HOOPSWORLD | Basketball News & NBA Rumors

by Nicole Auerbach, USA TODAY Sports

WASHINGTON — By the end of it all, Georgetown coach John Thompson III could only smile.

What else do you do when neither team scores 40 points in a Division I men’s college basketball game? And no players on either bench score in double figures? And when the game-winning shot turns out to be a jump shot taken with more than four minutes left in the game — because neither team scored after that point?

Thompson walked quietly into his postgame news conference, sat down and approached the 25th-ranked Hoyas’ 37-36 win over Tennessee with the best weapon at his disposal: Humor.

Thompson was asked if the game was as painful to coach as it was to watch — and boy, was it tough to see two teams combine to shoot 31-for-90 from the field and 7-for-20 from the line.

“That wasn’t nice to watch?” Thompson deadpanned, perfectly. “Some people will look at that as a thing of beauty.

“I don’t know if it was pretty or ugly or what, but I’ve never been a part of something like that.”

Thompson didn’t stop there, cracking quite a few jokes in a surprisingly good mood after a game where the ball just simply wouldn’t go in the basket for either team.

“Actually I have been a part of a game like this — I think I was eight,” Thompson said, as reporters laughed. “The game ended 13-11. I had 10.”

It was easy for Thompson to shake his head and smile at this kind of a game; he was on the winning side.

Vols coach Cuonzo Martin was less pleased — with the loss and also the way his team struggled against the Hoyas’ zone. He said he wouldn’t have cared much if he’d been on the winning end of a 37-36 contest.

“At the end of the day, you’re trying to get out of here with a ‘W,’ ” Martin said. “I don’t need anything to be pretty. Bottom line, you play a pretty talented ball club. You get the ‘W,’ you leave the scene.

… [For more on Georgetown edges Tennessee in pitiful fashion, 37-36, click here.]