[2][3][4] Iverson had been a stand-out in high school, but had been arrested and sentenced to prison for his supposed participation in a February 1993 fight in a bowling alley in Hampton, Virginia.

Available evidence in the case ranged from doubtful to strongly suggesting his innocence, and his conviction and sentencing were racially charged.

In the second and final exhibition game of the preseason, he scored 39 points against Croatia and again appeared 21 times at the free-throw line.

[4][5][6][7][8][9] Iverson's legal troubles and obvious athletic talent focused national attention on him, and he debuted in the regular season with a 19-point game against No.

He led the team in scoring 22 times and scored in double figures in all but one game, the exception being at Villanova in a game in which he played only ten minutes and Thompson threatened to pull the Hoyas off the court and forfeit after Villanova students mocked Iverson by marching around the arena wearing black-and-white-striped prison uniforms and carrying a sign comparing Iverson to former American football great O. J. Simpson, then under arrest and awaiting trial for murder.

After the game, Thompson told the press that the prison taunt was too offensive to tolerate and that he would not hesitate to pull his team off the court if anything like it ever occurred again, and such fan behavior did not recur.

[4][10] Fellow guard George Butler also began the season with high-scoring performances, his best of the year being 15 points against Memphis at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in Georgetown's only regular-season game ever played outside the United States and its territories prior to the opening game of the 2013-14 season.

He nonetheless contributed to Georgetown's scoring, notably with 27 points against 17th-ranked Syracuse in a game at the Carrier Dome in which the Hoyas came back from a 14-point deficit to upset the Orangemen.

In the final two games of the regular season, against Seton Hall at USAir Arena and at Madison Square Garden against St. John's, he scored a combined 47 points and had 28 rebounds.

It looked as though the Hoyas would repeat the pattern when they fouled Weber State's leading scorer, guard Ruben Nembhard, with the score tied 51-51 and eight seconds left in the game.

It missed, but Reid grabbed the rebound and scored on a layup as time expired to win the game 53-51 in perhaps the highlight of the year.

DePaul would not finally break the streak until the Blue Demons upset the Hoyas in the first round of the 2014 Big East tournament in March 2014.