Holy Hoyas!

Everyone knew Georgetown would be good. I thought the Hoyas would really come into their own in Big East play. But there were at least six teams that many thought would be better than John Thompson III's guys.

Yet here we are, the morning after the Big East opener, clearly scrambling to make sense of Georgetown's 74-63 throttling of UConn ... in Hartford! The No. 2 Huskies did very little right. Just look at the box score, where you can always find the reasons for the loss. Seventeen turnovers and six assists? (I'm going to beat this into your head this year, but there are four principles to winning -- good field-goal shooting, good free-throw shooting, few turnovers, lots of offensive boards.)

There is a laundry list of other things that went wrong for UConn -- Hasheem Thabeet only took four shots and scored four points; Jerome Dyson was 1 for 10 from the field for four points; and Georgetown scored 26 points off turnovers.

Sloppy play doesn't help you win games, let alone a Big East or national title. Jim Calhoun has to be furious about his team's performance. His Huskies won the battle of the boards and scored plenty of second-chance points, but turnovers and that lack of the extra pass killed them.

But give Georgetown credit. The Hoyas didn't have a much better stat line -- 14 turnovers, 10 assists, lost the rebounding fight, didn't shoot any special percentage -- but they just capitalized on UConn's mistakes.

This is the difference in the game: Points off turnovers -- Georgetown 26, UConn 13.

Simple as that.

Moving forward, Georgetown returns home to the Verizon Center for the ultimate chance to take advantage of its momentum and beat No. 3 Pitt. But the Panthers have a slightly different style than UConn and (I think) they match up better with the Hoyas.

This is a primetime Big East showdown with a lot on the line -- Georgetown raised the stakes with its pummeling of UConn. Pitt and G'town have the two best defenses (in terms of FG defense) in the Big East and they are both in the top three of the RPI right now.

How can I make this any simpler? In terms of efficiency, Georgetown has the No. 1 offense and No. 6 defense; Pitt's No. 12 and No. 8, respectively.

Each team has an Achilles' heel or two -- Georgetown one of the worst rebounding teams in the Big East (Pitt gets a ton of offensive boards) and turns the ball over a lot; Pitt shoots 67 percent from the charity stripe (Georgetown boasts a 75-percent clip) and doesn't have more than one legitimate outside shooter.

Let's just hope it doesn't come down to free-throw shooting ...