City of Basketball Love

Jeff Griffith
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(Ed. Note: This article is part of our 2025-26 season coverage, which will run for the six weeks preceding the first official games of the year on Nov. 4. To access all of our high school and college preview content for this season, click here.)

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With the calendar having officially flipped to October, the sports news cycle is filled to the brim with professional football, college football, the WNBA playoffs, the MLB playoffs, and more. But college basketball season lurks around the corner, just a month away, and with it, schedules for the 2025-26 season have come fully into focus.

Here’s a look at the highlights of each of this year’s non-conference slates for the city’s Division I men’s squads:

Drexel Dragons (2025: 18-15, 9-9 Colonial)
The Dragons open up the season Nov. 3 with the unique opportunity to host one of the region’s premier Division III programs, Widener. From there, it’s a pair of quick road trips to St. Joe’s (Nov. 8) and Colgate (Nov. 11), before an intriguing quasi-neutral matchup with Syracuse (Nov. 15) at Xfinity Mobile Arena. 

Drexel’s non-conference schedule doesn’t feature many “headline” programs, but there are plenty of quality mid-majors on the list, including American (Dec. 3) — which features Conestoga and Westtown product Matt Mayock — and Mount St. Mary’s (Dec. 19), both of which made the NCAA Tournament a year ago.

La Salle Explorers (2025: 14-19, 5-13 Atlantic 10)
The Explorers get somewhat of an opportunity to breathe out of the gates, with winnable home games against Coppin State (Nov. 5) and Monmouth (Nov. 8) to open the season. Quickly after, though, the non-conference road is littered with challenges. 

After those two games, the next nine days feature a trip to Temple (Nov. 11), a neutral site bout with Penn State (Nov. 15, Wells Fargo Center), and a home game against Villanova (Nov. 19).

La Salle won’t play a single home game between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The Explorers will participate in the aforementioned Cathedral Classic, then the Big 5 Classic (Dec. 6), and then wrap up their non-conference with visits to LIU (Dec. 13), High Point (Dec. 19), and Michigan (Dec. 21), the latter two of which participated in last year’s NCAA Tournament. With a loaded portal class, Michigan is also expected to be a contender on the national scale this season. 

Penn Quakers (2025: 8-19, 4-10 Ivy League)
Penn’s non-conference schedule provides somewhat of an east coast tour, featuring a slew of away games in and around the northeastern United States. 

After hosting D-II Rowan (Nov. 7) to kick off the season, Penn will pay a visit to aforementioned American (Nov. 9) before quickly heading the opposite direction for a road game at Providence (Nov. 11). 

A highlight of the Quakers’ non-conference slate, the Cathedral Classic, will bring La Salle, Hofstra and Merrimack to The Palestra for a three-day series of games over Thanksgiving Weekend. The Cathedral Classic alone will feature an array of local talent, including Hofstra’s Amir Williams (Neumann-Goretti) and a pair of Merrimack players, Kevair Kennedy (Father Judge) and Jaylen Stinson (Archbishop Wood). 

Not long thereafter, Penn will host arguably the most Philadelphia-bred roster in the country, Lafayette, which features six local products — Luke Bevilacqua (George School), Mark Butler (Penn Charter), Shareef Jackson (Roman Catholic), Andrew Phillips (Malvern Prep), Malik Rasul (Westtown Academy) and Josh Wyche (Cristo Rey). 

Saint Joseph’s Hawks (2025: 22-13, 11-7 Atlantic 10)
There’s been a little bit of shuffling surrounding St. Joe’s non-conference schedule, with the Hawks having recently been removed from the Players Era Showcase, a Thanksgiving Week tournament in Las Vegas. That said, the Hawks were able to reschedule road games with two of the teams they planned to face in that event; UNLV (Nov. 20) and Syracuse (Dec. 11). 

The rest of the Hawks’ non-conference slate could be described as quite eclectic, all in all. On top of the aforementioned trips to UNLV and Syracuse, St. Joe’s will also pay a visit to Virginia Tech (Nov. 12); the Hawks also take on two non-DI teams this season, with matchups scheduled against Rutgers-Camden (Nov. 25) and Arcadia (Dec. 28). 

St. Joe’s fans will have the opportunity to catch multiple homegrown players at home games, including Kareem Watson, a West Catholic alum and redshirt junior at Delaware State; the Hornets visit the Hawks Dec. 18. St. Joe’s also plays Lafayette (Nov. 3), and its aforementioned roster full of Philadelphia-area alums, to open the season. 

Temple Owls (2025: 17-15, 9-9 American)
Temple was among the last Big 5 teams to publicly list its non-conference schedule, but in many aspects it was worth the wait, with the slate featuring multiple power conference opponents and 2025 NCAA Tournament teams. 

The Owls open Nov. 5 against an aforementioned Delaware State side; when looking at the November slate, though, the readers’ eye quickly goes to Nov. 15, when Temple has the opportunity to host an ACC opponent in Boston College. The two faced off last season, with the Owls falling on the road by three. 

After opening with four straight at home, Temple heads down to Orlando to participate in the Terry’s Chocolate ESPN Events Invitational. The tournament features a field of 16; Temple will open its three-game stint in the Sunshine State (Nov. 24) against a UC San Diego team that won 30 games last season and earned an NCAA Tournament No. 12 seed, before taking on either Bradley or Princeton the following day. 

Regardless of who ends up being its second opponent in Florida, though, Temple will face Radnor alum Jackson Hicke and Princeton — possibly for the second time — to close out its non-conference slate December 22. All in all, Temple’s only true road game outside of Philadelphia comes December 18 against Davidson.

Villanova Wildcats (2025: 21-15, 11-9 Big East)
Villanova’s non-conference schedule is, simply put, loaded. 

In many ways, though, in terms of opponent caliber, it’s back-loaded. The final three games of Villanova's non-conference slate feature three power conference teams — two in the Big Ten, Michigan (Dec. 9, away) and Wisconsin (Dec. 19, Milwaukee), with Pittsburgh (Dec. 13, home) sandwiched in between.

The Wildcats’ opener, though, may be the most daunting game on the entire schedule. BYU, a squad projected by many to be a national title contender thanks to a strong portal class and the arrival of top-ranked freshman phenom A.J. Dybantsa will test Villanova right out of the gate November 3 in Las Vegas.

Otherwise, Villanova’s non-conference is relatively normal — a handful of east coast mid-majors, the usual Big 5 foes, and so forth. Notably, the Wildcats will also play host to Bayard Rustin product Griffin Barouk, a redshirt senior at Sacred Heart (Nov. 11) who transferred in from Hofstra.