Georgetown Hoyas Men's Basketball

Washington's team, from 1907 to the top of the sport

Basketball arrived at Georgetown in the autumn of 1906, and the first game was played on 9 February 1907, a 22–11 win over Virginia. For six decades the record was patchy, interrupted by a single run to the Final Four in 1943.

The programme became a national force under John Thompson Jr, who coached from 1972 to 1999 and finished 596–239. Thompson's teams reached the Final Four in 1982, 1984 and 1985, and the 1984 side beat Houston 84–75 for the national championship — Patrick Ewing was named Most Outstanding Player and Thompson became the first African-American head coach to win the Division I title. Thompson entered the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999.

The player pipeline out of that era is the programme's clearest legacy: Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, Reggie Williams and Allen Iverson all came through the Hilltop. John Thompson III took the Hoyas back to the Final Four in 2007. Across its history the programme stands at 1,755–1,190, a.596 win rate, with ten Big East regular-season titles and eight Big East tournament championships, the last of them in 2021.

The slide, and the hire meant to stop it

Patrick Ewing returned as head coach in 2017 and left in 2023 with a record of 75–109. His one NCAA tournament appearance came in 2021, won the hard way through four straight victories at Madison Square Garden; the seasons either side of it were among the worst the programme has recorded.

Georgetown's answer, in March 2023, was to hire Ed Cooley away from Big East rival Providence — an unusual move inside a conference, and one that still colours how he is received in Rhode Island. Cooley, born in Providence on 10 September 1969, had gone 92–69 at Fairfield from 2006 to 2011 and then 242–153 in twelve seasons with the Friars, taking them to seven NCAA tournaments. His 2021–22 team finished 27–6, won Providence's first Big East regular-season title and reached the Sweet 16; Cooley was named Naismith College Coach of the Year and Big East Coach of the Year that spring.

Three seasons in: 9–23, 18–16, 16–18

The rebuild has not been quick. Cooley's first Georgetown team went 9–23 in 2023–24 and 2–18 in the Big East. The second improved sharply to 18–16 and 8–12. The third, in 2025–26, slipped back to 16–18 and 6–14, a finish tied for tenth in the conference.

That season also produced the two things people remember about it. In December 2025 Cooley was suspended for one game after throwing a water bottle into the stands following a loss to Xavier. Then, seeded eleventh at the Big East tournament in March 2026, Georgetown beat seventh-seeded DePaul and third-seeded Villanova — the programme's first win beyond the opening round since the 2021 title run — before losing to sixth-ranked UConn in the semi-finals.

The underlying problem was scoring. The Hoyas averaged 73.6 points per game last season, which ranked 240th nationally, and Cooley spent the spring and summer addressing exactly that.

A roster rebuilt almost from zero

Nine players left after the Big East semi-final, among them guards DeShawn Harris-Smith to Delaware and KJ Lewis to USC, centre Julius Halaifonua to Oklahoma State, and Langston Love and Jeremiah Williams out of eligibility. Six transfers came in: guards Jaland Lowe from Kentucky, Vyctorius Miller from Oklahoma State and Elmarko Jackson from Kansas; forwards Josiah Parker from Florida Atlantic and NJ Benson from DePaul; and centre Chol Machot from Charleston. Three freshmen signed — forward Justin Caldwell, guard Athan Olivier IV and Brazilian forward Pedro Pastre — while a fourth commitment, Alex Constanza, withdrew in April 2026.

Cooley has described the brief plainly: he was recruiting age, know-how and shooting. Benson arrives having averaged 11.7 points and 7.6 rebounds on 63.6 per cent shooting at DePaul. Jackson, Cooley has said, is a "Swiss Army knife" who can drive and defend. The main returning piece is centre Vincent Iwuchukwu, 11.8 points and 6.1 rebounds at 54.9 per cent last season, alongside guard Kayvaun Mulready, who scored 14 points without a miss in the Villanova upset.

The early read is encouraging and incomplete. Georgetown beat Wake Forest 94–77 in Winston-Salem on 4 October 2026 — the two programmes' first meeting since 1997 — shooting 60 per cent from the floor and 55.2 per cent from three, outrebounding the Demon Deacons 38–25 and getting ten assists from Lowe, with Miller hitting five of six from distance for 16 points. Twelve days later, at a sold-out Charles E. Smith Center, the Hoyas needed Lowe's 19 points to hold off George Washington 76–68 after a first half in which they shot 12 for 33 with four assists.

Cooley's own framing, from October, was that this is "a fast group, a really good shooting team" still working on defensive fundamentals, and that it is "the first team that I feel we've coached that is more connected". The Big East's head coaches were less persuaded: in the preseason poll released at media day in New York on 1 October 2026, Georgetown was placed tenth of eleven with 27 points, behind UConn, St John's, Villanova, Marquette, Providence, Xavier, Creighton, DePaul and Seton Hall.

The 2026–27 schedule

The season opens at home against Loyola Maryland on 2 November, followed by Maryland on 7 November, Delaware State on 10 November, a trip to Clemson on 13 November, Navy on 18 November and Coppin State on 21 November. Georgetown then flies west for the Rady Children's Invitational at the Jenny Craig Pavilion in San Diego on 26–27 November, opening against Texas in a four-team field completed by UCLA and Saint Mary's.

December brings UMass Lowell, Rider, North Carolina at noon on 12 December and Sacred Heart, before Big East play starts at home to Seton Hall on 19 December. UConn away on 23 December and Xavier at home on 30 December close out the year. Conference play, a double round-robin against all ten opponents, runs to 6 March 2027, with St John's on 6 January and 20 February and the UConn return on 26 January.

What a night with the Hoyas looks like now

Most of the sixteen home dates are at Capital One Arena in Chinatown, where the Hoyas have played since December 1997 and where the configuration seats over 20,000 — a number that has long been the programme's awkward fact. Home attendance averaged 5,862 last season. Two low-draw non-conference games, Delaware State on 10 November and Coppin State on 21 November, are scheduled instead for McDonough Arena on campus.

The most concrete change for 2026–27 is on the ticket side. On 17 August 2026 Georgetown announced that complimentary men's basketball tickets would go to every undergraduate, scrapping the previous $99 subsidised season ticket, with the Maryland and North Carolina games included. Chief operating officer David Green said the aim was that "by removing the cost barrier to attendance, we'll be able to make the games accessible to all full-time students". Sections 104 to 107 have traditionally been the student block; more may be opened to take in roughly 7,000 undergraduates.

Whether that translates into noise is the open question of the season. Cooley, after the sold-out George Washington exhibition, said the atmosphere in the building was outstanding and that the game was good for the city. The campus press has been warmer about the shooting than the closing: The Hoya's account of that night criticised a sluggish opening half and an inability to put the game away despite repeated leads. Nothing about this roster has been tested against a Big East crowd yet.