Georgetown University is one of the premier brands in college basketball. However, the Hoyas have been on a pretty brutal streak of mediocrity since the 2014/15 season.
They have been especially terrible over the last three years.
It is very possible that Georgetown will finish with less than 10 wins for just the fourth time since 1960. That would include 1971/72, each of the last two seasons, and this season.
In an effort to breathe some life back into the program, the university chose to fire Patrick Ewing after six years with a long leash and made a big splash by hiring Ed Cooley away from Providence. Regardless of how things play out down the stretch, his first season in D.C. will be a losing season.
The Hoyas were able to add a few players through the transfer portal during the offseason, but the vast majority of their roster from a year ago ended up elsewhere. Cooley was forced to rebuild from the ground-up and the cards did not fall in his favor. Jayden Epps, Dontrez Styles and Supreme Cook — all transfers — are the only players on the roster who average more than 10 points this year. Things never quite clicked.
Success can be built overnight in the modern era of college basketball, so there is no reason to panic.
Between the transfer portal and traditional high school recruiting, coaches can completely overhaul a roster with four-star and five-star talent year over year over year over year… But NIL money is required to do so.
Georgetown basketball has a lot of NIL money!
According to John Kurkjian of Thompson’s Towel, Cooley and his staff will have approximately $4 million to spend on the roster for next season. That number could rise to as much as $5 million when it is all said and done— which is a lot of money.
Exact NIL finances are not public knowledge but that number is believed to put the Hoyas within the top-five of most wealthy college basketball programs in terms of NIL. To put those numbers in perspective, the floor for transfers who project as high-major starters is approximately $150,000.
Some of that money will be used to retain players currently on the roster. The rest will be used to acquire talent through the portal and through recruiting.
Georgetown will be very well positioned to win bidding wars for top talent.
Cooley left Providence for a reason. This reported NIL backing is a large part of the equation. That’s a big deal for a program that wants to get back to winning ASAP!