Fans of New York City area hoops will get to see several local sons play at Madison Square Garden when West Virginia meets Davidson and Texas plays Villanova in the 14th annual Jimmy V Classic doubleheader on Dec. 9 at Madison Square Garden.
Bob Huggins’ team features New York-area freshman Devin Ebanks, Kevin Jones and Darryl “Truck” Bryant.
“We’re counting on Dev to come in and kind of take up a little bit of the slack of what we lost with Joe (Alexander),” Huggins said. “We’re not foolish enough to think he’s going to come in and take up where Joe left off because Joe was pretty good at the end of the year and he had such great strength. I think as Devin gets stronger, he’s the same kind of guy. He can play inside and he can play outside. He scores over smaller guys and can take big guys off the bounce like Joe did, so we’ll do a lot of the same things for Dev that we did with Joe.”
Alexander spent three years in college. How long will Ebanks spend? One only?
“He’s going to have to get stronger,” Huggins said. “I don’t know. He could be one-and done. I’ve never been able to work him out, so I don’t know.”
Villanova also has several area players in Corey Fisher (St. Patrick), Corey Stokes (St. Benedict’s) and Casiem Drummond (Bloomfield Tech).
Davidson head coach Bob McKillop coached the USA U18 team that featured Lance Stephenson, Dominic Cheek and Maalik Wayns and lost in the championship game of the FIBA Americas Championship to Argentina.
