Georgetown forward Nate Lubick has eclectic musical taste

• The 6%2710 forward is averaging 5.4 points%2C 6.0 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game for the Hoyas
• Lubick gets his musical background from his father%2C David%2C and has recorded more than a hundred covers of songs he liked in high school
• Among Lubick%27s favorite artists are John Coltrane%2C Stevie Wonder%2C The Beatles and John Mayer

If you're a Georgetown student, chances are Nate Lubick doesn't approve of your taste in music.

"College is the wrong place to be interested in music, especially these days," Nate says. "People listen to horrible music. Everybody loves hip-hop. Everybody loves techno and house music. That's what's huge right now, and that makes me want to hit myself in the head with a frying pan."

Nate is known better for his basketball – he's a senior forward for the 16-11 Hoyas – but he also knows what he's talking about when it comes to music. His father, David, was a professional saxophone player for a number of years. Now, David teaches English and provides saxophone lessons at St. Mark's School, a boarding school in Southborough, Mass. He also works in the school's admissions office.

When Nate and his younger brother, Eli, were kids, David introduced them to the types of music he loved. Over long car rides, he'd play jazz songs. Or Motown. Soul. R&B.

At first, the boys complained. But slowly, they started to appreciate the music. Eventually, they sang along.

"Singing was the thing that they both really began with," says David, who also tried to get his sons interested in playing piano, but ultimately failed. "They didn't play instruments. They wanted to be involved with music, and the both have great voices and great ears.

"With Nate in particular, it's Nate's ear."

From an early age, David says, Nate could imitate sounds and duplicate people's voices. "It was remarkable," David says. Nate's brother, Eli, has perfect pitch and can write music, Nate says.

Over an all-too-short winter break, Nate and Eli spent a night recording a cover of John Mayer's "Daughters". Nate says he probably recorded more than a hundred covers of songs he liked in high school. He still listens to those recordings.

"I definitely used to be a lot, lot better than I am now, he says. "When you train your voice like that, and you're constantly singing and constantly listening to good music all the time, it's so much different. I kind of gave it up the first three years I was at Georgetown, and now I'm pretty bad. … This year, I started to get back into it."

That means he's been singing alone, not performing anywhere publicly. Though he keeps fairly quiet about his singing, Nate's teammates know he can carry a tune.

"Some of them have heard me, or tracks of me singing on my iPod," he says. "They always try to get me to do it – but I haven't broken out yet."

He laughs. He knows this is all a bit unusual for a Division-I college basketball player. He lists off his favorite jazz musicians: John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon. He brings up Stevie Wonder, Harold Melvin and Otis Redding. The Beatles. He loves soul music. The only contemporary artists he really likes are John Mayer and John Legend. Before Georgetown games, he listens to Sly and the Family Stone – "not really pump-up music at all," he says, laughing.

Eli, a sophomore at Hobart College, performs, records and writes music. "His talent is his voice," Nate says. "I just love music and have always been around it. My brother has kind of stuck with it. He performs."

Or, as his father puts it, Eli is "really, really starting to understand music." That's something that makes David happy, just as his sons' trip to the recording facility over winter break did.

"That's the point you think, 'Wow, this was a great thing. This was a gift, getting them interested in music was a gift, not an unfortunate consequence of what I'm interested in,' " David says.

That's how these things go; kids often end up interested in what their parents like. For David, that happened in two areas. He spent 17 seasons as the head coach of the St. Mark's boys' basketball team, and he coached both of his sons. Besides music, Nate says basketball is "the only other thing in my life that I'm completely obsessed with."

This season, Nate is averaging 5.4 points, 6.0 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game for the Hoyas, who started the season slowly but are on the NCAA tournament bubble after wins this month against Michigan State, Providence and Xavier.

As his senior season winds down, Nate's started to think about what he'll do next. He's in Georgetown's business school, and he says he'll likely end up working in New York when his basketball career ends.

"The basketball world, the business world I'm interested in pursuing and the type of music I listen to," Nate says. "They're (three) kinds of things that don't really go together."

And yet, somehow, they do.