I think enough has probably been said about the Old Spice Classic in terms of real basketball-related stuff, so I’m just gonna mention some fun things I noticed from my trip.

Teams

Georgetown:
After losing to Tennessee, the Hoyas become 3-1 on the season in their home gray uniforms.

Then, on Sunday, they earned win #1 in their road blue. It was the first time the team showed off their new unis and I think they looked pretty nice. They were definitely better than these.

Players

Georgetown:
Omar Wattad had a big game against Tennessee. While he may have looked a little slow at times on defense, he hit his first three pointer of the season against the Volunteers and then followed that up with two more, finishing the game 3-3 from three with his only missed shot being a putback layup – which he got his own rebound on, leading to his third and final trey. After the game, it was the first time that I’ve ever seen Omar in a postgame press conference. Apparently, he was familiar with a bunch of the Volunteer players, coming from Tennessee and playing with them in the summer. So a couple of firsts and three threes for Wattad – those numbers, 3 and 1, keep coming back for him, and those are definitely his own.

Coaches

Since this tournament was taking place in Walt Disney World, the coaches were not required to dress as formally as they would normally. The coaches all wore polo shirts instead of jackets and ties, and that includes John Thompson III and crew. I thought JTIII looked a little silly in the Wichita State game because while all of the assistants were wearing khaki pants, he was wearing dark pants with his black polo. Bailey Heaps from The Hoya paid more attention to Coach’s attire than I did, so you can read some of his stuff at The Hoya Paranoia.

What I thought interesting, though, was that the Maryland coaches all had the Old Spice Classic logo on the sleeves of their polo shirts. That might have been the closest Old Spice has ever been to Gary Williams’ sweaty arms.
 
 
 
 
 

Referees

When it comes to the refs, I’m not going to comment on how well they did. I am going to comment on what this one fan kept saying behind me. It was on Thanksgiving, as the Hoyas were facing Wichita State, and this fan was routing for the Shockers. I think he might have been a Tennessee fan, but that’s not important. He was constantly yelling at the refs for being biased in favor of Georgetown except when official Steve Welmer was nearby. Then, he kept on going on about how he was doing a great job, and they should give him a raise and fire the other two, yadda yadda yadda. The thing is, he kept calling Steve Welmer, “Ted.” I don’t know who he thought he was.

Fans

From the games I saw, Wichita State and Tennessee had the most enthusiastic fan bases make the trip to Lake Buena Vista. But maybe I just thought that because of their bright shirts.

But while the Hoyas fans were not the most raucous of bunches, they did have one thing no other team I saw had – cheerleaders. From what I saw, Georgetown was the only team to bring any cheerleaders with them to Florida. I thought I saw the Tennessee mascot, but then it turned around, and it was just a regular fan with a big orange hat. I guess that would make him not a regular fan. Anyway, their real mascot is apparently a dog who wears funny colored suits:

That’s just too weird.

At least this guy doesn’t wear orange all the time.