Hoyas Depend on Their Youth : College basketball: Georgetown relies heavily on the play of four freshmen who are learning on the job in the Big East.

They are a somewhat less-than-imposing foursome, these freshman mainstays on the Georgetown University basketball team.

One of them (Joey Brown) was dubbed the “Pillsbury Dough Boy” by teammates after an out-of-town sportswriter likened his chubby, innocent face to that of television’s muffin-bodied pitchman. Another (Lamont Morgan) is nicknamed “J.J.” for comedian Jimmy Walker’s thin-as-a-rail, fast-talking character on the old sitcom “Good Times.”

The designated shooter in the group (Charles Harrison) hasn’t shot the ball particularly well for most of the season, and the model of steadiness (Robert Churchwell) has fallen into a slump. “I guess we don’t really scare anyone,” Brown said recently. “We have other guys on the team to do that.”

Indeed they do, but even Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo cannot carry the Hoyas alone. Never was that more evident than in Sunday’s 72-63 loss to DePaul, during which the freshmen reverted to their tentative, unproductive form of months ago and even the Twin Towers’ 40 points could not rescue Georgetown from an irksome defeat.

Wherever the Hoyas will go this season, their quartet of first-year contributors will go a long way toward taking them. If they’re able to regularly live up to St. John’s Coach Lou Carnesecca’s lofty praise -- “they play like 10-year veterans,” Carnesecca said after his club lost to Georgetown last week -- this may be a team of virtually limitless potential; otherwise, more trying losses like Sunday’s are certain to follow.

“They’re getting accustomed,” Hoyas Coach John Thompson said of his supporting cast last week. “Time’s the only thing that will help them. Time is what we need.”

When No. 20 Georgetown (13-6, 5-3 Big East) took the Capital Centre floor Wednesday night vs. Providence (13-7, 4-5), three of the freshmen -- Brown, Harrison, Churchwell -- were scheduled to start, as they have all season. Morgan joined them for four games during Mourning’s six-week injury absence, marking the first time since Thompson’s first season as Hoyas coach he had started four freshmen.

Except for Harrison, they were not among the nation’s most hotly pursued high-school seniors a year ago. And save for Churchwell, none was planning to attend Georgetown before last-minute recruiting twists.

Now they see themselves as the future core of one of the nation’s premier teams. Of course, they don’t have the luxury of thinking solely about what’s to come; much is expected of them now. Together they have provided 52 percent of Georgetown’s points, 37 percent of its rebounds and 71 percent of its assists.

They have become close on the court and off, thrown together from the first day of Georgetown’s Community Scholars summer-school program. Brown once was the outsider in the group: The other three are from local high schools and had played with or against one another since the 10th grade; Harrison and Morgan went to elementary school together.

But any barriers among them were overcome soon after they met. “We’ve had a lot of good experiences together already,” Morgan said. “We’re all working hard at the basketball part of it, and we’re spending a lot of time with each other away from basketball. We stick together pretty tightly.”

Brown, the point guard, quickly became a favorite of Thompson’s at preseason practice. He’s stockily built at 5 feet 10 and 175 pounds, and his combination of strength, quickness and uncanny anticipation has made him the Hoyas’ latest ballhawking defensive whiz in the mold of former lead pest Gene Smith.

“I am a Joey Brown fan,” Thompson said earlier this year. “He’s competitive. He plays great defense. He responds well to criticism. He’s done about as well as you could hope for.”

Brown is the latest product of Georgetown’s Louisiana pipeline, a tradition of Hoyas players from the New Orleans area that began in 1979 with Steve Martin (and continued through the ‘80s with Perry McDonald, Jaren Jackson, Johnathan Edwards and Dwayne Bryant).

Brown is a stretch of the concept, since his home town of Morgan City is about a 90-minute drive south of New Orleans, but his fascination with playing for Georgetown stemmed from years of reading in the newspapers about the New Orleans-bred Hoyas.

“I think all of Louisiana is Georgetown fans,” he said. Brown had wanted to play for a high-profile program since he saw the recruiting rush that surrounded his one-time high-school teammate, David Johnson (now at Syracuse). Problem was, Brown never had been away from home for more than a week at a time, and he thought his mother wanted him to go to school closer to home -- perhaps at nearby Tulane.

