Quakers to open year with Syracuse tourney
An official within the Gazelle Group Inc., a business consultancy, confirmed this week that Penn will begin its 2006 season at the Black Coaches Association Invitational tournament.
The four-team event, hosted by Syracuse, will run for three days with a doubleheader every day and a round robin between every squad. St. Francis (N.Y.), Syracuse, and Penn are the confirmed guests so far, and the company declined to say who the fourth would be.
Last year, the BCA Invitational was an eight-team affair, and the list of participants included Wyoming, Charlotte, Northwestern and Alabama State. The tournament winner was North Carolina-Wilmington.
The tournament is also an exempt one, meaning that the entire trip will only count as one game toward the Quakers' limited total of nonconference matchups.
-- Andrew Scurria
Southern Cal guard to transfer to Cornell
Collin Robinson, a sophomore guard at USC, will transfer to Cornell, the Los Angeles Times has reported.
Robinson, a 6-foot, 170-pound guard, averaged 1.4 points in nine games for the Trojans his freshman year.
Normally, a transferring athlete must sit out the following year. But according to the Times, Robinson is applying to play immediately because, he says, USC coach Tim Floyd did not renew his scholarship.
-- A.S.
Archibong signs with new German team
Koko Archibong, a 2003 graduate of the Quakers basketball program, has signed to play with Alba Berlin of the German league.
The 25-year-old forward, who led GHP Bamberg to a league title last year, signed to play for Berlin for the next two years.
-- A.S.
Temple creates new athletic dept. positions
The Temple athletic department this week announced that three additional officials would be hired in an effort to improve the academic culture of the university's student-athletes.
The newly organized department will include a two-person academic advising team serving under Temple's division of university studies. Another official will oversee the evaluation of each Owls team's academic standing. All three will report to the University's provost.
-- A.S.
Local flavor in Sixers' rookie, free agent camp
A four-day rookie and free-agent camp for the Philadelphia 76ers opened on Monday at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. On the team's roster was 2006 La Salle graduate Steven Smith, as well as Tayron Thomas of Philadelphia University.
The final roster will play a six-game schedule in the Rocky Mountain Venue of Salt Lake City in the coming days.
-- A.S.
All-Ivy Harvard LB charged with assault
Matthew Thomas, captain of the Harvard football team, has been charged with breaking into a former girlfriend's room and assaulting her.
He has been indefinitely suspended from the team pending "due process," Harvard coach Tim Murphy told The Boston Globe.
-- A.S.
