The Triangle

Issue date: 9/26/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Evan Rosen Members of the DAC Pack will have to get used to a scene unfamiliar to them. Penn's men's basketball team is playing at the Daskalakis Athletic Center for the first time ever. The game, which will be televised on ESPN Nov. 18, will have one of the best fan groups in the Colonial Athletic Assiocation present. Drexel coach Bruiser Flint said the DAC is going to be packed.

For a series that has dated back to the 1920-21 season, one would expect Drexel to host Penn every other year, or due to the Palestra's historic presence, maybe every three or four years.

But through the 2007-08 men's basketball season, despite the fact that these campuses are literally just a stone throw away from each other, all 20 matchups between these two Philadelphia rivals have been played at the Palestra, Penn's home court.

This season, however, for the first time ever, Penn will be visiting the Daskalakis Athletic Center-and everyone in the country is going to get the opportunity to watch it.

The men's basketball team will host its season opener against Penn on ESPN Nov. 18, which will be part of ESPN's college hoops marathon that includes 14 games over 23 hours.

"This is a great game for us for the ESPN angle, and if you live in Philadelphia, you can't get around the fact that there's so many great Division I basketball schools here," Director of Athletics Eric Zillmer said. "I can't wait to see this gym hopping and the rollouts coming out one after another."

Some notable matchups during the marathon include Kentucky at North Carolina and UMass at Memphis. The basketball games include teams from 14 different conferences, a women's game, four NIT semifinals and two games in the CBE classic, which entails defending national champion Kansas and Florida Gulf Coast.

Drexel basketball games have been on ESPN2 a few times in the past couple years including games against Sam Houston St., Creighton, Duke and UCLA; but this is the first time ESPN is coming to the DAC since the 1994-95 season, when Malik Rose helped knock off Northeastern in the North Atlantic Conference championship game.

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