The Georgetown Hoyas were picked to finish last in the 11-team Big East Conference.
On Saturday night, Patrick Ewing and the Hoyas raised the championship trophy after winning the program’s first tournament title since 2007 in convincing fashion.
No. 8 Georgetown won their league record eighth Big East title with a 73-48 rout of No. 2 Creighton at Madison Square Garden, earning the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Georgetown (13-12), which knocked out Seton Hall in the semifinals on Friday night, will make their first tournament appearance since 2015.
Ewing became the first person to win Big East Tournament titles as a player and coach. He won three during his Georgetown career, along with one NCAA championship in 1984. Even though he never won a title with the Knicks at the Garden, this one felt pretty sweet.
“It means everything,” Ewing said on FS1.
“I keep talking about that Drake song, ‘Started From the Bottom.’ We started at the bottom, now we’re No. 1 in the Big East. It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.”
Now they will likely be one of four conference teams in the NCAA Tournament, along with Villanova, Creighton and UConn. The field of 68 will be announced on Selection Sunday at 6 p.m. on CBS.
“We can’t be happy with just winning this game,” said Ewing, whose team won four games in four days, with wins over Marquette, Villanova, Seton Hall and Creighton.
“We came here to New York and we talked about taking steps. There were four steps that we had to take. Right now we’ve taken all four and we’ve come out on top, but we can’t be satisfied with that.
“I don’t know who we’re going to play [in the NCAA Tournament], I know we’re going somewhere in Indiana, but we have to be ready for whoever it is, so I gotta figure out how I’m going to get some clean underwears, some clean socks, some clean T-shirts and even some clean polos to be able to get ready for this journey that we’re going to be on.”
Ewing was quickly congratulated on Twitter by his former Knicks coach Rick Pitino, who will join Ewing in the Big Dance after leading Iona to the MAAC Tournament championship in his first year at the school after being fired by Louisville in 2017. Former Roselle Catholic and St. Anthony’s star Asante Gist was named MAAC Tournament MVP after the Gaels’ 60-51 win over a Fairfield team
Ewing had his own issues related to the Knicks and Garden security this week. After the Villanova game, he said he was “accosted” by Garden security who would not let him move freely in the building without his credential.
Following the Seton Hall game, Ewing said he had a “private” conversation with Dolan and patched things up.
“That’s private, that’s between me and Mr. Dolan, we talked about the incident and it’s over with,” Ewing said Friday.
Ewing paid homage to former Georgetown coach John Thompson Jr., who passed last August and was honored by many coaches this year with a “Towel Tribute” in which they wore a white towel over their shoulder.
“I know he’s definitely smiling down on me right now,” Ewing said.
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Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media.
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