Sweet 16 by a wide margin
Nothing to sneeze at but the 2006 team played a cupcake schedule, with a great talented team, and the NIT title also means the team failed to even make the Dance

The Sweet 16 ride put the program on the map, put a GW player high in the 1st round, and set the course for all that was to come in the next 12 years

What's incredibly dissapointing is how poor 2008-present has been, considering how strong 1993-2007 were for our program, by and large

Since we are being asked about the accomplishment, I am looking at the totality of the accomplishment.  The sweet 16 comes in third easily when put in these terms.  That team may have had an easier OOC schedule than the 2005-06 team and I wasn't sure that was even possible.  They were 19-7 in the regular season, 8-6 in the A10, and then lost its first A10 tournament game.  Prior to the NCAA's, they were 0-1 against Top 25 teams having lost to #22 ranked UMASS.  They then beat #21 ranked UNM which was certainly an upset but not really a shock.  UNM had been considered a soft #5 seed by many pundits.  Then, the break of all breaks came when Southern knocked off #4 seed Georgia Tech.  This team played admirably in losing to eventual national runner-up Michigan, but reaching that Sweet 16 game was not a huge accomplishment.  (Being able to say that we made the Sweet 16 was significant, but is not at all congruous to the actual acts it took to get there.)

I would place the NIT Championship as the second biggest accomplishment.  First, there was the disappointment of missing the NCAA's due to some late losses.  Even if you wanted to argue that this was outside the actual accomplishment, the NIT run, while impressive, wasn't beyond belief.  The team barely got by Hofstra in round 1, took apart an overhyped Monmouth team in round 2, and then caught the break of all breaks by playing at home against Florida when the game actually should have been played in Gainesville.  (I believe their arena renovation was under way which is why the Smith Center became the site of the game.)  Finally, at MSG, we were able to avoid major conference schools by knocking off SD State and Valpo.  That's 4 midmajors out of 5, plus a home game where we were supposed to play away.  The team played great in just about every game (Hofstra being the exception) and again, claiming an NIT Championship sounds better than the actual accomplishment of doing so, at least against this field.

My vote goes to the #6 ranking.  Yes, the OOC schedule was miserable.  The team went 1-1 against Top 25 opponents in the regular season.  Nevertheless, it went 26-1 to earn the #6 national ranking.  The aspect to this that is so colossally underrated is that it is so incredibly difficult to win 26 of 27 games in Division 1, almost irrespective of the level of competition.  Upsets occur daily in college basketball.  Home teams win roughly two out of every three games.  College players are bound to have an off night here and there.  They might be distracted by schoolwork, or by relationships, or by trying to arrange to provide tickets for their parent's friends, or countless other things.  The thing about this team is that they lost two games to ACC teams that were simply better than them, and a third to a Temple team in the A10 tournament where Pops was injured and they clearly needed rest.  Put another way, their off-nights almost always resulted in wins.    They were 4-0 in overtime games which included back-to-back against a lowly Marshall team and a decent St. Louis team.  A pedestrian UMASS team came close as did pesky St. Joe's and Xavier teams.  All told, they were 6-0 in either one possession games and/or games that went to overtime.  Plus, they had a 4 point win at Xavier which could only be considered a major scare.  That's 7 nail biters and this team managed to win all of them.  That's how you compile a 26-1 record and a #6 ranking.  This body of work represents the program's greatest accomplishment in my mind.  Not because of who they played, but because regardless of who you play, it is still so difficult to pull off.

Last edited by Gwmayhem (6/09/2020 3:19 pm)

I voted for other because, to me, you left off the biggest one by far: Going 16-0 in the Atlantic 10. 


That is an incredible feat.  #6 was a byproduct of that, though the ranking was aided by the weak OOC schedule and the NCAA seed steps on that a bit ( tbf, the seedwas reduced because of both the Pops injury and geographic placement).

Making the sweet 16 and winning the NIT are close seconds Great accomplishment to blow out the 5 seed and blow out the 13 who had beaten the 4, but there’s a lot of A10 teams to have made the sweet 16 who have never sniffed 16-0. 

I will also add that GW Mayhem is selling the OOC schedule short from the sweet 16 year (plus the 10 team A10 was VERY strong then).  The OOC schedule included multiple conference champs, like good Pepperdine and JMU teams, and it included Vin Baker’s Hartford (Baker was an all American level player who had a long nba career and made Hartford tough), plus iirc, Unc Charlotte was pretty good back then. 

Winning the NIT is also so much more difficult than people realize - and we blew out our last two opponents in MSG to win it - but as much as we love it, most college hoops fans don’t get how hard winning the NIT is, or care.


Finally,, back to going 16-0, it’s not like that was a terrible year for the league.  Per kenpom, the A10 has 5 teams in the top 64, 6 in the top 100, and 7 in the top 105, and 11 top 150.  The odds of a team running the table against that schedule are very low.   

I would predict that we will make the sweet 16 before we go 16-0 in conference again.

I feel the biggest accomplishment in program history was made under Coach Karl Hobbs. In two years, Hobbs brought into the program the following five players:

JR Pinnock, Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Mike Hall, Omar Williams and Carl Elliott.

