By Ryan Mink
rmink@digitalsports.com

Georgetown Prep’s players are prepared to bring their own energy into a gym of 20 or 30 fans.

So when they walked into their home gym and it’s exploding with 2,000 or so fans Monday night, there wasn’t much motivation needed.

Pumped up by the gravity of playing its arch rival Landon in its packed house, Georgetown Prep ran up a huge first-half lead, locked down on defense and survived an injury to its best player in defeating the Bears, 69-53, Monday night in a battle of IAC unbeatens.

Defending IAC champion Georgetown Prep improves to 15-3 and 6-0 in the conference. The Little Hoyas have now beaten Landon (13-4, 5-1) in seven of their past eight meetings.

“Tonight, it seemed like it was all of Montgomery County in there,” junior guard Markel Starks said. “It was a great atmosphere in there and I think that’s what sparked us.”

Georgetown Prep outscored Landon, 23-7, in the first quarter and built a 20-point lead at one point during the first half. Starks scored 17 points alone in the first half and Georgetown Prep took a 13-point lead into the locker room.

“I guess we had a little more pep in our step,” Starks said. “We were a little hot.”

But early on in the third quarter, Starks (Georgetown) went down hard with a knee injury and needed to be helped off the court. He sat on the bench for the remainder of the game.

With Starks on the bench, Landon stormed back and cut the Little Hoyas’ lead to seven points with three minute, 16 seconds left in the third quarter on a three-pointer by Danny Rubin. Rubin scored 13 of his 18 points in the third quarter.

“We kept our composure,” senior guard Robert Olson (Loyola, Md.) said. “We were fine. We’ve been in tough spots through our whole season, so we knew we could come out with a win.”

The Little Hoyas responded to Landon’s run with a three-pointer by Paul Llewellyn (nine points) and didn’t look back from there. Midway through the fourth quarter, Kevin Mulquin pushed Georgetown Prep’s lead back to 21 points on a pair of free throws after an intentional foul.

Georgetown Prep attested the team’s win came from its defense. During the first quarter, Olsen volunteered to take over the job of guarding Landon standout guard Christian Webster from Nat Eggleston.

Olsen had done well earlier this year against Episcopal’s Given Kalipinde so Georgetown Prep Coach Dwayne Bryant the job.

By the end of the game, Webster had just 16 points, a small feat for Olson.

“He was shadowing him everywhere, making everything tough for him,” Bryant said. “A player like that, you’re not going to stop him, you’ve just got to make it difficult for him.”