Georgetown Hoyas
Georgetown's nickname is The Hoyas, but its mascot is "Jack the Bulldog." Various breeds of dogs have been used by the sports teams as mascots since the early 1900s. Several notable bull terriers like Sergeant Stubby and "Hoya" were used at football games in the 1920s, as was a Great Dane in the 1940s. However, in 1951, the school suspended its football program because of the increasing cost of the game financially and academically, which left the school without an official live mascot.
2016–17 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team
When Thompson arrived at Georgetown to take charge of the program in 2004, he inherited a team that had finished with a losing record the previous season. Also inheriting his predecessor Craig Esherick′s last recruiting class, which included point guard Jonathan Wallace and two future NBA players, forward Jeff Green and center Roy Hibbert, and himself recruiting DaJuan Summers, he had led the Hoyas back to the NCAA Tournament, reaching the Sweet Sixteen in 2006 and the Final Four in 2007 in his third season with the Hoyas. Over the next eight seasons, Georgetown made six NCAA Tournament appearances, but won only three NCAA tournament games, never advancing beyond the Round of 32 and losing in each case to lower-seeded teams, all but one of them double-digit seeds. The loss in 2008, to 10th-seeded Davidson, was shocking at the time but in retrospect was understandable, given that Davidson was led by future NBA great Stephen Curry. However, it was the harbinger of what turned out to be a gradual, decade-long slide into mediocrity. The later losses – to 14th-seeded Ohio in 2010, to 11th-seeded VCU in 2011, to 11th-seeded North Carolina State in 2012, and above all to 15th-seeded Florida Gulf Coast in 2013, as well as to fifth-seeded Utah in 2015 – had no such straightforward explanation.