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	John Beilein

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia University and the BIG EAST have announced the 2006-07 men’s basketball schedule.

West Virginia will play 15 regular season games at the WVU Coliseum, highlighted by three 2006 NCAA Elite Eight teams – UCLA, Connecticut and Villanova.

For the second year in a row, each BIG EAST team plays 10 teams once and three teams twice. West Virginia will play home and home games with Pitt, Seton Hall and Cincinnati. The Mountaineers will not play regular season games against Louisville and Syracuse.

West Virginia will open the season at home against Mount St. Mary’s on Friday, November 10. BIG EAST schools visiting Morgantown will be Connecticut, Pitt, Villanova, St. John’s, USF, DePaul, Seton Hall and Cincinnati. In addition to Mount St. Mary’s, UCLA, Canisius, The Citadel, Slippery Rock, Savannah State and Maryland-Eastern Shore will visit the Coliseum in non-league action.

The Mountaineers will play league road games at Pitt, Seton Hall, Cincinnati, Rutgers, Notre Dame, Marquette, Providence and Georgetown. WVU will travel to Duquesne and will face North Carolina State and Marshall in Charleston. West Virginia will face Montana in the first game of the three-game Old Spice Classic in Orlando. WVU will face either Virginia Tech or Western Michigan in the second game. The third game will be determined against either Arkansas, Marist, Minnesota or Southern Illinois.

West Virginia will have at least eight regular season games on national television this season. WVU will play UCLA on CBS, at Marquette on ESPN and Connecticut, at Notre Dame and at Pitt on ESPN2. All three games of the Old Spice Classic will be on ESPN2/ESPNU. Additional games on the ESPN network of channels will be selected at a later date. The BIG EAST championship will be televised by ESPN.

“With the aggressive BIG EAST and another competitive non-conference schedule, it will be a nice mix of games for our young team,” says WVU head coach John Beilein. “We’ve come a long way to have a lot of games on national television, which is a credit to the direction of our program.”

The Mountaineers will play an exhibition game on November 5, against Fairmont State. Game times and the rest of the television games will be announced in October. Basketball practice begins Friday, October 13.