The Final Four is upon us once again. Personally, it seems like much longer than just one year ago that the Hoyas were preparing to take on Ohio State in the 2007 Final Four. A lot has changed in that one year, both nationally and on the hilltop. Throughout this season in college basketball, I felt like there were three teams that were the top teams in the country - Memphis, Kansas, and UCLA. There were a handful of teams that were just slightly below that upper echelon - North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Georgetown, and Louisville among a few others. I felt that even as a #2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, the Hoyas would have had to have a lot of things go their way to win the National Championship. As it was, very little did go their way.

After last season’s season-ending loss for Georgetown, Roy Hibbert felt like there was what he famously called “unfinished business” that the team needed to try and take care of. At present, that business remains unfinished. If only Jeff Green had seen the situation like Big Roy did. If Jeff had stayed at Georgetown there would have been no guarantees that the team would have won the Big East Tournament, or advanced to another Final Four. The strangest part about Green’s departure is that he was still with the Hoyas all season. I’ve never heard of another college basketball team talking about a former teammate who left school early to enter the NBA draft as much as the Hoyas did this season. Coach Thompson and the seniors referred to Jeff a lot, even saying that he was still a part of the team and the senior class.

The Hoyas had a lot of success this season, most notably winning the Big East Regular Season by defeating Louisville in the last game of the year. It was the first time that Georgetown had ever won back-to-back regular season championships, and they did so in the first marathon 18-game season in the new Big East. Jeff Green was the Hoyas’ main option in crunch time last season, but this season it seemed like the only time they didn’t miss him was in the final seconds. Hibbert’s three-point game-winner against UCONN, Jessie Sapp’s three-pointer with 5 seconds left to take the lead at West Virginia, Patrick Ewing’s block at the buzzer against the Mountaineers, Jon Wallace’s heroics from the free throw line against Villanova and Marquette were all critical plays with the game on the line that were worthy of Green’s highlights at Georgetown.

This senior class for the Hoyas was very special. In some ways, the unfinished business was never going to be finished without that entire group getting it done together. It was surely a tough decision for Jeff to leave his friends and teammates behind for the NBA, but if he had decided that the business at hand was more urgent than his future career, he and his teammates might have been preparing for the Final Four once again. No one should blame Jeff for making the choice he made; it’s just that if he had opted the other way, it could have made an already special season even more so.