With Season Over, Questions Linger for Georgetown as Another Critical Offseason Begins

One year into the Ed Cooley Era, just as many questions remain about this program's direction as there were when Cooley took over.

Ed Cooley has been very open with people about how his team was going to look this season, dating back to last summer.

One Georgetown administrator told me last summer that Cooley said his roster in Year One was going to be “pretty bare”.

A recruit that Georgetown has been prioritizing said that Cooley told him, “we are going to suck” this year.

For as open as Cooley has been privately about the lack of talent on his team in his first year as Georgetown head coach, he has been just as confident about how things will look in Year 2 and beyond.

“It’s only a matter of time” has been the common refrain from Cooley in press conferences this year when talking about getting Georgetown back to its winning ways.

This was also the same guy that said the following at his introductory press conference:

“We’re not going to win a little; we’re going to win a lot.”

“We’re not going to be good, we’re going to be special.”

“Ian Eagle’s going to be talking to me at some point really, really soon, when Georgetown wins a national championship. I really believe that.”

As Georgetown turns the page on its 2023-24 season, it’s hard to feel like this team took even the tiniest of steps towards a national championship, or more realistically, just an NCAA Tournament appearance.

Despite Cooley’s attempts to level-set before and during the season, if you polled Georgetown fans today, most would say that this team underperformed this season, despite expectations already being so low coming into the season that they couldn’t even be considered in the basement. More like the earth’s core.

An overall record of 9-23 and 2-18 in the Big East is not good enough, no matter how low the standard is.

It’s especially not good enough for a head coach making more than $5 million per year to basically throw in the towel on a season when he misses out on a couple of priority targets in the transfer portal— namely, Hunter Dickinson.

Heading into this year, the basic expectation was that this team would compete hard— a trademark of most Ed Cooley teams throughout the years— and develop its young talent so that the team could really take off in the 2024-25.

While some young talent certainly did show signs of improvement over the course of the season— namely Jayden Epps, Rowan Brumbaugh, and Drew Fielder— the lack of effort and execution, particularly on the defensive side of the ball, that plagued this team from start to finish is cause for concern heading into Year 2.

Georgetown finished its season with an adjusted defensive efficiency of 113.8, good for 329th (!) in the country. That’s a number that is far worse than each of the past two seasons under Patrick Ewing.

No one expected Georgetown to become a defensive juggernaut overnight. But for the defense to somehow get worse under Ed Cooley is alarming.

For a team that was banking on roster continuity improving under Ed Cooley, a roster that just went 2-18 in the Big East with no wins against non-DePaul teams would seem to need some significant re-tooling and re-shaping heading into next season.

At the center position, Georgetown will need to basically shuffle its entire depth chart heading into next season.

Supreme Cook, while being a force on the offensive boards and constantly playing with high energy, was a defensive liability throughout the season. His defensive box plus/minus (DBPM) of -1.5 was fourth-worst on the team.

As a team, Georgetown allowed its opponents to shoot 70.9% at the rim, according to CBB Analytics. That is good for 362nd in the country.

At the guard position, Jayden Epps and Rowan Brumbaugh had up-and-down seasons, with Epps standing out in particular with some impressive offensive performances from a scoring standpoint. Brumbaugh had a rockier season, but 6-foot-4 point guards with his vision and ability to get into the paint don’t grow on trees.

There have been some unverified rumors recently about a potential Brumbaugh transfer this summer, but it’s unclear at this time whether those whisperings hold any weight. Regardless of who Georgetown brings in, they’d do well to retain Brumbaugh.

Notably, Georgetown has been heavily linked with Syracuse guard Judah Mintz as a potential portal addition this offseason.

At the wing position, Ish Massoud and Wayne Bristol Jr. are both going to be gone next season. Dontrez Styles should be back, but his inconsistent play at times has hurt this team this season. This is another position that the GU coaching staff will need to augment next season to be competitive.

Whatever happens, roster continuity does not appear to be in the cards for Georgetown heading into next season.

The team is still expected to add ~4 players in the transfer portal, while also bringing in a promising freshman class, consisting of four players (including Drew McKenna), that is ranked #17 in the country currently according to 247Sports.

A new roster brings renewed hope for a better season next year, but it is hard not to feel like this program is trapped in a never-ending cycle of scrapping its roster every season for a brand-new one the following season, only to have the lack of development and continuity come back to bite them in the ass eventually, leading them to bring in another new roster all over again when the results don’t follow.

At some point, Cooley and his staff are going to have to develop a core of 4-5 players that can stick around multiple years and help develop a consistent culture and identity that can eventually translate into winning.

The hope is with Jayden Epps likely returning for his junior season, along with (hopefully) Dontrez Styles and Drew Fielder, this team can augment its returning roster with some high-powered additions in the transfer portal, like Mintz, to get this program back on track.

Still, you would like to feel a better about this program’s direction going into Ed Cooley’s second season than the current situation allows for.

On top of the questions about defensive identity and roster turnover, Georgetown also has a key spot on its bench to fill now with associate head coach Ivan Thomas taking the Hampton head coaching job on Wednesday.

Thomas was the DMV recruiter on Cooley’s staff, and it will be a tall task to replace him with someone who can keep the local recruiting operation— which had gotten off to a very promising start— running smoothly after Thomas departs.

The 2025 class has several top prospects from the DMV, such as Acaden Lewis (Sidwell Friends), Cam Ward (Largo), and Jordan Scott (South Lakes), in it, and Georgetown can ill afford to have a setback in its attempt to build a fence around the DMV again and assert itself as the top destination for local talent that it once used to be.

At his introductory press conference, Cooley said, “We need each and every one of you not to be negative about yesterday. That’s in the past. What are we today? Where are we going tomorrow?”

Today, Georgetown is a team that plays no defense, lacks consistency on offense, and had issues with effort throughout the season.

Tomorrow, the same questions we had going into this season remain mostly unanswered. That’s not a great feeling when you have a highly-paid coach who comes in making the lofty promises that Cooley made about national championships and winning a lot.

There are reasons for optimism still, namely the incoming freshman class and a massive NIL warchest to attract transfer portal talent with this summer. But Ed Cooley and his staff have a lot of work to do after putting themselves in a big hole with the roster they assembled heading into this season.

We’ll see what lessons they have learned since then to help them put together a better roster in 2024 and beyond. Cooley’s track record suggests he will figure it out.