Who!? But I didn’t have time to make sense of this new player on the men’s basketball team before Vanilla Ice ushered Nikita onto the floor and Omar Wattad was doing the Cotton Eyed Joe dance. Now, a few days removed from the initial shock, I think I’ve found out who this mysterious Ryan Dougherty is…

If you look past the big picture of 2007 all-Met player of the year Austin Freeman and first-teamer Chris Wright on this old Washington Post page, all the way down to honorable mention, you’ll find Ryan, then a senior at St. Albans.

DCSportsFan.com named Dougherty their senior of the year and player of the year in 2007. He averaged 17.7 points per game, hit 41 threes and shot 80 percent from the line. (DCSportsFan also picked Markel Starks as their freshman of the year. Looks like Dougherty has “played” with a bunch of Hoyas on the awards teams).

DCSportsFan.com Player of the Year

Ryan Dougherty, St. Albans
There couldn’t have been a more consistent player in the league than Ryan Dougherty. Although St. Albans didn’t have the best season as far as their record was concerned, Dougherty kept the team alive on all fronts. The senior captain was 88th in the entire D.C. are in scoring and was 43rd in the D.C. area with 41 three-pointers.

He played for Rochester last season, scoring 12 points in seven games. Rochester is one of the top teams Division III — they went to the D-III final four in 2002 and 2005. It’s likely that Dougherty is not on the GU roster because he is sitting out for a year after transferring. (Patrick Ewing Jr. wasn’t on the roster the year he sat out).

I imagine Dougherty is a walk-on, but he gives them an extra body at practice. They have 12 guys with him, which is the same number as the last two seasons.