The Temple men’s basketball team will host Duke and Villanova next season, and is nearing an agreement to play two-time defending national champ Florida as part of a neutral site doubleheader near Fort Lauderdale, athletic director Bill Bradshaw confirmed this week. The Owls will open the 2007-08 campaign by participating in the Puerto Rico Tip-Off Classic, an eight-team event scheduled for Nov. 15-18.Bradshaw also revealed that the Owls will play twice against Saint Joseph’s, La Salle, and Charlotte as part of the 16-game Atlantic 10 schedule. They’ll play everyone else in the league once. For those 10 games, home and away games won’t necessarily be the opposite of this past season, because the 14-team league is rotating everybody’s home-and-home opponents this year.
For Temple, the only change is Charlotte replacing UMass as a two-time foe. The Owls have played two regular season games against St. Joe’s and La Salle in each of the two years since the league expanded to 14 teams.
Bradshaw said home-and-home opponents are determined through a complicated process that places the conference teams in different scheduling tiers and takes rivalries into account.
As for the rest of the schedule, the Owls will play five MAC opponents next season – Akron (away), Bowling Green (away), Northern Illinois (away), Ohio University (home), and Toledo (home). The MAC games are subject to change, but there will definitely be five of them.
Temple will also host Penn and Towson and will visit Drexel. The Duke game will be played at the Wachovia Center. The field for the Puerto Rico Tip-Off Classic has not been finalized.