Story By: Sol Tucker
Photos By: Sol Tucker
Washington, D.C–
The Hoyas haven’t always been on the right side of many pretty victories this season, but they have battled to the end against those same Big East teams that had knocked them off last season in the final minutes. Tonight, Butler was on the wrong side of that scrappy 73-70 victory by the Hoyas.
Micah Peavy and Thomas Sorber each had 19 points leading the Hoyas to a 5-6 record in the conference with the victory tonight.
Sorber who had to exit the game in the first half after getting hit in the nose area, returned in the second half and went to work. Sorber shot 8 of 14 from the field and 3 for 4 from the line while he also had five rebounds and three steals.
We can’t forget about Malik Mack, who didn’t really have night of shooting he would like to remember, but it was his 14 points and shot 6 of 17 from the field, that made the difference lake in the game. His 0 for 5 from 3-point range was the worst of the season.
The biggest difference late in this game was that Butler could not recover from when Georgetown went on a 15-0 second half run to take the lead at 55-44 with 13:14 remaining in the half.
For most of the game after the 5:00 mark the Hoyas and the Bulldogs would trade buckets and force Bulter into quite a few turnovers which the Hoyas also had trouble converting which allowed for the game to get quite a bit closer in the final 1:30.
Butler did claw and scrape a bit more in the final seconds when Patrick Mc Cafferty hit a three with 0:11 remaining and then Mack missed a free throw that allowed Finley Bizjack to hit a lay-up off the Butler rebound cutting the score to 71-68 with 5 seconds remaining.
Bizjack struck one last time at the buzzer, but it was the free throws by Curtis Williams Jr. that put the Bulldogs to sleep for good before that shot.
After the game Hoyas Head Coach Ed Cooley was asked about the consistency of his team.
“It’s been somewhat of a frustrating January with coming out of Syracuse and not having the same lineup consistently. I give our kids a lot of credit. Coming off of a very disturbing loss against a high-quality opponent, for us to respond the way we did today, in particular, the second half defensively. I thought the change of the game was our defensive pressure in the second half. We were able to close it out. When you’re building and growing, you have to expect something like that,” said Cooley.
The Hoyas hit the road again with a match-up against Xavier on Tuesday night.