Hoyas Echo Their Glory Days in Beating Ohio State

It’s hard enough for John Thompson III to follow in the footsteps of his famous father. Now the elder Thompson has raised the stakes.

Roy Hibbert scored 20 points, Jeff Green 19, Ashanti Cook 17 and Darrel Owens 14 -- accounting for all the Hoyas’ points -- to lead Georgetown to a 70-52 victory over second-seeded Ohio State on Sunday in the second round of the Minneapolis Regional.

“And he’s going to win a national championship too,” Thompson said of his son, the Hoyas’ coach. “Remember me telling you that.”

The seventh-seeded Hoyas (23-9) did it with a patient, disciplined offense and a dose of the tenacious defense that the elder Thompson’s teams favored.

After the final seconds ticked away, the happy Hoyas pointed to the elder Thompson at courtside, who stood and raised a fist and flashed a smile as wide as any he showed during Georgetown’s NCAA title run in 1984.

The 7-foot-2 Hibbert also had 14 rebounds and three blocked shots.

The trip to the regional semifinals came in Thompson III’s second season after he took a team that was down and almost forgotten. His father, who built the powerful teams of the 1980s, went four seasons before winning twice in the 1976 NCAA tournament.

Georgetown advances to play Florida (29-6) on Friday.

“What does it mean?” Thompson III said. “We’ll wait until the season is over to see. Hopefully, we’re not done.”

It was a bitter loss for Ohio State (26-6), which was making its first tournament appearance since an NCAA investigation into the program while Jim O’Brien was the head coach led to four trips from 1999 to 2002 being erased from the books.

This marks the first time since 1996 that a Big Ten team hasn’t made it through the tournament’s first weekend.

The Hoyas put it away with a late 9-0 run to push the lead to 15 points. By that time, many Ohio State fans -- they made up probably 75% of the crowd -- were flooding the exits.

“We came in here knowing this was almost a home game for them,” Hibbert said. “We’ve played in atmospheres where the whole crowd’s against us. The seniors led us, and we followed right behind them.”