NC State just dropped jersey numbers like they were dealing a fresh Uno deck, and the ref’s already hovering over Favour Ossai’s card.
The Pack’s “We’ve got jersey numbers” video is all red-and-white player cards sliding across the table: familiar faces keeping their old digits, a couple of first-time numbers in program history, and then boom, Favour in 77. First 77 the Wolfpack women have ever put on a back.
That’s not a jersey number. That’s a plot twist.
For decades it wouldn’t even have been legal. College basketball used to ban any digit above 5, which left teams with 0, 00, 1–5, 10–15, all the way up to 55 and nothing else. The point was to make life easy for referees flashing a foul to the scorer: one hand per digit, five fingers max. A 7 already gets messy. A 77 was a nonstarter. The NCAA finally opened it up to 0–99 in 2023–24. Favour walked through that newly unlocked door and took the number that used to make rulebooks nervous.
Which brings us to the real entertainment value.
The first time she picks up a whistle this season, some poor referee is going to jog to the table, raise both hands, and try to flash “77.” One 7 is already a two-handed job in old official-speak. Two of them is interpretive dance. Expect jazz hands, a little shake, and at least one person in Reynolds yelling “lucky sevens.”
Khady Leye grabbing the first No. 6 in program history is a nice footnote from the same rule change. Returners keeping 2, 7, 10, 11, 12, and 35 is orderly. Favour wearing 77 is the bit that will live on every time she fouls somebody and the official has to become a human calculator.
Pack fans, start practicing the signal now. Two hands. Big energy. Slightly confused face. The old rule is gone. The bit is not.
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