Big East Basketball: Ranking best homecourt advantages for 2020-21 season
By Max Marmitt
9. Georgetown Hoyas Home Court: Capital One Arena
Having Georgetown ranked at 9th shows how strong of a home-court advantage Big East teams have. More so based on recent history, Georgetown’s home court hasn’t been the same the past few years, considering they were also second to last in average attendance during 2018 and 2019, averaging 7,531 and 7,212 fans per game (no official data for 2020). Sharing the same arena as the Washington Wizards, Georgetown can have a capacity of 20,356 fans.
The atmosphere at Georgetown games is still exhilarating, as they have a solid fanbase and an overall amazing basketball history. In 2017, there was an AP Poll for the top 100 all-time college basketball teams throughout NCAA history and Georgetown was the highest-ranked Big East team at #15 (every Big East team is on the list).
Recently, Georgetown has been one of the worse teams in the conference as they have not gone above .500 in conference play since 2015. They’ve had some outstanding talents, but no NBA players/draft picks since Otto Porter Jr. was taken 3rd overall in the 2013 NBA draft, the last draft of the old Big East (Omer Yurtseven could be drafted this year though and don’t count out Jessie Govan from making the NBA soon). With an influx of transfers recently as well, CBS Sports analyst Matt Norlander ranked Georgetown as 10th (out of 11 now) in his rankings for the conference’s success probability over the next 5 years.
Georgetown’s play certainly damages the effectiveness of their home court, but this is still not a bad home-court advantage. Also, how many college basketball teams have an 11 time NBA All-star as their head coach? An all-time NBA/college great Patrick Ewing could turn the program back around, but he hasn’t done that so far at Georgetown. Despite that, he has instilled a real sense of fight in this Georgetown team and the fans are behind them every home game.