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im Boeheim didn’t know what else he and his staff could do in the 1989-90 season. There was no easy way to prepare for the 7-foot-2, 260-pound, size-22 shoe Dikembe Mutombo and his looming paint presence. So, Boeheim grabbed a broom.

The broom was long with white tape plastered around the coil, reading ‘MUTOMBO.’ Former Syracuse forward Billy Owens said Boeheim and then-assistant coach Wayne Morgan employed the broom during layup drills before facing Georgetown. One coach would stand below the rim, extend it upward and reject every layup SU’s players attempted; even if the broom went through the net on a goaltend, it meant Mutombo won.

The drill’s sheer ridiculousness incensed Syracuse star big man Derrick Coleman during one particular practice, Owens said. In pure disgust, Coleman snatched the broom from Morgan and chucked it across Manley Field House following a rep.

“Coach was saying that Mutombo is coming from the weak side, so you got to be strong with the ball. Take it to his chest,” Owens said of the unorthodox drill. “If he blocks it, he blocks it, but let him know you’re still going to go at him.”

“I don’t know if that helped or not,” Boeheim added.

It didn’t. Mutombo blocked 10 shots across two matchups against Syracuse that season.

Before his 18-year Hall of Fame NBA career, where he won four Defensive Player of the Year awards and became iconic for his shot-blocking prowess, Mutombo starred in the SU-Georgetown rivalry while playing for the Hoyas from 1988-91. His dominant college career helped propel the then-Big East matchup to one of its golden ages. Stars lined up all over the court — Owens, Coleman, Alonzo Mourning — yet Mutombo shined brightest.

Mutombo died from brain cancer on Sept. 30. He was 58. Mutombo’s legacy transcends generations, notably through his acclaimed humanitarian work and timeless finger-wag celebration. Ahead of Syracuse and Georgetown’s 100th-ever meeting on Dec. 14, those who knew, played or coached against Mutombo reminisced on his role in shaping the historic rivalry.

“He’s just the nicest human being you ever want to meet. And it’s hard to say that about a Georgetown guy,” Boeheim joked about Mutombo. “He was a great statesman and an ambassador for the game of basketball. It was sad to see him go. He was a force.”

Dikembe Mutombo’s basketball journey in the United States began with his college career at Georgetown, where he was a two-time All-American across three seasons. Photograph Courtesy of Georgetown University Athletics

Mutombo moved to the United States from the Democratic Republic of Congo to sign with Georgetown in the fall of 1987 and joined its basketball team the following year. He became one of the NCAA’s greatest defenders of all time. Mutombo was a two-time All-American, averaged a double-double as a junior and senior and won Big East Defensive Player of the Year in 1991 — in which he totaled a whopping 4.7 blocks per game.

At the time of his graduation, Mutombo’s 354 blocks were the third-most in college basketball history.

“He made you think about every time you drove to the basket, that he’s going to be there,” Owens said.

Mutombo’s success wasn’t surprising, especially to his Georgetown teammates. The day former Hoyas forward Milton Bell saw a 7-footer running back and forth on the court with the speed of a deer, he said he knew head coach John Thompson had found another gem.

Bell lived with Mutombo during his freshman year in 1988-89. He likened Mutombo’s road from the Congo to playing Division I ball to following the “golden staircase.” The talent was always there — he just needed to be himself. Thompson gave him that chance.

“It didn’t take me long to figure out if you take a kid with the drive of Dikembe Mutombo and the knowledge and connections of John Thompson, we knew this kid was going to be special,” Bell said.

Thompson let his players be free. For Mutombo, that meant rejecting layups with authority while laughing about it on his way to the offensive end. That was originally seen during his first season when he was on the Hoyas’ second team behind Mourning.

Bell said Mutombo was tenacious in every practice and quickly earned more minutes as the year progressed. Mutombo finished the 1988-89 season playing just 11.3 minutes per game, but averaged 2.3 blocks. His breakout performance came against Syracuse. On March 5, 1989, Mutombo tallied four blocks in an eventual SU overtime victory. But Owens and Coleman still won’t let Herman Harried forget one of Mutombo’s swats.

Harried, who played for the Orange from 1984-89, crafted a baby hook shot that Owens and Coleman could never block in practice.

“They told me, ‘We’re gonna get Herm a blocked shot, we’re gonna get it today,’ and they could never get it,” Harried said.

Harried trash-talked Owens and Coleman, continuously drilling his signature shot over them. But the roles reversed when Syracuse played Georgetown in 1989. As Owens and Coleman sat on the bench at one point, Harried went up for his baby hook.

“Mutombo just sent it wherever the hell it needed to go but not toward the basket,” Harried said, with disbelief still in his tone. “And as I’m running down the court, my two teammates are laughing at me for getting my shot blocked.”

Once Mutombo moved to the starting group in his second season, Bell and Georgetown’s second-teamers thought he’d be an alien on the hardwood.

“If you could score on him or you could dunk over him, you would have no problem in the game,” Bell said. “Because you were playing against a pro at the time.”

