Player Preview: Mikael Hopkins

This is the fourth profile of the members of the 2011-12 Georgetown Hoyas. You also can read about Tyler Adams, Moses Ayegba, and John Caprio.

In the age of round-the-clock recruiting coverage and the ever-present online echo chamber, the opinion of a young basketball player can swing wildly before he even puts on a college uniform. Georgetown’s freshman power forward Mikael Hopkins appears to be one such example.

Hopkins has the look of a high-level baller. He’s both 6’8″ and highly mobile, making him an effective defensive presence around the basket.  He’s also versatile offensive threat, whether in the post, where he can spin toward the basket and finish near the rim, or the mid-range, where he can face up to hit jumpers. He also is an adept passer, a valuable skill for a future Hoya post. All of those skills are on display here:

Hopkins also has the pedigree of an elite prospect, attending DeMatha and playing his summer ball with Team Takeover, both D.C.-area hoops institutions. With these credentials, Hopkins earned top-100 rankings in his class and drew interest from college basketball bastions like Ohio State, Kansas, and Texas. He spurned each of those schools for Georgetown, his hometown team, committing in October 2010 and becoming just the second DeMatha commit (Austin Freeman was the other) to Georgetown in roughly time immemorial.

Even so, there were rumblings about Hopkins. He wasn’t assertive, tended to disappear during games, and avoided contact. For Hoya fans tired of getting bowled over in the post by Pitt, Syracuse, and UConn (including many who had seen Hopkins play several times), Hopkins was more of the same. Those reservations seemed to be confirmed last season, when, after a strong start to the season, Hopkins tailed off, mixing in strong performances with games in which he appeared uninterested and seemed to defer to the other members of his stacked DeMatha squad. Eventually, while fellow Georgetown commit Greg Whittington took hope the Post‘s All-Met Player of the Year, Hopkins received just an honorable mention. In light of Whittington’s late-blooming potential, Otto Porter’s mysterious (given his lack of national exposure) versatility, and Jabril Trawick’s fiery aggression, Hopkins seemed, for all his smooth promise, destined to once again be lost in the shuffle.

But in Kenner League play, that tantalizing and unreliable predictor of regular season performance, Hopkins showed development on top of promise. He scored in double figures in several games, succeeding against opponents both big and small. He also seemed to improve as the summer wore on, even putting home a last-second winner in the Kenner semifinals. On the Hoyas’ China trip, Hopkins found ways to contribute despite the reduced role that went with the full Georgetown line-up. Seeing time at both power forward and center, Hopkins was effective on the boards and defense in a scoreless first game, then saw his offensive game come alive in the later games.

As with his fellow freshman big man Tyler Adams, Hopkins may get more than he bargained for this season in light of sophomore big man Moses Ayegba’s season-ending ACL tear. At times in China, JTIII trotted Hopkins out with Nate Lubick, suggesting that the freshman may help fill some of the void left in the middle. And with good reason. Hopkins’s shot-blocking ability is matched on the team only by Henry Sims’s, while his knack for rebounding will be welcome on a squad that has come up short on the boards in recent years. At minimum, the opportunity for playing time should be there for Hopkins to take, giving him the chance to answer questions about his motor and physicality. But by the same token, inaction and passivity should earn any player a spot on the pine, as two freshmen, a sophomore (Lubick), and a still-less-than-sure-thing senior (Sims) compete for minutes down low. As during his high school career, Hopkins has the skills and the opportunity, and the rest is up to him.