[preston]

The West Virginia University men’s basketball team will play 29 games in 2006-07.

That became public Thursday afternoon when the Big East released the Mountaineers’ conference schedule.

WVU will play 15 regular-season games at the Coliseum. Highlighting the home card will be games against UCLA, Connecticut and Villanova, all NCAA Elite Eight teams last March.

Each Big East team will play 10 teams once and three teams twice each, as was the case in 2005-06. Pitt, Seton Hall and Cincinnati are the teams to be met twice.

WVU won’t be playing either Louisville or Syracuse this year.

Coach John Beilein, who faces a major rebounding job in his fifth season here, likes the mixture of Big East and non-league games.

He said, “With the aggressive Big East and another competitive non-conference schedule, it will be a nice mix of games for our young team.

“We’ve come a long way to have a lot of games on national television, which is a credit to the direction of our program.”

Significantly, nine of WVU’s first 14 games will be played in the Coliseum. Another against North Carolina State is set for the Charleston Civic Center on Wednesday, Dec. 6.

That early spacing should give the new players time to gain valuable experience before facing tougher tests on the road.

Beilein announced that the Mountaineers will play an exhibition game on Sunday, Nov. 5 against Fairmont State University at the Coliseum.

They will open the regular season on Friday night, Nov. 10, against St. Mary’s, also at home.

Cincinnati will visit the Coliseum on Saturday, March 3 for the regular-season finale.

Besides Connecticut, Villanova and Cincinnati, Big East schools appearing at the Coliseum will be Pitt, St. John’s, South Florida, DePaul and Seton Hall.

WVU will have at least eight regular-season games on national television. Those include UCLA on CBS, at Marquette on ESPN, and Connecticut, at Notre Dame and at Pitt on ESPN2.

In addition, all three games in the Old Spice Classic at Orlando, Fla., will be on ESPN2/ESPNU.

Even more games on the ESPN network of channels will be selected at a later date, according to WVU’s announcement.

The Big East championship tournament games, as usual, will be televised by ESPN.