Hoyas waste no time in rout

ROSEMONT, Ill. — Superb teams do not trifle with relative rabble.

Continuing its evolution into the former, Georgetown jumped on struggling DePaul early last night at Allstate Arena and never looked back, burying the Blue Demons 64-44.

The 17th-ranked Hoyas (15-4, 6-2 Big East) drilled five of their first six 3-point attempts, bolting to a 23-4 lead. Georgetown, off to its best league start since Allen Iverson was slashing through defenses at the Capital Centre (7-1 in 1996), now enjoys a three-game homestand beginning with a noon tip Sunday vs. No. 9 Pittsburgh.

“Especially on the road, you’ve got to attack from the start and set the tone. You can’t give the other team a chance to mess around,” said Georgetown sophomore point man Jonathan Wallace, who opened the game with back-to-back 3-pointers. “We’ve learned from our mistakes of the past. Last year we had a problem with sluggish starts, so we’ve taken more pride in our starts of late.”

As Wallace said, this was exactly the kind of game these Hoyas struggled with as recently as two weeks ago, when lowly South Florida pushed the Hoyas to the wire in a 50-47 victory at MCI Center. Coach John Thompson III commented after that game that it was the first time he could remember his team playing poorly and still winning. That was a step, however halting and ugly.

And in the wake of the team’s signature victory over top-ranked and previously unbeaten Duke 10 days ago, the Hoyas seem to have taken another major step toward becoming an elite program. Now they are blowing out inferior teams, jumping on them early and quashing their spirit.

That’s exactly what the Hoyas did to Cincinnati in a 19-point rout at MCI Center on Saturday that could have been far more lopsided. And it’s exactly what they did to DePaul (8-11, 1-7 Big East), ending all suspense in the game’s opening minutes by making eight of their first nine field goals while the reeling Blue Demons still were searching for offensive solutions.

With leading scorer Sammy Mejia slowed with a tender ankle, DePaul had no offensive identity at the outset. The Hoyas negated DePaul’s lone offensive strength, its athleticism and driving ability, by sagging into a zone anchored by sophomore center Roy Hibbert and forcing the Blue Demons to hoist 3-pointers. Not surprisingly given DePaul’s status as one of the Big East’s poorest shooting teams, the ploy worked. DePaul finished the first half with only seven field goals on 25 attempts (28 percent), leaving the Hoyas with a commanding 34-18 advantage at intermission.

After the Hoyas’ torrid opening, most of the team’s first-half offense came courtesy of Hibbert (17 points, eight rebounds), who exploited DePaul’s extended defense for a series of pivot hoops over and around undersized, overmatched Blue Demons.

“That’s what’s great about our offense,” said Hibbert, a 7-foot-2, 283-pound center. “When our guards start hitting shots, that really opens up the middle for me. … And when I got it down there tonight, I finished it.”

Hibbert finished the game an impressive 7-for-9 from the field, playing only eight minutes after intermission thanks to the lopsided score.

“Roy played well,” Thompson said. “His confidence is up. He played really well early in the year, and then there was like a 10-day stretch where he forgot he was good. He did a very good job establishing position down low tonight, and there was a stretch in the middle of the first half where he really got going. The nature of our team is that we’re very versatile, and that’s the way we decided to attack tonight — in the post with Roy and Jeff [Green].”

Green added 15 points and seven rebounds to the cause but experienced an atypical night in some regards with four turnovers against just two assists.

“We got a little more careless than we’ve been, particularly late in the first half, with turnovers,” Thompson said. “Actually, that’s kind of eating at me a little bit. … And we lost a little bit of our defensive intensity and edge in the second half, which I gave them an earful over. But at the end of the day, I thought we played pretty well. Anytime you get a road win in this conference, you’ve done a solid day’s work.”