DETROIT (11/8/2018) -- The University of Detroit Mercy men's basketball team will open the Gotprint.Com Legends Classic Presented By Old Trapper on Friday in Philadelphia as the Titans visit Temple.

Game time is set for 7 p.m. at the Liacouras Center and will be broadcast live on ESPN3.

Detroit Mercy started the season and the Mike Davis era by falling at Western Michigan despite a team-high 32 points from freshman Antoine Davis, one off a Titan freshman record for offense. 

Detroit Mercy and Temple have met only twice before with the Titans beating the Owls in the 1968 Motor City Classic championship game, while dropping a road contest in the Gotham Classic in 2013.

Following the game, the Titans will head to Butler for a Monday showdown with their old conference rival. 

Season tickets as well as single-game tickets are now on sale and can be purchased by contacting Director of Ticket Operations & Sales Justin Hairston at 313-993-1700 ext. 7301, email at hairstjj1@udmercy.edu or by visiting DetroitTitans.com/tix.

ALL-TIME SERIES

• This will be the third career meeting against Temple as both teams have split the first two games - years apart. 
• The last match-up was in the Gotham Classic in 2013 – a game that was played in Philadelphia in late February due to a weather postponement in December - with Temple collecting an 83-78 win. 
• The two teams also met in the championship game of the 1968 Motor City Classic, where a nationally-ranked Titan team defeated the eventual NIT champions, 87-76, with Spencer Haywood tallying 32 points and 26 rebounds.

LAST TIME OUT

• Freshman Antoine Davis tallied a team-high 32 points, but a slow start by the Titans was the story as the University of Detroit Mercy men's basketball team fell, 89-76, at Western Michigan on Tuesday night.
• The game marked the started of the Mike Davis coaching era in the Motor City. 
• Senior Josh McFolley posted 14 points, five rebounds, three assists and two steals. Junior Lamar Hamrick had 13 points and four steals and senior Gerald Blackshear Jr. recorded eight points and a team-best 10 boards.
• The Titans started the game with a 7-2 lead, but went cold from the field as Western Michigan took a 45-28 lead at the break.
• In the second half, WMU had a 21-point lead, but Detroit Mercy chipped away as Davis scored 18, McFolley 12 and Hamrick netted 10 in the frame and the Titans cut the deficit to 10 twice, 62-52 and 65-55, in the frame
• The Titans had just nine turnovers and forced 15 total. 

113 YEARS OF TITAN BASKETBALL

• This season is the 113th year of collegiate basketball at the University of Detroit Mercy - the oldest Division I program in the state - as the Tigers – yes, Tigers as they were called back then - beat Collegiate, 18-7, in the first official Detroit basketball game in 1905. 
• Until 1919, the U-D teams were known as the Tigers. In the fall of 1919, Detroit Free Press' sportswriter Stan Brink, who was covering football for the paper, thought that a good nickname for the team would be the Titans.
• In Greek mythology, the Titans were a class of oversized people who happened to have almost perfect physiques. 
• In its 113 years (two years records are missing in 1907-08 and 1908-09) Detroit Mercy is 1,401-1190 (.543) with two regular season HL Championships (1998, 1999) and three tournament titles (1994, 1999, 2012). 
• Detroit Mercy has also made six NCAA tournaments (1962, 1977, 1979, 1998, 1999, 2012) and seven NIT appearances (1960, 1961, 1965, 1978, 2001, 2002, 2013).

IN-SEASON TOURNAMENTS

• Detroit Mercy has appeared in a number of in-season tournaments in the last eight years and has posted a 14-18 mark during in-season tournaments with two subregional titles.

VS. THE AAC

• Detroit Mercy is 29-42 all-time against current members of the American Athletic Conference.
• In fact, the Titans have played every member of the league except SMU and have picked up a win over everyone outside of SMU, Cincinnati (0-2) and Tulane (0-1). 

ALL-AROUND TITANS

• Detroit Mercy's roster has 17 total players - 13 new - and the roster features players from 10 states and two countries in Georgia and Newfoundland.
• The team has players covering four time zones from the eastern standard time in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, and of course Michigan, central time in Alabama, Kansas, Texas and Wisconsin, mountain time in New Mexico and the pacific time zone of California. 

