1971–72 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team
| 1971-72 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Conference | Independent |
| 1971-72 record | 3–23 |
| Head coach | John Magee (6th season) |
| Assistant coach | Ed MacNamara (1st season) |
| Assistant coach | Don Weber (1st season) |
| Captain | Mike Laughna (1st year) |
| Home arena | McDonough Gymnasium |
The 1971–72 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team represented Georgetown University during the 1971-72 NCAA Division I college basketball season. John Magee coached them in his sixth and final season as head coach. 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 3-23 and therefore was not ranked in the Top 20 in the Associated Press Poll or Coaches' Poll at any time and had no post-season play.
Forward Art White, thought at the time to have been the greatest player in Georgetown history, had left the team at the end of the previous season because of academic difficulties, and he sat out this season entirely. Magee's relationship with his players had begun to unravel the previous year, when the 1970-71 team had followed up the 1969-70 team's appearance in the 1970 National Invitation Tournament with a disappointing performance that Magee blamed on the players – including the once highly regarded White – although he reserved praise for then-junior forward Mike Laughna. In all, Georgetown lost all but two of its top nine scorers from the 1970-71 season.
Magee's relationship with his players continued to deteriorate this year, but that and the loss of scorers were not the 1971-72 squad's only problems. Athletic director Robert Sigholtz had committed the Hoyas to a schedule that included only 10 home games and forced the team to play nine straight road games between December 13, 1971, and January 22, 1972. Magee, working in the last year of his contract with no sign of the university offering an extension, openly feuded with Sigholtz over this schedule and over whether or not Sigholz had provided Magee with an adequate recruiting budget, which totaled only $5,140. After Laughna, now a senior and the team's captain, said in an interview with The Washington Post that Georgetown did not seem to spend very much of the revenue it earned from the basketball team on the basketball program itself, Sigholtz responded with an ineffective late-season news conference that failed to address Laughna's comments and deflected criticism onto Magee, blaming him for the unfavorable schedule and for not using fully the recruiting tools he had available to him. Observers took away little more than the impression that the Georgetown athletic department was deeply troubled.
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