Georgetown Hoyas
The University admits that the precise origin of the term "Hoya" is unknown. At some point before 1893, and likely before 1891, students versed in classical languages combined the Greek "hoia" or "hoya", meaning "what" or "such", and the Latin "saxa" to form "Hoya Saxa!", or "What Rocks!" This cheer may either refer to the stalwart defense of the football team, or to the baseball team, which was nicknamed the "Stonewalls", or to the actual stone wall that surrounds the campus. Father William McFadden, S.J., campus Jesuit and the team's in-house announcer at the Capital One Arena, has disputed the Greek and Latin origin, suggesting the classical words were retroactively applied to a nonsensical cheer.
After World War I, the term "Hoya" was increasingly used on campus, including for the newspaper and the school mascot. In 1920, students began publishing the campus's first sports newspaper under the name "The Hoya", after successfully petitioning the Dean of the College to use it instead of the proposed name, "The Hilltopper". "Hilltoppers" was also a name sometimes used for the sports teams. By the fall of 1928, the newspaper had taken to referring to the sports teams as the Hoyas. This was influenced by a popular half time show at football games, where the mascot, a dog nicknamed "Hoya," would entertain fans.
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.