ALL-AMERICA, 2007

Jeff Green arrived at a low point in Georgetown athletics, a Top 150 recruit passed over by Maryland. He left it with a Final Four berth and a lottery pick.

Green was a hard working forward from Northwestern HS with a 17 point, 11 rebound average as a senior, but when it came to the Terrapins, Gary Williams opted to sign Good Counsel's James Gist. Green responded on the court with a 19 point, 14 rebound per game effort that drove Northwestern to the Maryland 4A title. A first team All-Met nomination followed for Green, Georgetown's first All-Met forward since Mike Sweetney in 2000. Early comparisons between the two were inevitable, but Green's ability to contribute on all sides of the ball were more than Sweetney, who was primarily a scorer and rebounder.

As a freshman, Green started all 32 games in John Thompson III's first season, shooting 50 percent from the field, and leading the team in rebounds, assists and blocks, the first Georgetown player ever to lead the team in these three categories. A 20 point effort versus #1 Illinois was a sign of things to come, as he went on to post 21 double figure games in scoring and six in rebounding. His play won him a share of the Big East Rookie of The Year honors with Connecticut's Rudy Gay.

Green could be both spectacular and low-key at the same time. He led the team in scoring but was the leading scorer in nine games that season, and was equally adept feeding Roy Hibbert of Brandon Bowman when it counted. In the Hoyas' seminal upset of Duke on Jan, 21, 2006, Green was 7 for 11 from the field with 18 points, but a team high seven assists--almost as many as the entire Duke team that day. Green and the Hoyas returned to the NCAA tournament for the first time in five seasons in 2006, where green fought off a season low two points in a narrow Georgetown win over Northern Iowa to post a 19 point, eight rebound, six assist effort over Ohio State, sending the Hoyas to the Sweet 16, where they fell in a last minute decision to eventual national champion Florida.

The road to the 2007 Final Four was a team effort, but the Hoyas could not have done it without Green, who earned third team All-America honors and was named Big East Player of the year as Georgetown won its first conference title in 18 years. At every turn, Green was challenged, and did not disappoint. He scored in double figures in 27 games, leading the 2006-07 team in scoring and second in assists. In 545 minutes of Big East play, when the team needed him, he fouled out just once, averaging 34 minutes per game.

Two of Green's biggest games came in March 2007, where a career high 30 point effort steered the Hoyas past Notre Dame in the Big East semifinal, and a 22 point, nine rebound effort in the NCAA regional final versus North Carolina. Yet the Hoyas would have never made it to the regional final without Green's memorable finish in the semifinal versus Vanderbilt. Shooting 7 for 9 from the field, Green's twisting, off-handed shot with 2.5 seconds to play was the margin of victory, 66-65, inciting a brief firestorm among Vanderbilt fans that Green had traveled on the shot. As noted at HoyaSaxa.com, "Rule 4, Section 66 of the NCAA rule book clearly notes that "A player who catches the ball with both feet on the playing court may pivot, using either foot. When one foot is lifted, the other is the pivot foot...After coming to a stop and establishing the pivot foot, the pivot foot may be lifted, but not returned to the playing court, before the ball is released on a pass or try for goal." The pivot foot never came back down until the shot was taken [and] post-game comments by CBS' Billy Packer supported this position."

"You'll stop and think when I say this, but it's true: Jeff Green is the smartest player I've ever coached," Thompson told Sports Illustrated.

Like Mike Sweetney before him, Green was in demand following the season and followed Sweetney's footsteps in Georgetown's first early entry in four seasons. Drafted fifth in the 2007 NBA draft by the Boston Celtics, Green was part of a trade that sent him to Seattle, which later became the Oklahoma City Thunder. After three seasons with Oklahoma City, Green signed a one year, $9 million contract with Boston as a restricted free agent, but his life took an abrupt turn. On December 17, 2011, Green was diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm that could be life threatening if not treated. Green underwent open heart surgery and missed the entire season.

Green returned to Boston in 2012 with a four year, $36 million contract but soon became a journeyman, traded to five teams over the next four seasons. Despite being a productive player (11 of his 12 full seasons were in double figures) he was a sixth man, but came up big when it counted, helping Cleveland to the NBA finals with his late run in the conference finals. Green was traded to the Washington Wizards in the summer of 2018, followed by stops at Utah, Houston, Brooklyn, and Denver, a valuable reserve for playoff contenders.

Jeff Green's Georgetown story did not end the day he announced for the NBA draft. A year after leaving college, he returned for the graduation of teammates Roy Hibbert, Jonathan Wallace, Tyler Crawford, and Patrick Ewing Jr. After seeing what he missed, Green sought to do something no early entry candidate had done: complete his degree.

"The reason I made the decision to come back was because I played three years here and was so close to graduating," Green told GUHoyas.com. "Coming back and watching the guys I played with all graduate - Roy, Tyler, Jon, and Pat - when I was watching them, I was upset that I left at the moment. But I was happy for those guys. We formed such a great bond that for me to come back and get my degree, it will be something that we all did together."

"Honestly, there are times when I regretted not staying," told the Washington Post. "I'd see the Davidson game and think, Man, if I was there, we wouldn't [have] lost to them, or something like that. But most of the time, it was just that I didn't get to have a graduation day with my closest friends...I'd be sitting in [an] apartment, in some city I didn't know, thinking, Why did I leave?"

"They pushed me to come back and finish. It was a no-brainer, especially for my mom and dad. It was important to them for me to keep coming back for the last four years to get my degree." Sidelined by recovery from heart surgery, Green finished his studies in the spring of 2012, and received his degree with his old teammates there to congratulate him.

Green's road from Northwestern HS has been a long one. When asked by The Undefeated what he would say to that 18 year old today, Green said, "I would definitely tell my 18-year-old self, "tomorrow is never guaranteed."