Georgetown has officially fired men’s basketball coach Patrick Ewing a day after the Hoyas’ 80-48 loss to sixth-seeded Villanova in the first round of the Big East Tournament.
The Hoyas trailed by double digits less than 10 minutes into the first half, trailed by 21 points at halftime and never threatened in the second half.
Ewing walked off the court alone Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden, the site of his greatest moments as an NBA player with the New York Knicks, after what was his final game leading Georgetown.
“No thoughts about my future,” Ewing said after the game. “The (last) two seasons [have] been rough Disappointed by the results of these last two years. My future is in the hands of our president and ours [athletic director] and the board of directors.
[Why Patrick Ewing didn’t work out at Georgetown, and what must come next]
“It was a tough year. It wasn’t the year we thought we’d have. We kept fighting. We didn’t give up and we’re disappointed that the season ended the way it did. . . I’m proud to be. at Georgetown Hoya. This institution has been great to me over the years. I would be honored to come back as a coach here. That’s all.”
Ewing’s firing ends a tenure that began with the homecoming of one of the greatest players in program history who returned to lead the team as head coach in 2017. However, things they went downhill quickly after that.
Ewing went 75-109 in six years with the Hoyas, reaching the NCAA Tournament just once in 2021, and that only came after the Hoyas made a surprising run to win that year’s Big East Tournament and secure an automatic offer.
Georgetown posted a 2-38 record in the Big East over the past two seasons.
Ewing had no college coaching experience and had only served as an assistant coach in the NBA when Georgetown hired him, but the move was still met with fanfare because of his legendary playing career there in the 1980s.
Before a Hall of Fame career in the NBA, Ewing was a three-time consensus first-team All-American with Georgetown and led the Hoyas to the 1984 national championship, where he was named Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Final Four. He won the National College Player of the Year the following season before being selected No. 1 overall by the Knicks in the 1985 NBA Draft.
Georgetown will begin its search for a coach who can return the men’s basketball program to the consistent success it experienced in the 1980s and 1990s under former Ewing coach John Thompson Jr. The Hoyas haven’t reached the Final Four since 2007 with Thompson’s son. John Thompson III, and have not earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament since 2015, also under Thompson III.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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