Moving On From Patrick Ewing Is the Easy Part. What Comes Next Is Where It Gets Hard.

Georgetown leadership must look at itself in the mirror and ask some tough questions first before moving on to fix Georgetown basketball once Patrick Ewing is gone.

The clock is ticking on Patrick Ewing. After a bad loss on the road to DePaul, Georgetown is back at the bottom of the Big East with an 0-3 conference record, and the end of Ewing’s tenure as head coach feels almost assuredly inevitable at this point. The only question is if that would come mid-season (unlikely, but not impossible), or after the season (similar to JT3’s dismissal).

But moving on from Patrick Ewing, as long and excruciating of a process as it has been up to this point, is the easy part in all of this. What comes next will require a level of leadership, accountability, and shrewdness that university leadership simply has not displayed in recent years. That’s where the real long-term concern should lie for Georgetown fans.

When you take a look at all the major players at Georgetown, it is hard to have much confidence in the university and athletic department to right this ship after Ewing is gone.

In Jack DeGioia you have a president who is the head decision-maker of the men’s basketball program and someone who prioritizes the feelings of one man— Patrick Ewing— over the long-term success and direction of his university’s flagship athletic program.

DeGioia’s decision to reward Ewing with a secret three-year contract extension after the 2021 Big East Tournament championship— despite Ewing having two years remaining on his original deal— was a financially-negligent decision that has put Georgetown in the difficult decision it finds itself in today, where it will have to force the best player in program history out the door while also paying him a hefty buyout that could approach $11 million if Ewing demands the full buyout still, as his contract states.

DeGioia’s recent comments to alumni at a London fundraiser, if taken at face value, also show a fundamental misunderstanding of the real reasons for what has led this program to become the laughingstock of the Big East.

DeGioia’s rash decision to reward Ewing for four good days in March of 2021 completely crippled this program. To think that he would be in charge of finding the next head coach to lead this program, after leading a sham “search” that only led to hiring John Thompson Jr.’s choice for head coach back in 2017, is a frightening thought.

Then you have Georgetown athletic director Lee Reed, who is by most accounts competent at his job overall, but has minimal influence over the men’s basketball program currently.

In an ideal world, Reed— who was formerly the athletic director at Cleveland State University for eight years, and before that was an assistant basketball coach at the University of New Mexico— would lead the search for the next head coach, and also take over management and oversight responsibilities of the men’s basketball program from DeGioia.

That could still happen post-Ewing, but DeGioia has not shown a willingness to let go of his power yet. Maybe that changes over the next few months.

After Reed, you have Ronny Thompson, the man who is as responsible for the downfall of Georgetown basketball as Ewing or DeGioia is. Thompson was not publicly-acknowledged as the the team’s chief of staff until this year, when the program finally started to publicly list him as chief of staff in their staff directory, following our story on him last spring.

Thompson is the most disliked man in the men’s basketball program by a mile. While the feeling towards Ewing among those at Georgetown are ones of disappointment and regret, people still genuinely like Ewing as a person. Conversely with Thompson, many in the university are eagerly awaiting Thompson’s exit when Ewing goes. His heavy-handed approach with many on the Hilltop will not be missed, to put it kindly.

But there are mixed feelings among people in the athletic department and university administration about what Ronny will do if Ewing goes. Some think that he will go quietly. Others think that he will try to consolidate power and attempt to hang on in his role under whoever the next head coach is. The fact that is even a possibility is disturbing, considering how poorly things have gone with him as chief of staff so far.

After Ronny, you have a bunch of friends of the Thompson family that have managed to escape scrutiny and hang around this program, including Bill Howze (Director of Basketball Operations; close friend of Ronny’s), Irv Horne (Assistant Director of Basketball Operations; best friend of Patrick Ewing Jr.), Mike Hill (Associate AD for Sports Performance/Director of Sports Performance for MBB; Thompson holdover).

That’s a lot of clutter to clear out of the waste bin this spring.

There will be a lot of strategic decisions about the long-term future of Georgetown men’s basketball that will need to be answered when Ewing moves on.

A few examples include:

• Is the university committed to keeping the program’s operational budget at the same level it has under Ewing and John Thompson III? That budget is still believed to be around top-15/top-20 in the country.

• Will they pay the next coach a similar salary as Ewing?

• Is the university committed to building an NIL collective structure that will enable it to attract high-end talent and compete at the high-major level of Division 1 basketball moving forward?

To answer those questions, Georgetown needs a competent and clearly-defined leadership structure that will be able to chart a course for the men’s basketball program in a shifting college athletics landscape.

Right now, Georgetown’s leadership is a rudderless mess.

DeGioia has shown a thirst for power, a lack of leadership and any shred of accountability, and an inability to make sound financial decisions for the men’s basketball program. His blunder in acquiescing to almost all of David Falk’s demands during negotiations for the contract extension of Ewing now threatens the financial well-being of the university overall, with how much a potential buyout of Ewing could cost Georgetown.

For Georgetown to revive its men’s basketball program, it will require honest conversations among university leadership and a level of introspection that few at the top of the university have shown so far.

While many will begin to discuss head coaching candidates for Georgetown these next few months, the university must get their ducks in a row internally first, and identify the crisis of leadership that exists at the highest levels of the university, before it can move on to trying to fix its men’s basketball program…again.