I feel all 5 players deserve to be in the GW Hall of Fame.  In those two years, Hobbs set the foundation for many of the great accomplishments listed on this thread.  To my knowledge, there is nothing that comes close to this, except the Sweet 16 bid in 1993.  I feel the cumulative accomplishments of Coach Hobbs' teams easily eclipse the Sweet 16 appearance.  And, although this is just speculation, I must add that, if Pops hadn't been injured and the refs had called an honest game, I think we would have beaten Duke in 2006. That would have been our second Sweet 16 bid.  I don't know how we would have done against LSU, but at least we would have had a shot.

So I feel the biggest accomplishment, by far, was the fact that Coach Hobbs recruited and helped developed these young men into great players, great people and a great team.

I hope we look back in a few years, and are able to say that JC did the same!

Last edited by 22ndandF (6/10/2020 9:05 am)

Gwmayhem wrote:

Finally, I'm pretty sure I recall in the past your mentioning how down the A10 was in 2005-06.  It's worth noting that had GW won the A10 tournament that season, the A10 would have only had GW representing the conference at the dance.  A pedestrian Xavier team snuck in by winning the conference tournament and received a 14 seed which is the poorest seed I can ever recall a conference school receiving.  Another example in how two different sets of data can speak to two very different points about the exact same thing.

You recall wrong.  I’ve talked about 05 and 07 (when we won the A10 tourney) as being down A10s.  As I said, plenty of good teams in 06 - and ironically, more would have gotten bids if they could have beaten us. 

In 05, the A10 GW and St Joe were both just inside the top 50, but those were the only top 75 teams.  There were 4 in the top 105 (compared to 8 the next year) and only 5 teams in the top 150 (compared to 11 in 06).

07 was also down, though only 1 team in the top 64 (compared to 4 in 06).   There were only 2 in the top 75 and  4 in the top 105.

FWIW, when we made the tourney in 14, there were 6 teams in the top 55 and 9 in the top 105, and only 1 team worse than 152.

I’ll also of course disagree that it’s splitting hairs because lots of teams have made it to #6 but few have run the table in a decent league. 


For 22 & F, if we are looking at program building, then it has to be what Jarvis did over what Hobbs did.   Setting aside the fact that every fan puts the teams they first loved on a pedestal (I’m assuming you came of age as a GW fan during the Hobbs years), look at what Jarvis did:

- took a team that had been 1-27 two years earlier to the NiT and within 3 years to the Sweet 16

- Recruited the National Freshman of the Year (Yinka).  Not even Pops or Mike or any of the Hobbs recruits could come close to that level of recognition.

- Put together arguably the deepest roster in gw history with Yinka, Sonni Holland, Brigham, Dirkk Surles, Pearsall, Kwame Evans, Vaughn Jones, Nimbo Hammonds, Antoine Hart, and others who contributed. 

- Earned 3 at-large Ncaa bids in 4 years.

- Won 3 ncaa games in 2 years (we’ve only won one ncaa game since he left). 

- set the program on a sustained path to success so that even though 30 years after GW had made the NCAAs, he got us there and established us enough that every GW coach until MoJo got to the tourney.   

I love the recruits you mentioned, but it’s no match for what Jarvis did for the program.

No question that Jarvis put us on the map and forever changed the trajectory and expectations surrounding GW men's basketball. He should be the patron saint of GW basketball. We've had our ups and downs since and mainly our downs were self-inflicted. I really feel that we are on the front edge of another upswing with JC. Hopefully, we will be able to add accomplishments to the debate over biggest program accomplishment in the coming years. 2 of 3 events cited are 14 and 27 years old. Even the NIT is now 4 years old. Time for something new.

FQ, sorry if the finger should not be pointed at you, but there have been plenty of people here who have posted that the 2005-06 season was a down year for the A10.  When considering that GW would have been the only team to reach the NCAA's had they received the automatic bid, and that Xavier was a 14 seed for winning the A10 tournament, it's hard to think otherwise.  I could be wrong but it seems like there have been plenty of years when we had at least six teams in the Top 100. .  

Gwmayhem wrote:

GWRising, as long as you were talking to Coach Jarvis about the Iowa game, did you ask him what he ever did with those two unused timeouts?

Not really. Like a lot of us I think he would like to have that game back and re-do it.. As I said, it was his biggest disappointment at GW as far as the outcome. He is well aware of the missed opportunity. Part of GW basketball lore at this point.
 

BM wrote:

The Shawnta Rogers, Mike King, Koul, Yegor team didn't stink either.  Agree that Jarvis built the best program.  Multiple sellouts at the Smith Center every year with average attendance over 4k a couple of seasons.  Local and national press loved us and had multiple deans list students on the team every year.  Proudest I've been to be a fan.

BM, I hadn't considered that so much, but I feel you make an excellent point.  Getting Shawnta, Yegor and Koul in back to back years was a fantastic job by Jarvis.   All three were stars.  I agree that Jarvis built the best program too, and I think he was our greatest coach (at least since I started to follow GW basketball).  I was just thinking that for Hobbs to land those five players, fill the Smith Center, go 16-0 with them, rocket-ship into the national spotlight and be single-digit ranked, was a bit of brighter star for the program.  Unfortunately, Hobbs' star burned too hot and didn't have the life span of the Jarvis teams.  Thinking back, to those mid-1990 years and GW basketball brings back some great memories.  Those teams were so much fun and were quite amazing!