Penn alumnus Matt Langel is coming home to Philadelphia.
But he's not returning to teach at the Wharton School, from which he earned a B.S. in Economics with a concentration in Management.
Rather, the Class of 2000 graduate is returning to the City of Brotherly Love to drain some jumpers.
Langel, along with a host of other free agents and young NBA veterans, will practice with the Philadelphia 76ers in their pre-summer league camp at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.
The camp and its double sessions begin today and will run until Saturday. The following day, the Sixers will scrimmage against the Baker League All-Stars at Temple's McGonigle Hall at 1 p.m.
The hectic schedule will continue into next week, when the 17 players head north to the campus of the University of Massachusetts-Boston to compete in the 2001 Shaw Summer League, where they will face players of a similar caliber from Seattle, San Antonio, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Boston and New Jersey.
Among the 17 players on the Sixers' summer league roster are Raja Bell, Rodney Buford, Speedy Claxton and Jumaine Jones, all of whom were a part of the 2001 NBA Eastern Conference Champion Sixers this season.
There are also a lot of other players -- 12, to be exact -- who are rookies like Langel to the NBA.
In 1999-2000 -- Langel's final season donning the Red and Blue -- the two-guard started in all 29 Penn games and average 12 points, 4.1 assists, 4.1 rebounds and 32 minutes per contest. The 6'5" co-captain also shot 70-for-180 (38.9 percent) from three-point range for the season and was a unanimous first team All-Ivy selection. Langel also helped lead the Quakers to repeat success from the year before -- as Ivy League champions, and as 21-game winners.
Langel said at the start of his senior season with the Quakers that he was fully committed to playing professional basketball after graduation.
But he may not have expected to get that chance in the same place where his collegiate basketball career began six years ago.
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