On Sunday, Hoya Hoop Club members were invited to McDonough to see the 2008 Hoyas during an open practice. Open practices are a great opportunity for fans to get a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes of their favorite teams, and they can also get a sneak peek of the team’s new players who’ve yet to play a game in their team’s colors.

For the Hoyas, this meant most of the eyes were focused on Austin Freeman’s game and Chris Wright’s foot (which was doing well enough for him to shoot some free throws while the rest of the team practiced).

Some Hoop Club members were checking out Nikita Mescheriakov, the 6-8 forward out of Belarus, to see if he could earn himself any more playing time than his Eastern European comrades, Vladimir Bosanac (’94) and Sead Dizdarevic (’07).

Still others were watching Bryon Jansen, the junior walk-on, trying to spot what he did to impress the coaches this time around and to see how well he would rank up against the last Hoya to wear #11, four-year walk-on Trenton Hillier.

But me, I had my eye on Omar Wattad. No it wasn’t his three-point range or his toughness or his basketball IQ that perked my interest in the 6-5 swingman. It wasn’t his 2191 points at Science Hill or any of his impressive numbers from high school. Rather, it was his impressive college numbers that caught my attention. What college numbers you may ask? The ones on the back of his practice jersey.

Omar Wattad is the first #31 to wear the Blue and Gray since Bernard White in 1968. And actually, White only wore a blue #31: in those days, they wore even numbers at home and odd numbers away. You’d have to go all the way back to 1950 and Dick Falvey to find a pure, year round #31. But even Falvey only wore the illusive jersey for one season: he was #13 his Freshman through Junior years.

So why am I going through the history of a fairly irrelevant jersey number? Because Omar Wattad has the potential to be the first player in Georgetown’s 101 year history to wear #31 throughout his Hoya career. And those are impressive numbers.