Men’s Basketball Embarks on Foreign Tour

8/23/06 -- The Long Island University men’s basketball team departs this week for a 10-day, four-game trip to Italy from Aug. 24 to Sept. 2. The Blackbirds will take on Italian teams in Como, Mestre, Montecatini and Rome.

The Blackbirds are coming off a 12-16 season that ended with an opening-round loss in the Northeast Conference Tournament. LIU finished sixth in the conference with a 9-9 record.

LIU returns 10 players from last year’s squad, including all five starters. All-NEC First Team and All-Met Third Team honoree James Williams (DeSoto, Texas) is coming off a season that saw him average 16.6 points per game. Williams is also the active career leading scorer in the NEC, with 1,239 points coming into this season.

Williams will be joined by fellow returning starters Aubin Scott (Hempstead, N.Y.), Esa Maki-Tulokas (Forssa, Finland), Kellen Allen (Mansfield, Texas) and Tyrone Mattison (Toronto, Canada).

The Blackbirds’s Italian opener will be on Aug. 26 in Como against Casalpusterlengo. LIU will take on the Giants Marghera team on Aug. 28 in Mestre. The team will then travel to Montecatini to play the Don Bosco team on Aug. 30, before visiting Rome to compete against the US Stella Azzurra team.

Click here to view the Men's Basketball Italy Tour Schedule, Results and Journal page.