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Freshman Monroe leads Georgetown in rout of Drexel

Nov 22, 2008 - 10:59 PM WASHINGTON (Ticker) -- The graduation of Roy Hibbert left quite a hole in the paint for Georgetown, but highly touted freshman Greg Monroe has done his best to fill the void early on this season.

Monroe missed just two of his nine attempts from the field and knocked down all six of his free throws en route to 20 points as 18th-ranked Georgetown cruised past Drexel, 81-53, on Saturday.

DaJuan Summers added 10 points and Chris Wright collected 11 and seven assists for the Hoyas (2-0), who led, 42-25, at halftime and breezed past the Dragons after struggling to put away Jacksonville in Monday's season opener.

"With this group, we have the ability to get into the paint and to get to the rim off of cuts, off of post-ups, off of penetration, off of passes," Georgetown coach John Thompson III said. "That is a focal point for us."

Monroe was tagged by many as the No. 1 recruit of 2008. After a 14-point, seven-rebound performance in Georgetown's season-opening 71-62 win over Jacksonville, the 6-11 center nearly was perfect offensively against Drexel while grabbing eight rebounds.

"Greg is an unselfish player," Thompson said. "He does a good job of making decisions on when it's his turn and when it's his teammates' turn. He is going to continue to get better, obviously relative to most incoming freshmen. He's had two pretty good games."

Monroe led four players in double figures as the Hoyas shot 53 percent (28-of-53) from the field and 86 percent (19-of-22) from the free-throw line.

Georgetown scored 15 straight points to open a 15-2 advantage just five minutes into the opening half and used a 12-2 run late to push the bulge to 38-15 just before intermission.

"Whether they play man or zone, we are going to run our offense," Georgetown senior guard Jesse Sapp said. "We have stuff for man, zone or whatever other defense they are going to run. We have answers for it all, we just have to run it the right way and stick with it no matter what they are doing."

The Hoyas struggled from beyond the arc against Jacksonville, converting just 5-of-23 3-point attempts. The long-range shooting did not improve much on Saturday as they knocked down just 6-of-21 tries.

Austin Freeman scored 16 points and reserve Jason Clark added nine for Georgetown.

A 25-10 spurt at the start of the second half saw the Hoyas extend their lead to a game-high 31 points and brought most of the starters to the bench.

"They didn't even need to run the offense, they just knocked balls out, got steals and got lay-ups," Drexel coach James Flint said. "They did everything in transition. One of our things was, we wanted to run our offense. We didn't want them to get the ball out in transition because it becomes that much harder to stop the offense. We just threw the ball to them."

Scott Rodgers scored 13 points and Jamie Harris added 12 for Drexel (1-1), which shot just 25 percent (13-of-53) from the field.