Where Are They Now? Victor Page

The storied Georgetown basketball program has had quite a few stars of the blazing variety over the years.  Sleepy Floyd, Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Allen Iverson, Jeff Green, Roy Hibbert, and Otto Porter fall into this category.

Then there are players who fell somewhat below this level, but still did a lot to make Hoya fans happy.  Guys like Michael Graham, Boubacar Aw, Kevin Braswell, Jonathan Wallace and Jessie Sapp.

Victor Page falls somewhere in between the two.  In retrospect, we don't think of Page as one of those signature superstars.  In reality, in his two years on the Hilltop, he was just about that good.

Page grew up in the Barry Farm neighborhood of Washington, D.C., one of the worst neighborhoods in a city full of urban blight.  He managed a couple of arrests before he graduated, but he excelled on the court. He was the All-Met High School Player of the Year in 1995.  He seemed a perfect fit for John Thompson Jr.'s Hoyas.

His rugged upbringing made him a perfect backcourt mate with Allen Iverson, and together they formed perhaps the best backcourt Georgetown has ever had.  Page had an incredible freshman year in 1996, culminated by his performance in the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden.  The 1996 Tournament was a star-studded event, culminating in the legendary Ray Allen-Allen Iverson duel in the Championship Game.  In a title game featuring two future NBA Hall-of-Famers, who was the Most Outstanding Player of the tournament?  None other than Victor Page, who won the award despite Georgetown bowing out in the Elite Eight.

Iverson left for NBA riches after that season, but Page returned to Georgetown for the 1996-97 season.  Now a sophomore, Page took over the scoring load and led the team with a 22.7 points per game average.  He was the best player on what would prove to be John Thompson Jr.'s final NCAA Tournament team, which lost in the First Round to UNC Charlotte.

Page was seen a solid building block for future Hoya teams, but that would not prove to be the case.  Instead, Page declared for the 1997 NBA draft, leaving after his sophomore season. As a pure shooting guard who topped out at 6-foot-3, Page figured to be judged a tweener by NBA scouts.  This bleak projection proved to be accurate, and Page went undrafted.  He went to training camp with the Minnesota Timberwolves that fall, but that would be as close as he would ever come to the NBA.

Instead, Page relocated to the decidedly non-major league locale of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he went to play for the Sioux Falls Skyforce of the CBA.  His most memorable moment may have been an attempt to attack an opposing player with a broom during a game, but Page continued to show his ability to score the ball, and in four years with the Skyforce would become their all-time leading scorer.  In a further Crash Davis-style compliment, the Skyforce would retire his number.

Page spent a year playing overseas in Europe, but things got ugly for Page in a hurry after that.

In 2003, Page was back in Barry Farm when he got into a scuffle with a childhood acquaintance.  Page was shot in the right eye and ended up losing his eye entirely.  For all realistic purposes this ended his basketball career, though to this day he still talks about making a comeback attempt in the NBA.

At this point, with no marketable skills, Page fell back on criminal behavior.  Since 2010, Page has been arrested about 33 times for everything ranging to drugs, theft and assault.  During one of his stints outside of jail in 2012, Page broke into a woman's house, dragged her by the hair to the bathroom, ran hot water over her face while punching her, and attempted to stab her.  Last year, Victor Page pled guilty and accepted a 10-year sentence for second-degree assault.

So there Victor Page sits in a Maryland prison, refusing to any interview that doesn't pay him.  There is nothing positive or humorous to say about the world of Victor Page. It's just a failure.