PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team is ready to tip off the 2017-18 campaign on Saturday. Exactly eight months after the 2016-17 season ended with an Ivy League Tournament loss to Princeton in overtime at The Palestra, the Quakers will be in Bridgeport to face Fairfield University—a team coached by former Tigers player and head coach Sydney Johnson—in a game that will tip off at 1 p.m.
 
GAME 1 – PENN (0-0) at FAIRFIELD (0-0)
Saturday, November 11, 2017 * 1 p.m.
Webster Bank Arena (Bridgeport, Conn.)
 
THE SERIES
• This marks the third meeting between the Quakers and the Stags in men's basketball, with the teams splitting the first two contests with each other.
 
• Penn earned a 74-68 win last year at The Palestra in Philadelphia. AJ Brodeur led the Red and Blue with a double-double, recording 27 points (tops among all players in the game) and 10 rebounds.
 
• The first matchup took place almost exactly five years ago, as Fairfield defeated Penn 62-53 on November 13, 2012. That game was played at the University of Virginia as part of the NIT Preseason Tipoff.
 
PENN vs. THE MAAC
The Quakers are 25-17 all-time against programs that currently play in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC). Penn will meet another MAAC foe on the road this season, traveling to Monmouth in exactly two weeks.
 
PENN BY THE NUMBERS
3 • This is the third season for Penn's John R. Rockwell Head Coach of Men's Basketball, Steve Donahue. Prior to his return to University City, where he was an assistant coach for 10 years, Donahue was head at Cornell and Boston College.
 
4 • Penn will play four games in the season's first week. Following Saturday's game at Fairfield, the Quakers will be home three times next week hosting La Salle (Monday at 7 p.m.), Navy (Wednesday at 7 p.m.) and PSU-Brandywine (Saturday at 11:30 a.m.).
 
8 • Consecutive games that sophomore Ryan Betley scored in double figures to end last season; he averaged 17.8 points per game in those contests and capped it with a double-double (18 points, 12 rebounds) in the Quakers' Ivy League Tournament overtime loss to Princeton.
 
9 • The number of games that Penn will play in November, a program record. In an informal survey of the other SIDs around the country, only Chicago State (with 10) will play more games before the calendar turns to December.
 
12 • The number of players on this year's roster who have at least one double-figure scoring game at Penn. That includes six players who have had at least one 20-point game wearing the Red and Blue.
 
66 • Blocked shots last year by sophomore AJ Brodeur, the program's single-season record.
 
81.8 • The percentage of points from a year ago that returns to Penn's lineup. The returning players totaled 1,577 of the team's 1,928 points last season. (That doesn't include junior Antonio Woods, who averaged 10.7 ppg in 13 games to start 2015-16 and was not on the roster last year.)