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Inside the City: A glance at the City Six teams

VILLANOVA Villanova redshirt freshman Mikal Bridges, who starred at Great Valley, has been "such a pleasant surprise" to coach Jay Wright. The 6-foot-7 swingman is averaging 7.0 points and 3.3 rebounds and among the team leaders in blocked shots and steals.

VILLANOVA

Villanova redshirt freshman Mikal Bridges, who starred at Great Valley, has been "such a pleasant surprise" to coach Jay Wright. The 6-foot-7 swingman is averaging 7.0 points and 3.3 rebounds and among the team leaders in blocked shots and steals.

Bridges also has impressed on defense. He recently has been matched up against the opposition's top scorer, going eye-to-eye with Georgetown's D'Vauntes Smith-Rivera, Seton Hall's Isaiah Whitehead, and Providence's Kris Dunn.

"We all have great confidence in him guarding anybody at the end of the game," Wright said. "He's really contributing, and I just think he's going to get better and better."

Coming up

Sunday vs. St. John's, at Madison Square Garden), noon, Fox29.

ST. JOSEPH'S

DeAndre' Bembry and Isaiah Miles are getting much of the publicity during the Hawks' 16-3 start, and rightly so. But when asked to identify a player who might be getting overlooked, coach Phil Martelli spoke of his two point guards - sophomore starter Shavar Newkirk and freshman Lamarr Kimble.

"If you lay that down as a position, they're really doing a terrific job, especially at the offensive end," Martelli said. "Discussions continue to be held with both of them about upping their game defensively. But at the offensive end, they're making sure we are organized."

Newkirk averages 7.8 points and 2.8 assists in 23.3 minutes per game and owns an assist-to-turnover ratio of better than 2-to-1. Kimble, a product of Neumann-Goretti, is third on the team in steals with 11 while averaging 4.6 points and 2.2 assists in 17.2 minutes.

Coming up

Wednesday vs. Massachusetts, 7 p.m.

Saturday at Rhode Island, 6 p.m., CBS-SN

PENN

Starting this weekend and continuing for the next five weekends, Penn will engage in the annual Ivy League ritual of back-to-back games. The Quakers play at Yale on Friday night and then head to Brown the next evening.

It's the first Ivy League season for Steve Donahue as Penn's head coach, although Donahue went through the same routine for 10 seasons as a Quakers assistant to Fran Dunphy, and later for 10 seasons as head coach at Cornell.

The Quakers, who are 0-1 in the Ivy after a tough, 73-71 overtime loss to Princeton on Jan. 9, enter the full schedule with the second-worst RPI (304) in the league, according to CBSSports.com.

Coming up

Friday at Yale, 7 p.m.

Saturday at Brown, 8 p.m.

LA SALLE

If things haven't been difficult enough for La Salle this season, now there comes word from Explorers coach John Giannini that junior Jordan Price, the team's leading scorer, has a fractured ring finger on his right (shooting) hand.

Giannini said Price, who was averaging 20.8 points and 3.0 three-pointer baskets per game going into Tuesday night's contest at Duquesne, was having problems "the last few weeks" and had the finger X-rayed last week, revealing a small fracture.

"He can play with it," Giannini said. "He's in a splint when he doesn't play. He's taped when he does play. But you've got to feel for a guy who doesn't have a ton of scoring help around him."

Coming up

Saturday at Dayton, 2 p.m., NBCSN.

DREXEL

Putting the ball in the basket has been a challenge for Drexel this season. The Dragons are shooting 38.1 percent from the field overall. If you just boil it down to CAA games, their percentages are 37.3 percent and 28.8 percent from three-point range.

Noting back-to-back games of 26.7 percent against Towson and 31.3 percent against James Madison, both defeats, Drexel coach Bruiser Flint suggested that opponents "are backing up and letting us shoot the ball."

"What happens is that you start running into people just because you're trying to get closer because you can't make a shot," he said.

Coming up

Thursday vs. Towson, 7 p.m.

Saturday vs. Hofstra, 4 p.m., TCN.