The multi-year weighted average APR for Georgetown men's basketball dropped from fourth to eighth among the 10 Big East schools:

The Georgetown results among all sports are below. Ten teams scored a perfect 1000 on the rating and 12 overall scored in the top 10th percentile nationally.

Last month, Georgetown officials announced a design contest for the floor at Verizon Center. A sample of entries is found at GUHoyas.com--check it out.

Recent graduate Jabril Trawick (C'15) is featured in a review of free agents practicing with the NBA's Indiana Pacers, reads an article at NBA.com.

"Trawick possesses great size for a guard, measuring out at 6-4 and 218 pounds," reads the article. "In addition to his strong frame, Trawick showed marked improvement as a jump shooter in his final college season, improving his 3-point percentage from .312 as a junior to .407 as a senior."

Also in the Pacers camp: Greg Whittington, the former Georgetown forward who disappeared from the sports pages after his dismissal from the team in the fall of 2012.

"It means a lot," Whittington said of the invite. "It means that these two years I've been working hard and now my chance is right here, time to take it."

Over 100 Georgetown students receive athletic scholarship support each year. But in the wake of an new NCAA rule, the University will offer additional support to just 28 of them.

At issue is the "cost of attendance" scholarship, which allows Division I schools the ability to provide an amount beyond room, board, books and tuition, to include such costs as academic supplies, transportation and laundry, among others. The rule is effective in the 2015-16 academic year.

Friday's Washington Post reported that while Virginia and Maryland have committed to cost of attendance for all scholarship athletes, Georgetown has opted only to award this to men's and women's basketball players.

"As college athletics has gone through this reformation period over the last several years, Georgetown has said all along that we would remain competitive nationally as we have throughout our rich history," said athletic director Lee Reed in an e-mail to the Post. The total amount of additional aid is reported at $72,800 across the 28 men's and women's players under scholarship, or $2,600 per person.

"This is a great natural experiment," said economist Andy Schwarz."We’re getting to see change in an economic environment and see how firms react. We’re learning a ton about the real preferences of schools with where they decide to put their money."

In the social media era, it's almost impossible for a public figure to go on a campus tour, and such was the case when New York Yankees infielder Alex Rodriguez visited Georgetown Tuesday.

Rodriguez's visit wasn't merely a photo-op, however.

"He was very inquisitive not only about athletics, but about the academic challenges in Georgetown: what it’s like to live here, what it’s like to go to school here,” said Assistant Athletics Director Mex Carey to the Washington Post. "The fact that a guy of his stature would take time out of his day to tour a campus, I was impressed. It was a really cool experience."

An extended look at Rodriguez and his interest in visiting colleges is found in this link to ESPN.com. Rodriguez, 39, was recruited in two sports at the University of Miami but turned down a scholarship to enter professional baseball in 1993. He later donated $3.9 million to Miami to renovate its baseball stadium, which is now known as "Alex Rodriguez Park at Mark Light Field."

With a record 700 transfers in college basketball for 2014-15, many of them eligible in the next semester, there's no downtime for college coaches, reports Ben Standig at CSN Washington.

"The way the last couple of years, and definitely this year, you have to make sure in the fall you don't use all your scholarships so you have some when free agency opens up," head coach John Thompson III told Standig. "That's what it feels like, free agency".

Georgetown has one scholarship open for 2015-16 but it's not certain that it will choose to fill the open place on the roster, or save it for 2016, where Georgetown has two seniors graduating.

"We're still involved with a few people," Thompson said. "We'll see how it shakes out."

Verizon Communications, Inc. officials have given notice that it will not renew its naming rights for Washington's Verizon Center past 2018, reports Sports Business Journal.

However, Verizon officials have refuted the account, saying they have not decided whether to renew when the agreement comes up on 2018, reports the Washington Post.

The downtown arena, which assumed its present title when Verizon acquired MCI Inc. in 2006, will seek a new naming rights deal of $7 million annually, though the article said that it will face competition in the marketplace from Nationals Park, which will also seek sponsorship.

The only other major arena in the Washington DC area, Patriot Center, was renamed EagleBank Arena last month as part of a 10 year, $6.6 million deal.

Proposed changes to increase scoring may have a significant impact on the 2015-16 men's and women's college basketball landscape.

Last week, an NCAA committee recommended the following changes for the men's game:

1. Reducing the shot clock from 35 seconds to 30;
2. Timeouts within 30 seconds of a media time out will be media timeouts;
3. Ending the ability of coaches to call live-ball time outs
4. Expand the restricted area from three to four feet under the basket.

Each of the first three items above could have an impact on the Hoyas in 2015-16, in that the John Thompson III offense is often built on shots near the end of the shot clock and the effective use of timeouts in and around the media timeouts.

Proposed changes to the women's game are even more expansive, which would move from two 20 minute halves to four 10 minute quarters.

"These rules changes are a departure from the inertia and glacial pace of change the game has experienced over the past three decades, and they represent a great first step toward making men's college basketball more current and in line with the rest of the world," said ESPN analyst Jay Bilas.

The changes also have its critics.

"You’re just going to get more bad shots,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins in this link to the Charleston Daily Mail. "The game was better back in the day because there wasn’t a shot clock and you could actually run offense."

A Georgetown alumnus will be named to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation's highest military command.

Gen. Joseph Dunford (G'85), commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, will be formally announced at the White House on Tuesday.

"In the choice of Dunford, Obama would be seeking chief counsel from a military leader who is not likely to question administration policy publicly but would provide unvarnished advice behind closed doors," writes Politico.com.

Upon approval by the Senate, Gen. Dunford would be only the second Marine to head the Joint Chiefs since its founding in 1949.

Last week's commentary on the 10th anniversary of the groundbreaking for the Multi-Sport facility is now at the Third Rail Blog.

Please follow the extended conversation at the HoyaTalk board.