the program.
But Ewing will have to lead Georgetown back to prominence without three players that were on the roster this year. The school announced on Wednesday that junior center Timothy Ighoefe, freshman guard Tyler Beard, and freshman forward Jalin Billingsley have all entered the transfer portal, according to Fox Sports play-by-play announcer John Fanta.
News: Georgetown announces that Timothy Ighoefe, Tyler Beard and Jalin Billingsley have entered the transfer portal.
— John Fanta (@John_Fanta) March 30, 2022
While on the surface this doesn’t seem like a big issue for Georgetown considering the small roles each of these players played last season, losing young freshman players who can develop is never a good thing for a program.
This also continues a troubling trend for the Hoyas, as they saw their second-leading scorer Qudus Wahab transfer to Maryland at the end of the 2020-21 season.
Wahab was a big part of the team’s miraculous run in the Big East Tournament in the 2020-21 season, and his departure was a big reason for the team’s struggles this past season.
This is the way that college basketball is changing with the new transfer rules, and it’s very clear that players don’t want to be on a losing program like Georgetown has been in recent years.
Ewing will need to change this program around, and do it quickly if the Hoyas want to stop losing key players to the transfer portal moving forward.
[John Fanta on Twitter; photo from Brad Mills/USA Today Sports]
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.