Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Philly Classic Update: Three's the Charm

The University of Hartford website released the Hartford Hawk's 2008-09 Out of Conference (OOC) schedule. The Hawk's two preliminary games are, as suggested in my July 30 post, a road game with Rhode Island and a road game with Penn State. Since Hartford is the third member of the eight team field to release their match-ups, this pretty much confirms that Villanova will host preliminary round games against Niagara University and Monmouth University. Aside from a broad window of after November 14 and before November 28, days & times are only speculation.

Hartford also revealed their first opponent at the Palestra (11/28) will be NJIT, thus confirming that Niagara and Monmouth will play in the other game in the bracket. If this comes to pass, then the final in that bracket ought to have some local fan appeal as both Niagara and Hartford have ties to Philadelphia. The Hartford head coach, Dan Leibovitz, was an assistant coach at Temple University, under John Chaney. The Purple Eagle squad from Niagara will feature three players from the Philadelphia area. Senior guard Charron Fisher hails from Pennsauken, NJ and played ball at Roman Catholic in Philadelphia. Sophomore guard Tyrone Lewis lived in Levitown, PA and played ball at Truman HS. Bilal Benn, a junior guard played high school ball at Cardinal Dougherty HS in Philadelphia along side of Villanova great Kyle Lowry. Benn later rejoined Lowry and played 2 years at Villanova before transferring to Niagara.

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