Brown’s high-school coach, Herman Hartman, even telephoned Thompson on Brown’s expected signing day to inform him that Brown was headed to Tulane. But at the last moment, Brown’s mother told him to go to school where he really wanted to go, and the reversal was made within hours.

His family now watches his games via satellite dish, and Brown has fit in well -- in the head-turning big-city environment as well as within the Hoyas’ system. He says Hartman was a “defensive fanatic” who turned him into the kind of pesky player he is now, although he shudders in recalling the night three years ago when Gulfport, Miss., native Chris Jackson torched Morgan City High for 49 points.

If Harrison -- the wispy, 6-2 shooting guard with lightning-quick hands and an array of hanging, leaning, running shots usually devised in mid-flight -- is reminiscent of former Hoyas all-American Charles Smith, it’s not entirely by accident. The two often went head-to-head during playground games while Harrison was a high-school junior.

Harrison was regarded as the lone blue-chip recruit in the group, a 26-points-per-game scorer during his senior year who drew the interest of big-name schools with a procession of eye-opening summer-camp showings. He once was headed to Maryland, but suddenly backed out of a oral commitment to go to Georgetown on the last night of the November 1989 early-signing period.

“I always wanted to come to Georgetown,” he said, also admitting to an awareness of Maryland’s NCAA sanctions that were to come. “I didn’t understand the way (Georgetown was) recruiting me. ... Georgetown wasn’t calling me all the time, but that didn’t mean they weren’t interested in me. It’s just that their players come first. I didn’t realize that for a while. ... It was nothing against Maryland, but it’s worked out really well for me.”

Harrison is Georgetown’s third-leading scorer (behind Mutombo and Mourning) at 12.7 points per game, but he’s shooting just 37 percent and has suffered through a handful of games of nightmarish misfiring -- like four of 14 against Villanova last month and Sunday’s three-of-15 effort, which came on the heels of improved marksmanship in wins over Pittsburgh and St. John’s.

Thompson praises his no-conscience willingness to keep firing, but Harrison concedes the misses were troublesome earlier in the season. “I took a lot of good shots, but I also took some bad shots,” he said. “The ones I missed, they were getting me down. Now I know not to let that bother me.”

Still, Harrison insists he and Brown have at least held their own with other guards in the Big East. “I feel like we’re doing excellent for our first year ... even if we do still have a long way to go.”

Churchwell and Morgan are confidants from their years as teammates at Gonzaga High here. They’re a disparate duo -- Morgan is among the team’s leading comedians, Churchwell the studious, button-downed type -- but their dissimilarities have balanced one another in friendship.

“He keeps me out of trouble,” Morgan said. “Of course, sometimes I have to straighten him out too.”

Churchwell is as athletic a player as the Hoyas have, with explosive leaping ability that took him to first place in the high jump, long jump and triple jump at the Metro Conference track and field championships while at Gonzaga. The 6-6 forward chose Georgetown over Notre Dame -- a fitting twist because he grew up with his mother in South Bend, Ind., until moving here the summer before high school to join his father.

He’s in a four-game dip of sub-10-point performances, but he had scored in double figures in nine of 15 games before that. Morgan has all but disappeared from Georgetown’s offense for the past two games, but his agility and versatility (he can play either guard position and small forward) remain ingredients key to the Hoyas’ rotation.

Morgan never really was recruited by the Hoyas, but -- after Churchwell decided to go to Georgetown -- he talked Thompson into being interested in him.

“I contacted Coach and told him that I wanted to come,” Morgan said. “He said he hadn’t really had an interest, but he hadn’t had an interest in Charles Smith either, and it worked out well with him. ... I wasn’t really expecting to play this much, but I figure if you work hard and put your heart into it, good things will happen.”

Said Churchwell: “I’m still a lot closer to Lamont, but all four of us kind of have this bond now. ... We know we’re under a little pressure, because if we don’t win it probably won’t be considered Dikembe and Alonzo’s fault. But the thing about us only being freshmen, that gets carried too far sometimes. We’ve played enough games now to be able to contribute on a consistent basis.”