Season Preview: How Far Can Youth Movement Carry the Hoyas?

The talent has improved, but will the kids on the team provide the necessary depth and production for Georgetown to improve on last season's record?

Hope springs eternal in Washington, DC as Georgetown gets set to embark on its second season under Ed Cooley and his coaching staff. After a disappointing 9-23 record last season that saw the Hoyas go 2-18 in conference play, it’s fair to expect - at minimum - a modest uptick in wins this season as Cooley continues his effort to get this Georgetown program back on track.

To help him do that, Cooley has brought in the 12th-ranked high school recruiting class in the country (second in the Big East) and the 23rd-ranked transfer class this summer.

The transfers, headlined by ex-Harvard point guard and DMV native Malik Mack, as well as former TCU wing Micah Peavy, will be relied on heavily to help right the ship after last season’s slog of a campaign.

But what will determine how far this 2024-25 iteration of Georgetown men’s basketball can go will be its deep and talented freshman class, with several members expected to play significant roles early on for the Hoyas.

Thomas Sorber, Drew McKenna, Julius Halaifonua, Caleb Williams, and Kayvaun Mulready represent the highest-ranked freshman class for Georgetown since 2014, when Isaac Copeland, LJ Peak, Paul White, Tre Campbell, and Trey Mourning made up the 8th-best recruiting class in the Class of 2014.

Georgetown’s expected starting lineup this season will be Malik Mack, Jayden Epps, Micah Peavy, Jordan Burks, and Thomas Sorber.

On paper, that is a solid lineup that should be able to put points up on the board, thanks to the Mack-Epps backcourt duo, and with the the versatility of Peavy and Burks, should make for a athletic, switchable defense that will be an improvement on a Georgetown defense that finished last season ranked 321st in Adjusted Defensive Efficiency on KenPom.

But the success of a team isn’t just based on its starting lineup. Depth is a factor for every team, and a large chunk of Georgetown’s role players this season are going to be underclassmen.

Behind Thomas Sorber, a freshman starting center, you have sophomore PF/C Drew Fielder and freshman 7-footer Julius Halaifonua, who is ramping up to full game fitness after committing late in the cycle this summer, but should play a key role for this team later on in the season.

Georgetown’s depth in the backcourt behind Mack and Epps looks light on paper. The Hoyas could use a sophomore leap from Louisville transfer Curtis Williams, who struggled in his first season with the Cardinals - averaging 5.3 points per game with 32/29/72 shooting splits - but came out of high school with the reputation of being a knockdown shooter.

Aside from Williams, the Hoyas also have defensive-minded freshman guard Kayvaun Mulready. His role remains to be determined for this season, but the team is likely going to need him at some point, especially if one of its other guards sustains an injury.

On the wings, Drew McKenna and Caleb Williams, two DMV natives who will be freshmen this year, will be competing for backup minutes behind Micah Peavy and Jordan Burks.

Georgetown is going to need its young talent to grow up sooner rather than later if they are going to be competitive in the Big East this season.

While we won’t know how these questions about depth and production will be answered until the games begin on November 6, we can take some clues (but not too many!) about Georgetown’s preseason scrimmage results, which featured wins against the Maryland Terrapins and the Tony Bennett-less Virginia Cavaliers.

After leading by as many as 18 points against Maryland, the Hoyas defeated them by a score of 68-64. Against Virginia, the Blue & Gray won 66-55.

What can we read into those performances, if anything? The starting lineup of Mack-Epps-Peavy-Burks-Sorber, to start.

Outside of the starters, we also saw who Ed Cooley and his coaching staff will look to as rotation pieces.

Behind Sorber, Drew Fielder logged 11 minutes, scoring 2 points and grabbing 6 rebounds.

Curtis Williams was the first guard off the bench, but only took two shots in the 15 minutes he played.

It’s hard to be that concerned about shooting performances in preseason scrimmages, but against Virginia, the three-point shooting was very cold.

The team shot 2-21 (9.5%) from three, and the overall shooting wasn’t that much better, shooting 22-57 (38.6%) from the field.

Virginia was worse from behind the arc. The Cavaliers were 2-27 (7.4%) from long distance.

Maybe there was a draft in the gym that day. Let’s hope.

The frontcourt for Georgetown will a focal point of this season, one way or another.

After trying unsuccessfully to land several veteran centers, such as Cliff Omoruyi, in the transfer portal, Georgetown decided to lean in to its youth movement, adding New Zealand native Julius Halaifonua to its roster as a late addition from the Class of 2024 high school class.

Thomas Sorber has received praise publicly already from his head coach for how he has looked during preseason, and a lot of Georgetown’s hopes for this season and beyond will rest on how quickly he gets up to speed heading into Big East play.

Eventually, with both Sorber and Halaifonua on the team, it’s possible that Georgetown could deploy a double-big lineup of Sorber at the 4 and Halaifonua at the 5 as the season progresses.

If the two freshman centers play well this season, Georgetown will be well-positioned to have their frontcourt of the future already in place. Cooley and his staff will look like geniuses for their gamble on the youth movement at the center position.

If Sorber and/or Halaifonua take longer to acclimate to the college game than expected, though, and the Hoyas can’t make up for the lack of alternatives at the center position, there will be deserved criticism of Georgetown’s inability to land a veteran big in the portal this offseason.

For a season as important as this one, where maintaining positive momentum for this program is a must if you want to continue to build back your fan base, the number of question marks around this team heading into the season is a bit unnerving. The range of outcomes for this team, from another Big East basement finish to competing for an NCAA Tournament bid if the kids play well, is pretty wide.

But coming off a very positive preseason that was highlighted by scrimmage victories against two local foes, there is enough for Georgetown fans to latch on to to make them believe in this team, once again.

Now, it’s time for Cooley and the players to turn promise into results.

Predictions:

Overall Record: 13-18

Big East Record: 7-13

Big East Rank: 9th