Fantastic freshmen bloom on Hilltop

Georgetown’s surprisingly strong men’s basketball start is directly attributable to the instant impact of two old-school youngsters.

At first, there would seem few similarities between standout freshmen Hoyas Jonathan Wallace and Jeff Green.

Wallace is a 6-foot-1 walk-on who grew up on a cattle farm in Harvest, Ala., population 3,054.

“I’d never ridden in a taxi before I came to Georgetown, much less on something like Metro,” admits Wallace, who stepped out of rural Alabama and instantly into the metropolitan spotlight as starting point guard for the Hoyas (10-4, 2-1 Big East). “Everything about my first few months here, from school to basketball to the city, has been an experience well beyond what I expected.”

Green is a 6-8 blue-chipper from the Beltway area who made a late charge in the recruiting rankings last season while leading Hyattsville’s Northwestern High School to the Maryland 4A championship. From his braids to his NBA-style inside-outside game, everything about the Hoyas’ starting power forward screams big city.

With an assist from Georgetown coach John Thompson III, fate brought the two together as roommates on the Hilltop. An odd couple, indeed … until you see them together on the court. They share the two attributes crucial to Thompson’s complex system: a startlingly advanced combination of basketball acumen and work ethic.

“There’s no doubt they both have very high basketball IQs,” says Thompson, whose Hoyas face Villanova (9-2, 2-1) today at the Pavilion. “Looking at the situation at the start of the season, anybody could see we were going to need contributions right away from this freshman class.

“Jonathan and Jeff are both gym rats who came in from Day 1 ready to work and learn. We put a lot of demands on them, and they responded by absorbing everything we threw at them. Now of course, they’re going to have their ups and downs — that’s basketball, that’s youth. But there’s no longer any need for us to think of them as freshmen.”

Green is second on the team (behind junior forward Brandon Bowman) in scoring (13.3 points) and rebounding (7.2), leading all Big East freshmen in these categories. Only four players in the conference have recorded more double-doubles this season than Green’s four. And in consecutive games last week against his principal rivals in the Big East’s Rookie of the Year race, Green dwarfed the performances of prized Connecticut freshman and Baltimore product Rudy Gay and Rutgers forward Ollie Bailey.

While Gay and Bailey combined for just seven points and 10 rebounds against the Hoyas, Green totaled 38 points (on just 22 field goal attempts), 16 rebounds, seven assists and seven blocks in the loss to the Huskies (66-59) and the victory over the Scarlet Knights (62-55).

“He’s a beast,” said UConn coach Jim Calhoun after watching Green shred the nation’s most daunting frontcourt en route to a career-high 22 points. “He’s going to be a major factor in this league.”

Wallace’s impact has been more subtle. Averaging 8.3 points and 2.6 assists, the guard can’t match Green’s stat-stuffing splendor. But the stability and consistency he’s brought to the backcourt have made him arguably just as valuable.

Though Wallace leads the Hoyas in 3-point shooting (44.8 percent), he is also the team’s only true pass-first point man. In Thompson’s complex motion offense that demands patience, Wallace is a tight fit, a fundamentally flawless court corporal. And if you factor in grit, look behind the stats and consult the sweatmeter, Wallace might be the team’s MVP.

Tuesday night’s victory over Rutgers provided a perfect example. At a glance, his final line (11 points, three assists) seems fairly unremarkable. But he also didn’t commit a turnover in 32 minutes. Anyone who happened to be at the game also knows it was Wallace’s aggressive defense on Rutgers gunner Quincy Douby and his handful of lull-snapping layups that helped turn the game in Georgetown’s favor.

“Not only is Jon extremely competitive, he just has a special feel for the game,” says Thompson, who recruited Wallace to Princeton and then convinced the guard to follow him to Georgetown. “You look at him and at first you wish there was a little more of this and a little less of that. But every time I saw him in high school, he made plays, and he made plays at key times.”

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