“Threw it away to Worthy! Worthy…FIVE…the TAR HEELS are going to win the NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!”

Makes you smile, doesn’t it? A win over the Hoyas on Sunday won’t win the Heels another title, but it’ll get them one step closer. And that’s all we can ask for this weekend. We’ll wait until next weekend to ask them to win the championship.

Meanwhile, Georgetown is trying to return to the Final Four for the first time since 1985 (by comparison, North Carolina has been to 76 Final Fours in that same time span). The Hoyas have played in four title games in their history…one in 1943, and then three in a four year span – 1982, 1984, and 1985. Their lone championship victory came in 1984 as they defeated the University of Houston by nine. To the best of my knowledge, no airballs resulted in game-winning dunks in this particular contest.

While the Hoyas will no doubt be out for revenge for their one point loss to the Tar Heels in the 1982 championship match-up, Carolina will be seeking payback for a 79 to 74 loss to Georgetown in the 2003 NIT. While it certainly hurts worse to lose in the NCAA title game than the third round of the NIT, recent memories are always more vivid than older ones. And since none of the current Hoyas were even alive for the loss in ’82, the current Heels have the advantage in the revenge as a motivator department.

This season, head coach John Thompson III (no relation to former Hoya coach John Thompson, Jr. – aside from them being father and son) and the Hoyas walk (literally) into the Elite Eight after wins over Belmont, Boston College, and Vanderbilt. If the Heels had had to play the Eagles or the Commodores in the tournament, Carolina fans would probably have spent a good deal of time talking about how tough they were, but don’t you think Michigan State and USC would have soundly defeated Georgetown’s last two opponents?

The Hoyas have had a lot of big names don their hideously ugly grey uniforms over the years. As a part of their celebration of 100 years of Georgetown basketball this season, fans were asked to vote on the top 25 players in Hoya history. The list included Tom O’Keefe, Patrick Ewing, Dikembe Mutombo, Alonzo Mourning, and Allen Iverson. Surprisingly, Michael Jackson made the list over Paul Tagliabue. Which reminds me…why did the second leading rebounder in Georgetown history become the commissioner of the NFL instead of the NBA?

You’re no doubt curious about the origination of the term Hoya. If these previews have taught me nothing else, it’s that typically when a team has a nickname that’s not a real word, some (intoxicated?) student of the school just said it one day and it stuck. I was tempted to just say that’s what happened at Georgetown without even looking it up, but that would have been a disservice to you the reader. After extensive research, I’ve learned that for years Georgetown went by the nickname “The Stonewalls,” until one day a student cheered his Stonewalls on by shouting “Hoya Saxa.” Hoya is Greek for “what” and Saxa is Latin for “rocks.” He must have yelled it obnoxiously loud and repeatedly, because it caught on enough to became the new nickname. Since this scholarly individual was making up cheers in a foreign language, he probably wasn’t inebriated…but, in fairness, he did mix two different languages in his two word phrase.

Tickets are still available to Sunday’s game through Carolina Water Cooler’s exclusive ticket provider. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of that link and check out the three lower level tickets going for $232,404. Each. I guess $697,212 is a small price to pay to watch the Heels earn a spot in the Final Four.