Hoyas get late start

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Longtime Georgetown coach John Thompson despised noon starts at home, claiming it usually took his teams a half to wake up against a focused, rested road team that had spent the previous night sequestered in a hotel instead of enjoying weekend life on the Hilltop.

Father always knows best.

The sleepwalking Hoyas were stung by the early-tip phenomenon and the nation's premier frontcourt yesterday, falling to No.10 Connecticut 66-59 before 11,363 at MCI Center in a game that practically was over at intermission.

"There was not too much in that first half that was Georgetown basketball," said Hoyas coach John Thompson III, subdued but still seething after his team shot just 25 percent (7-for-28) from the field and were dominated on the boards (32-15) in a woeful first half that sent them to the locker room down 39-19 to the defending national champs.

"The first five or 10 minutes of the half, we ran our stuff and the ball just didn't go in," Thompson added. "That happens. But in the latter part of the half, we were just out there. That's not acceptable. We cannot win games playing only 20 or 30 minutes of basketball."

Despite misfiring on nine of their first 10 shots, the Hoyas (9-4, 1-1 Big East) trailed just 25-17 when junior forward Brandon Bowman (14 points, eight rebounds) completed a three-point play from the line with 4:35 left in the first half. But what followed was the kind of offensive relapse of which the young Hoyas are still capable: a static series of dribble-centric possessions ending in quick, forced jumpers, long Connecticut rebounds and easy buckets for the Huskies (9-2, 1-1).

"A lot of guys took it upon themselves to try and make big plays, and we got away from our offense," said senior forward Darrel Owens of the resulting 14-2 run powered mostly by UConn's 6-foot-11 terror, Charlie Villanueva (19 points, 13 rebounds), and streaky junior forward Denham Brown (19 points). "We got back to our stuff in the second half, but by then it was too late."

Thompson was far too disgusted with the effort before intermission to pay lip service to a second-half comeback that saw the chastened Hoyas hold their own on the boards against the larger, deeper Huskies and sprint back into contention via some stellar three-point shooting and the superb interior play of freshman standout Jeff Green.

The 6-8, 225-pound dynamo from Hyattsville's Northwestern High School notched a career-high 22 points against Connecticut's daunting front line, overwhelming the man-to-man defense of shot-swatting maestro Josh Boone and dwarfing the performance of Baltimore product Rudy Gay (three points) in a battle of the league's elite freshmen.

"He's terrific," said Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun of Green, who made eight of 11 from the field and added six rebounds. "He's going to be a force in this league."