Today is a day that will live in infamy. Probably. If the Georgetown Hoyas defeat the Florida International Golden Panthers this evening at the Verizon Center, the team will break a school record for most consecutive home wins. Sort of. First, there are some specifics that need to be addressed.

Many years ago, from the latter part of the 1910s through part of the 1920s the Georgetown University basketball team won somewhere around 50 straight games at home. College sports wasn’t as well documented back then, so there is some discrepancy in the historical documents about how many games the team actually won in a row at home. The real answer is somewhere between 47 and 52 games.

For the potential record-breaking event this evening, we’re talking about the modern era of Georgetown Basketball. Generally, that means when John Thompson (JTIII’s father) took over as the Hoyas’ head coach. That was in the 1972-73 season. For Hoya History, it’s easy to see why that year can be chosen as a logical start date, but coincidentally that was also the first season that freshmen were allowed to participate in Varsity Basketball in the NCAA.

Since the 1972-73 season, there have been four Georgetown Hoya teams that went one full season undefeated at home – 1977-78 (15-0), 1988-89 (14-0), 1995-96 (16-0), and 2007-08 (16-0). If you take the consecutive home wins to complete the preceding seasons and add the home wins to begin the seasons following the undefeated years, you get the four longest streaks in the modern era of Georgetown Basketball.

There are two other little wrinkles to consider. First, the Hoyas have used different arenas as their home court – McDonough Gymnasium, the Capital Centre (later known as the USAir or US Airways Arena), and the Verizon Center (previously known as the MCI Center). For the streaks in question, we are referring to all home games for the Hoyas, whether they were played at any of the facilities that the Hoyas have called “home” over the years. However, there were also some games at the Capital Centre that are recorded as played on a neutral court. All that means is that there were some Georgetown games played at the Capital Centre that were not technically home games for the Hoyas and therefore cannot count towards the home winning streak. The other confusing part is that the 1976-77 team lost the final game of the season at home to Old Dominion. This was not a regular season game, but the opening round of the ECAC Tournament. The game was played at McDonough, but is officially listed in the Georgetown Media Guide as a neutral game because it was a post-season tournament game. Since that game was not technically a home game, the loss did not snap the Hoyas’ home-winning streak at that time.

Having explained all of the needed details, here are the longest home winning streaks in the modern era of Georgetown Basketball.