Story By: Sol Tucker
Photos By: Sol Tucker
Washington, D.C–
It took 23 years for the Hoyas to return to the Hilltop to open the regular season and perhaps after the support they received from the students and others they should try it more often.
While the Hoyas started extremely slow against Lehigh in the first half, their strong play in the final 5 minutes gave them their first victory of the 2024-25 season.
For most Hoyas fans, this was a completely different team than last year for Ed Cooley and it was his new players like Micah Peavy who scored 18 of his 20 points in the first half for Georgetown as the Hoyas earned a hard-fought 85-77 victory in their season opener against visiting Lehigh on Wednesday night in Washington.
Another newcomer to the Hoyas this season, Thomas Sorber, dropped 20 points with 13 rebounds for Georgetown (1-0), which shot 31-of-64 (48.4 percent) from the field. Jayden Epps, who finished fifth in the Big East last season with 18.5 points per game, scored 17 points. After finishing 9-23 in his first year with the Hoyas, Cooley has big plans for this team and plans on being around to see out the process.
“You have to get started at some point. These guys have been putting in the work in practice this past week and knew how important it was to not overlook their opening opponent said,” Cooley.
“I really enjoyed our preparation leading up to the game. Obviously, happy about the win. I thought Lehigh did an incredible job bouncing back from their game the other day when they played Northwestern. They made a lot of tough shots. They made shots early. They made shots late. Credit to Micah (Peavy). I thought he really got us going with his energy and his toughness, getting to the rim. Once the game settled in, we got our feet underneath us. I really thought Lehigh played great and I give them a lot of credit, really a lot of credit. And obviously, very, very happy with the win. We’ll have a preparation day tomorrow. We’ll clean up what we did today and prepare for Fairfield, and continue to try to move forward,” said Cooley.
The Mountain Hawks (0-2) opened the season with a 90-46 loss at Northwestern on Monday. Lehigh, which has 11 returners from last season, advanced to the Patriot League Tournament championship game last year for the first time since 2017 before losing to Colgate 74-55. Georgetown improved to 4-1 all-time against Lehigh. It was the teams’ first meeting since the first round of the 1985 NCAA Tournament when the Hoyas rolled to a 68-43 victory.
