1964–65 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team
| 1964-65 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Conference | Independent |
| 1964-65 record | 13–10 |
| Head coach | Tommy O'Keefe (5th year) |
| Assistant coach | Chuck Devlin (1st year) |
| Captain | John Prendergast (1st year) |
| Home arena | McDonough Gymnasium |
The 1964–65 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team represented Georgetown University during the 1964-65 NCAA Division I college basketball season. Tommy O'Keefe coached them in his fifth season as head coach, but Georgetown's head coaching position paid so little that he could only coach part-time and held a full-time job outside of coaching in order to meet his financial obligations, impairing his ability to recruit players. The team was an independent and played its home games at McDonough Gymnasium on the Georgetown campus in Washington, D.C.. It finished the season with a record of 13-10 and had no postseason play.
Georgetown' "Classic Era" (1943-1972) teams usually lacked the height and size necessary to be truly competitive, but the 1964-65 team generated excitement because high-scoring junior forward Jim Barry – perhaps the best player of the Classic Era – was returning after missing the previous season while recovering from knee surgery, and because three large and talented sophomores – 6-foot-11 (211-cm) center Frank Hollendoner, 6-foot-10 (208-cm) center-forward Neil Heskin, and 6-foot-8 (203-cm) forward Steve Sullivan – were joining the varsity after a strong season on the freshman team. For the first time, Sports Illustrated picked Georgetown as one of its Top 20 teams as the season began, and hopes were high that the Hoyas would break their drought and earn a berth in a postseason tournament.
An early blow to the team came in November 1964, three weeks before the season's first game. Junior guard Jim Brown and junior forward Owen Gillen had taken part in an off-season Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Easter basketball tournament in the spring of 1964, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) disallowed the tournament and suspended both players for the first nine games of the 1964-65 season. They thus could not join the team until January 1965. In his first game back with the team, Gillen scored 18 points against Navy, which he followed with a 16-point performance against Delaware four days later. He averaged 13 points and seven rebounds per game for the year and 8.6 rebounds per game for his career, which ended after this season when he did not return for his senior season because of academic issues. Brown, meanwhile, appeared in 14 games and averaged 9.6 points per game.
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