You know how everybody always says, “It’s not time to hit the panic button yet”? Well, guess what. Someone on the Hoyas needs to hit the panic button right now! Stay the course, keep running the offense, fight through it, will all lead to more losses and a real possibility of an N.I.T. bid. With as much progress as the program has made in the last three seasons, those letters should make every Hoya fan shudder.

The Hoyas need something to change immediately. They actually needed it to change against Seton Hall, and then against Cincinnati. Somebody (player, coach, fan, radio announcer) needs to do something out of character that will jump start, reset, reboot, or reenergize the Hoyas. What would be something totally out of character for this team? Panicking. The guys always seem to be at ease, sometimes even too much so. It looks like whether the team is up by 9 or down by 5 in the final minute, nothing changes. The cliché would be that the Hoyas need to play with urgency, but to me, what they need to play with is character. Because over the past three games I haven’t seen much personality from anyone.

Greg Monroe is a stud, we all know that. Lately he’s been a little timid and a little uncomfortable. I’m sure it comes from all of the offensive fouls he had been receiving. But Monroe playing scared is not helping anyone. Being an excellent passer is different from passing too much. Greg needs to be Greg.

Austin Freeman is a good three-point shooter, maybe a great three-point shooter. Lately, he’s been in a big slump. In fact, if he took a basketball to a farm, he might have trouble hitting the broad side of a barn. But he’s a player, and a shooter, and the most important rule for a shooter is… just make the next one. Freeman could be 0-100 over the last 20 games, but if he goes 4-4 from downtown this weekend, no on will care about the prior misses.

The Hoyas are quickly fading into oblivion, but it’s not even February yet, much less March. As Coach Thompson said after the Cincinnati game, “We will fix this.” OK, so do it. If the nervous Hoyas that have been on the floor for the past games show up on Saturday, the team will drop to 3-6 in the conference. If the Hoyas show up relaxed and playing like their old selves, then they will have put the last two weeks behind them. The Hoyas need to just have fun and play. That’s what they had been doing for 10 weeks, and that’s the thing that will get them back to where they want to be.