Sweat Equity: Ty Banks, Georgetown's Defensive Key, Always Giving Max Effort

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ty Banks can’t help it. You’re always going to see him sweat.

“Anytime practice is over, anytime lift is over, he literally looks like he jumped in the Potomac River,” Georgetown defensive coordinator David Shriver said. “He is just drenched, head to toe.”

Thing is, the junior defenseman gives opponents more than enough to break out in a cold sweat themselves.

When the Hoyas (11-4) meet Duke (10-4) on Sunday in the NCAA tournament’s first matchup of unseeded quarterfinalists since 2007, they’ll do so with a defense that’s allowed only three teams to get beyond 11 goals. Two — Notre Dame and Syracuse — have already booked passage to the season’s final weekend. The other (Richmond) was one of Division I’s most consistent teams.

And the fulcrum of the unit is Banks, a three-year starter who offers a truly literal definition of sweat equity.

If his prowess as an all-around defender is the easiest thing to get coaches and teammates to talk about, then it isn’t too much more difficult to offer tales that are dripping with amusement with another telltale trait.

To his credit, Banks is in on the joke, and was even courteous enough to caution reporters eager to talk to him after he contained attackman McCabe Millon to a goal and two assists in last week’s 14-10 victory at fifth-seeded Virginia not to get too close.

“After games all the time, people will run up and show me some love and dap me up and every time it’s, ‘Ugh, God, you’re disgusting,’” Banks said. “My bad. I can’t control it.”

It’s something that runs in his family (his dad also perspires quite a bit), and even the source of some remarkable stories. Like the time a couple summers ago the British Columbia native was playing Junior A ball for the Coquitlam Adnacs, the air conditioning failed inside the arena and he found himself sloshing his way up and down the field.

At least for a little while.

“Every time I took a step, you could see sweat on the floor,” Banks said. “Mid-game, my coach [Peter Tellis] says, ‘Ty, sit down, take your shoes off.’ He takes his socks off his feet and I switch into his socks mid-game.”

Seeing a player giving that sort of effort would appeal to any coach, particularly one with a defensive background. Throw in a big, strong, thick frame, savvy play off the ground and some welcome intangibles, and Banks was a coveted recruit.

It made a great match for the Hoyas, who were understandably interested.

“I still remember watching him in the summer recruiting him and thinking, ‘OK, he’s a little different than everybody else,’” coach Kevin Warne said. “Every summer, there’s a few guys that are like that. I was like, ‘He’s a guy who I wouldn’t mind coaching.’”

Banks wanted to go to school in a bustling city, and Georgetown’s history of strong defensemen over the last decade — Gibson Smith IV, James Donaldson, Alex Mazzone and Will Bowen among them — was also attractive.

And when he arrived for his official visit and walked into a senior’s apartment and saw a couple freshmen, a sophomore and a graduate student all hanging out, he knew he’d found an enviable clique-free environment, a facet of the Hoyas’ long-touted culture under Warne.

He joined a unit oozing with experience, fourth- and fifth-year players at close defense (Wesley Chairs and Seamus Foley), long pole (Wallace Halpert) and short stick (Dylan Hess, Will Godine and Jack Leary).

There was a predictable learning curve for Banks to pick up the nuances of college defensive schemes. And while there were some harrowing moments, Georgetown simplified things by giving him one major task each game.

“They did a phenomenal job of just letting me figure it out,” Banks said. “Me and [goalie Anderson Moore] were the only freshmen out there on the defensive end our first year, and they took the stress off of me. I was usually getting matchup with a No. 1 guy on the other team, so going into those games, all I had to worry about was taking care of my matchup.”

Not for long, though. Suddenly one of the defense’s elder statesmen as a sophomore, Banks as up to the task of figuring out how the Hoyas wanted to operate from week to week. He was still an ace cover guy, but it was also evident by the time Georgetown got into the postseason and upended Duke on the road in the first round of last year’s tournament that Banks was one of the sport’s top defensemen.

That’s continued this spring, and was particularly helpful in speeding up Virginia’s potent attack last weekend in Charlottesville.

“He’s has totally elevated to where he knows everybody’s spot,” Warne said. “I think learning college defenses is a really tough skill. Some guys don’t ever get it; they’re just great on the ball and they can go cover everybody and that’s awesome. The intricacies of how offensive lacrosse is played, you need that guy with a high IQ to kind of have that offensive mindset where everything is always moving.”

It makes Banks an exceptionally important voice on defense, so much so that even Moore will sometimes ask him which scheme the Hoyas are in. And because of his smarts, Banks is a capable on-field multitasker. Sometimes that means covering his man and communicating at the same time. At others, he’ll be covering a guy off ball while trying to help on someone else.

And listed at 6 feet and 200 pounds and imbued with an all-business approach between the lines, Banks isn’t a particularly pleasant opponent for attackmen to tangle with for two hours.

“He’s a very intimidating player to go up against,” Moore said. “He’s a big dude, and he plays mean and he wants to get after the ball. A lot of times, when you have guys that are just cover guys, off ball maybe you can get them on a backdoor cut. He just makes a lot of plays that even when he’s not on the ball, he’s telling guys what to do or seeing a skip lane. He’s a very complete player.”

Moore shakes his head when thinking about Banks’ other calling card. He can recall January practices when it was 20 degrees out and the defenseman ended up sopping wet, moisture seeping through his aptly named sweatpants.

Yet it also illustrates something any team values: The Hoyas never have to sweat whether they’re going to receive maximal effort from Banks, who would seem like an ideal candidate for an NIL deal from a deodorant company. (He whimsically suggested Carpe as possibility.)

“It doesn’t happen very often that I’m not sweating, but when I walk off the field and I can wring out my shorts after the game, I know I left everything out there that I could,” Banks said.