Does anybody know what an upset is? Me neither. But I do know that an upset doesn’t have anything to do with little imaginary numbers that are next to team names in TV graphics. The headlines for the Georgetown win over Connecticut will almost all have the word upset in them. But that’s because the people who write headlines don’t study the teams or games; they rely on those little imaginary numbers. When you assess if a result is an upset or not, just ask yourself the following question: “If this game was to be played 10 times, would this result occur three times or less?” If the answer is “No” then it’s not an upset.

 
Georgetown beat Connecticut. Going into that game it could easily have gone either way. UCONN was a slight favorite since they have fewer loses, much more famous players, and, most importantly, because they were playing at home. The game was the conference opener for both teams, and Big East games are impossible to predict whenever two of the top teams play. That doesn’t seem like a real upset anymore does it? That’s because it wasn’t. The Hoyas outplayed the Huskies on this day. That wasn’t lucky, and it wasn’t a fluke. But if they play this game 10 times, neither team would win 7 times.

Georgetown showed great execution on both ends of the floor and deserved the win. The victory doesn’t make the Hoyas better than UCONN; if their rankings had been switched and the Hoyas lost, it wouldn’t have been an upset either. Here’s the bottom line – Connecticut is a very good team. They lost to the Hoyas, and the game wasn’t a fluke, so that means the Hoyas are good too. It seems like up until this point in the season, a lot of people haven’t been very convinced about how good the Hoyas are. It all really comes back to an idea that I mention often – don’t believe the hype, believe your eyes.

Who watched the GU-UCONN game and thought it was an upset? Probably not too many careful observers. Georgetown is much better than people thought two months ago, but the question remains about how good they will be two months from now. The people may still not be convinced, but Georgetown took a nice step forward on Monday towards proving to themselves what they are capable of.