State College, Pa. – July 26, 2005 – Penn State Nittany Lion basketball player Brandon Hassell (Farmersville, Ohio) will represent Penn State on the 2005 Big Ten Men’s Basketball Foreign Tour, as announced today by conference officials. Illinois head coach Bruce Weber, who will serve as head coach for this year’s tour, has put together a squad comprised of 12 student-athletes from 11 different league schools. The Tour, which runs from August 9-19, is tentatively scheduled to include five games in Spain.
Hassell played in 20 games for Penn State as a freshman last year, averaging 1.7 points per game and 1.9 rebounds per contest. A 6-9, 220-pound forward/center, Hassell is one of seven players on the Tour roster with two or fewer years of experience.
The 2005 Foreign Tour Team will include a pair of Weber’s own players in guards Calvin Brock and Brian Randle. Brock and Randle both enter this year after sitting out the 2004-05 season as redshirts. In addition, the Tour squad will have two other guards in Iowa’s Mike Henderson and Northwestern’s Evan Seacat. Henderson saw action in all 33 games with 14 starts at the point guard position last season to rank fourth on the team with a 4.9 scoring average. Seacat enters his senior season after seeing action in 73 career games.
The Foreign Tour Team includes six student-athletes who play the forward position in Indiana’s Marco Killingsworth, Michigan’s Ron Coleman, Ohio State’s Matt Terwilliger, Hassell, Purdue’s Matt Kiefer and Wisconsin’s Jason Chappell. Killingsworth redshirted last year at Indiana after transferring from Auburn, where he led the Tigers in scoring (13.7 ppg) and rebounding (6.9 rpg) in 2003-04. In his first season in Ann Arbor, Coleman worked his way into the lineup, starting in 23 of 31 Big Ten games to finish the season with an average of 7.5 points per contest. Terwilliger saw action in 15 games for the Buckeyes under first-year head coach Thad Matta.
Hassell competed in 20 contests and earned his first career start against Illinois last season. Kiefer averaged 9.0 points and 4.9 rebounds per game last year, while claiming Academic All-Big Ten laurels for the second consecutive year. After sitting out his sophomore season as a redshirt, Chappell returned in 2004-05, competing in 14 games.
Weber will also have two centers to choose from in Michigan State’s Goran Suton and Minnesota’s Spencer Tollackson. Suton sat out last season as a redshirt, while Tollackson competed in all 32 games last season with three starts for the Golden Gophers.