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Mutombo began to learn he was a big deal. Clarence “Bucky” McGill, a former SU football player who used to host Georgetown players at his home in Washington, D.C., developed a tight bond with Mutombo. When McGill called Mutombo, he answered the phone more than the other guys on the team did.

Bell said Mutombo would answer the phone every time it rang when they were together excited at someone calling for him. His teammates used to hide the phone from him so he wouldn’t get distracted if a woman from around campus gave him a ring, Bell said.

“He thought that every phone call was for him,” McGill said.

Mutombo loved the attention. He was about to receive plenty of it from Syracuse heading into the 1989-90 season. The programs were perennial heavyweights then. Both sides later finished as top-three NCAA Tournament seeds, while SU closed the year with a Big East Championship appearance.

The weight of the Syracuse-Georgetown rivalry speaks for itself, but Boeheim believes the Mutombo and Coleman days were its most contentious. Every game at Syracuse’s Carrier Dome and Georgetown’s Capital Centre were filled to the brim, he said.

“Every game was just a battle and I looked forward to it. It was really the height of the Big East those years,” Boeheim said. “There was respect, but it was a fierce rivalry.”

Even as battles between stars like Mourning versus Coleman and Stephen Thompson versus Mark Tillmon raged, Mutombo remained in the middle. Owens said the Orange prepared the best they could for Mutombo’s generational paint defense. It was a simple strategy: go around him, avoid him or get embarrassed.

Owens said since Mutombo wasn’t from the U.S., he didn’t care too much about who the game’s best players were. He wasn’t fazed by Owens or Coleman, only feared by others. Owens felt there was an added incentive for attempting to climb Mount Mutombo.

“It’s like that clip of him and Michael Jordan talking in the locker room, saying that he never dunked on him. And believe me, everybody that’s a basketball player wants to dunk on the shot blocker,” Owens said of Mutombo.

He learned his lesson.

Owens still chuckles about one play in the Carrier Dome from March 4, 1990. Syracuse defeated Georgetown 89-87 in overtime. But that’s not what sticks out to Owens.

At one point, Owens boldly charged into the paint as a trailing Mutombo converged from the weak side to block his shot. Owens panicked. He didn’t think he had enough time to jump. So he threw the ball up nonsensically, and it ricocheted off the shot clock above the glass.

Owens said he played it off by looking at his hands as if they were too sweaty. He even joked it was a win for him because Mutombo didn’t get a block.

“I just remember Boeheim screaming at me, ‘Billy, Billy! What are you doing?’ Just screaming and screaming at me,” Owens said. “I had no chance of making that layup.”

Dikembe Mutombo was known for his defensive prowess, earning Big East Defensive Player of the Year honors in 1991 before winning four NBA DPOYs during his 18-year career. Photograph Courtesy of Georgetown University Athletics

Though Mutombo tallied a litany of stellar performances against Syracuse — including that overtime game, where he scored 19 points with 12 rebounds and five blocks, and when he hauled in 18 rebounds in a Jan. 21, 1991, matchup — the Orange had the Hoya’s number.

Syracuse beat Mutombo’s teams five of seven times. Boeheim’s squad, consisting of Owens, Dave Johnson and LeRon Ellis, swept Georgetown in the 1990-91 season after a Coleman-and Owens-led SU swept the Hoyas the year before.

Boeheim insists those Georgetown teams led by Mutombo and Mourning were among the best he ever faced and takes pride in Syracuse running the rivalry with them around.

“You had to run your offense and everything away from him, you didn’t want to challenge him too much,” Boeheim said of Mutombo. “When you had success against Georgetown with those two guys (Mutombo and Mourning) there, it was a good win.”

Mutombo’s career hit new stratospheres when he moved on to the NBA, but his role in solidifying the gravity of Syracuse-Georgetown can’t be understated. Opponents and teammates hail him as the rivalry’s most intimidating player. It was the first major basketball feat of Mutombo’s life in America. He never wanted people to forget it, either.

Ryan Mutombo — Mutombo’s son and a current senior center at Georgia Tech after transferring from Georgetown — said his father passed the rivalry’s lore down to him. Mutombo was always a “Big East guy,” Ryan said, often attending SU-Georgetown games and taking pride when his son followed in his footsteps.

“He really enjoyed that one game my freshman year when we beat Syracuse,” Ryan said of his father. “He thought that game was really important for the culture of Georgetown basketball. I’m glad they still play that game.”

Every now and then, Owens and Mutombo, who became close throughout their basketball careers, would run into each other at Big East Tournament games. Pride turned into smack talk for Mutombo. He used to give Owens an earful, even if he didn’t have his stories straight.

“He claimed he beat me more times than I beat him. But that’s not true,” Owens said, laughing. “That’s just his character. He was so fun to be around, and I was always looking forward to running into him so he could talk his trash with his big smile on his face.”

Photograph Courtesy of Georgetown University Athletics

Published on December 12, 2024 at 1:29 am

Contact Cooper at: ccandrew@syr.edu | @cooper_andrews