For GUHoyas.com coverage and photos of the Open Practice, click here.

For the Hoya Hoop Club's Twitter feed coverage, click here.

That is a LOT of pizza.

Seasons change…our heroes change…but even in the get-it-done now, early-entry world of college basketball, certain constants remain.

To wit: you will never leave a Hoya Hoop Club Open Practice hungry.

The fine folks at Ledo Pizzaprovided the final course of Saturday's Open Practice, the Hoop Club's annual appetizer for the upcoming college basketball season. Ledo's was a late replacement for the Georgetown University Grilling Society, and though we missed out on a true campus institution in GUGS, the lunch selection for me was a fitting symbol of what the Open Practice has come to mean to the Hoop Club and its members.

For most college students, pizza is their unquestioned comfort food-tasty, inexpensive, and easily acquired at all hours of the day and night. In the same way mom's cooking reminds us of home when were growing up, a big slice of greasy pizza reminds many of us of our undergraduate years. I've been known to comment around my office: if you want to know which younger employees haven't quite left their college years behind, watch how they act when there is free pizza in the conference room (note: I haven't quite left my college years behind).

For the hundreds of local Hoya Hoop Club members who attend each fall, the Open Practice is our comfort food.

There's something comforting and familiar about the event, after all. Old friends sit around tables reminiscing about season's past, fans get re-acquainted with the players they know and love, and somebody asks Coach Thompson whether the Hoyas will play at a faster pace in the coming season.

What is especially comforting is that there are more seats at the table than ever before. This year's event drew what is believed to be the largest Open Practice attendance ever, with at least 500 attendees on the RSVP list. This doesn't include the Georgetown undergraduates who attended as part of a Senior Class Committee event and pledged their Senior Class Gift to the Hoop Club. I'm sure the pizza was a welcome bonus for them especially.

The Open Practice tipped off on the top floor of the O'Donovan Cafeteria, where instead of scanning their GOCards to get to the chicken fingers line, HHC donors lined up to receive their membership packages. The most coveted item: one of the first 2009-2010 We Are Georgetown t-shirts, whose slogan ENVY OUR PAST FEAR YOUR FUTURE was revealed just last week at Midnight Madness. If that doesn't remind you of basketball season, I don't know what will.

The marquee events of the morning were the autograph session featuring the men's basketball team and a Q&A session with Coach Thompson (check out the GUHoyas.com photo album here).

The Q&A more than anything exemplifies the comforting familiarity of the Open Practice. The Big East remains a difficult conference top to bottom. Georgetown's out of conference schedule is never easy. Progress will always be measured in baby steps, and there is always room to get better and time to figure things out.

Does it matter that the questions (and for the most part, the answers) are similar every year? Not really. In fact, I wouldn't have it any other way.

If I order delivery from Philly Pizzanext weekend, there is something comforting in the fact that it will taste the same as it did when I was living on the Village A rooftops seven years ago. By the same token, it's comforting that whether the Hoyas are coming off a Final Four or a NIT, Coach Thompson remains grounded in the same coaching methods and philosophy that brought the Georgetown program to the point of such success where 500+ Hoop Club donors will show up on a Saturday morning to ask these questions in the first place.

One thing was different this time: for the first time in years, nobody asked Coach when we'd be playing Maryland again.

Coach Thompson led the crowd to McDonough Gym for the second half of the event, which gives Hoop Club members the exclusive chance to watch a Hoyas practice.

Coach was quick to note in his Q&A (as he does every year) that the team was just now hitting the one-week point in its practice schedule. They may still be figuring things out as a team, but our one-hour window into the team's development tells me intensity isn't a problem for this group. Open practices too are comforting and familiar, if not particularly surprising-save the moment when Julian Vaughn inadvertently slid Vince Coleman-style into the baseline during a suicide drill, or Henry Sims nearly ended up in the front row's lap hustling for a loose ball.

The Open Practice ended as they all tend to do-Coach giving the crowd a hearty thank you to the remaining crowd, and a familiar smell wafting in from the kitchen in McDonough.

John Hawkes (SFS '04)

Proud Member of Generation Burton