Women's College Basketball: St. Joseph's alumna Black to join Phila. Sports Hall

Debbie Black, the former St. Joseph's playmaker and WNBA all-star who is currently an assistant to Jim Foster, her former Hawks coach, at Ohio State, will be among the inductees Nov. 8 into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame at a ceremony at the Sheraton Society Hill.

The former Archbishop Wood High School star was named early last summer just days after it was announced that Foster will be part of the next Women's Basketball Hall of Fame class in Knoxville, Tenn., next June.

Incidentally, Ohio State will play Muffet McGraw's Notre Dame squad on the deck of an aircraft carrier Nov. 9 in Charleston, S.C., to launch the season as part of a men's-women's doubleheader.

Marquette will play Ohio State in the men's game on the USS Yorktown as part of the second annual Carrier Classic.

During a recent news conference in New York to promote the event, McGraw, who also starred at St. Joe's, discussed Notre Dame's move to the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Because of the exit from the Big East, she said, "I'm calling all those Philly schools, starting with my alma mater, so I still have my homecoming visits."

Auriemma returns to college. After guiding the U.S. Olympians to a gold medal in London with a team that included six of his former Connecticut players, Geno Auriemma has returned to the collegiate world to challenge defending NCAA champion Baylor and pursue an eighth national title.

Auriemma, who has the top recruiting class in the country, according to several publications, was at the annual Jimmy V dinner in New York on Oct. 10 to help preview the women's game in which the Huskies will host Maryland in Hartford on Dec. 3.

"I think there are going to be times early in practice when we look at each other and say, 'Man, it didn't look like this in July. What happened to the players from July till today?' " said Auriemma, who is from Norristown.

He said that senior Caroline Doty, the former Germantown Academy High School all-American, has gotten over her anger about missing time during her career because of knee injuries.

"She is doing exactly what I want her to do, and she is playing better as a result," the coach said.

Division II power Holy Family in Northeast Philadelphia will play UConn in Hartford on Nov. 7 in a preseason game.

"The minute the game was announced on Twitter, there was a kid that plays for Holy Family, like, 'I can't wait till early November. It's going to be the greatest day of my life. I'm playing at UConn,' " Auriemma said. "What might be just an exhibition to us, to those kids, it's a great event. That's kind of cool."