OU Basketball: Sooners To Face Villanova at Pearl Harbor

The Oklahoma men's basketball team is putting together quite the non-conference schedule for the 2015-16 season. With a home date against Wisconsin already on the schedule, it was announced on Wednesday the Sooners will take on Villanova in Hawaii on Dec. 7. 

The game will be played at Pearl Harbor and will be part of a remembrance of the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on the naval base that launched the U.S. involvement in World War II.

The game will be played at 6 p.m. CT and will be followed by Navy playing Oregon. Villanova finished 33-3 this past season and won the Big East regular season title with a 16-2 conference mark. The Wildcats were a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and will return two starters and several key rotation players from this year's squad. 

"Playing in this game will be a true honor for our basketball program," said OU head coach Lon Kruger. "The activities surrounding our trip will provide a tremendous educational opportunity for everyone in our group. We're very much looking forward to learning in person about the events of Dec. 7, 1941, the servicemen who tragically fell that day and the remarkable patriotism that united our country as a result."

OU is 1-2 overall against the Wildcats, winning a 1988 NCAA Tournament Elite Eight game (78-59 in Birmingham, Ala.) and losing regular season contests in 2005-06 (85-74 at Villanova) and 2006-07 (67-51 in Norman).

The Sooners will also travel to Hawaii later in December to participate in the eight-team Diamond Head Classic Dec. 22, 23 and 25 in Honolulu. The tournament field will include Auburn, BYU, Harvard, Hawaii, New Mexico, Northern Iowa and Washington State.