1942–43 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team
| 1942–43 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball | |
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NCAA Tournament, Runner-up
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| Conference | Independent |
| 1942–43 record | 22–5 |
| Head coach | Elmer Ripley (7th year) |
| Captain | Dan Kraus (1st year) |
| Captain | Billy Hassett (1st year) |
| Home arena | Tech Gymnasium |
The 1942–43 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team represented Georgetown University during the 1942–43 NCAA Division I college basketball season. Elmer Ripley coached it in his seventh of ten seasons as head coach; it was also the fifth and final season of his second of three stints at the helm. The team returned to Tech Gymnasium – where Georgetown had played its home games from 1929 to 1940 – on the campus of McKinley Technical High School in Washington, D.C., for its home games. It finished with a record of 22-5 and became the first Georgetown team in history to participate in a post-season tournament, advancing to the final game of the 1943 NCAA Tournament before losing to Wyoming. Its youth and inexperience led it to be nicknamed the "Kiddie Korps."
The previous season, Georgetown had posted a 9-11 record, after which all but three varsity players had either graduated or left school for military service in World War II. For 1942-43, Ripley fielded a young team consisting of three seniors, a junior, and ten sophomores (at a time when freshmen were ineligible for varsity play under National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules), leading to the team being nicknamed the "Kiddie Korps." However, the sophomores were a particularly talented group Ripley had recruited primarily from the New York City area, and had led the 1941-42 freshman team to a 20-1 record.
One of the talented sophomores to join the varsity from the freshman team this season was forward Andy Kostecka. In the season's second game, the 1942–43 squad became the first Georgetown team to score 100 or more points in a game when it defeated American 105-39 – a margin of victory no Georgetown team would exceed until the 1986–87 team beat Saint Leo 126-51 – and Kostecka scored a season-high 22 points in the game. He also had strong scoring performances against Temple, Catholic, Syracuse, and Penn State, and by the middle of the season led the team in scoring and was averaging 15 points per game. At the end of February 1943, Kostecka left school for World War II military service, not to return until the 1946–47 season, but he nonetheless was the team's second-highest scorer for the year.
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