WHO IS THAT?

• Detroit Mercy will bolster one of the highest groups of newcomers in the nation at 13 (14 if you count walk-on Musial Gjysma who redshirted last season). 
• Among Division I teams with the highest number of newcomers are Tennessee Chattanooga and Duquesne at 13, while Florida Atlantic and Wichita State welcome 12. 

TOUGH NON-CONFERENCE SLATE

• The University of Detroit Mercy men's basketball team will have a challenging non-conference schedule with nine road games, including trips to California, Temple, Butler and Xavier as well as hosting the GotPrint.com Legends Classic subregional. 
• In total, the Titans will have four home games out of their 13 non-conference match-ups. The known opponents posted a 205-190 record (51.8%) last season, and four teams made the postseason with NCAA appearances by Butler and Xavier, a NIT team in Temple and one CIT opponent in Eastern Michigan. 

FAMILY FUN

• Nothing new for the Titans to have a family connection in the program and this season, Detroit Mercy will feature three Davis' in head coach Mike Davis, assistant coach Mike Davis Jr. and freshman guard Antoine Davis.
• From 2010-13, the Titans had head coach Ray McCallum and star guard Ray McCallum Jr., winning the Horizon League Championship in 2012 and earning a trip to the NIT in 2013.

COMING BACK

• Just four players return from last year's team and only three of those saw the court totaling 1,496 minutes in senior Josh McFolley (804), senior Gerald Blackshear Jr. (191) and junior Cole Long (501). 
• The 1,496 minutes represents just 23.2 percent of the total minutes returning. 
• The three players also posted 521 combined points (McFolley-354, Long-115, Blackshear Jr.-52), which is just 20.7 percent of the returning offense from last year.

LET IT FLY

• Detroit Mercy nailed 10 or more 3-pointers in 15 games last season and was second in the HL with 8.8 triples per game, 88th in the nation, as well as fifth in the HL in three-point field goal percentage (34.5%). 
• The Titans started the 2018-19 season hitting 11-of-33 from long range at Western Michigan. 

WHAT A DEBUT

• Freshman Antoine Davis had a collegiate debut to remember as he netted a team-high 32 points at Western Michigan. 
• He scored the team's first points and ended the contest 12-of-26 from the field and 6-of-14 from behind the arc.
• The 32 points are the most by a freshman since Jermaine Jackson Jr. had 32 against Youngstown State last season and just a point away from the Titan freshman record of 33 Corey Allen had against Fort Wayne in 2016.
• The 32-point outing is also the most ever by a Titan true freshman in his debut game and the second most ever by a Titan in their collegiate debut behind only junior college transfer Spencer Haywood's 36 he tallied against Aquinas in 1968, a game that was called with 6 1/2 minutes left after he broke the backboard with a dunk and the Titans up 105-40. 

HAMRICK TIME

• Junior Lamar Hamrick made his Division I debut in the opener and had 13 points - 10 in the second half - to go with a team-high four steals. 

G CRASHING THE GLASS

• Senior Gerald Blackshear Jr. had some early foul trouble against Western Michigan, but he showed just how important he is registering eight points and a team-high 10 rebounds in just 23 minutes of court time.
• The 10 rebounds are the most since he pulled down a career-best 11 boards at Cleveland State as a sophomore. 

MCFOLLEY FOR 3

• Senior Josh McFolley connected on a 3-pointer in 25 of the Titans' 32 games last year, including a season-high six in the regular season finale against Green Bay, and started the season hitting a pair at Western Michigan. 
• He now has 169 career 3-pointers, eighth in school history and chasing down the fifth spot held by Jon Goode's  202. 

PICKING YOUR POCKET

• Senior Josh McFolley has been a thief for all of his Titan career as he has 148 career steals, ninth in school history and just six away from moving into the top five. 
• He led the team and was tied for second in the Horizon League with 1.5 steals per game last year as his 49 steals was the second most in the league. 
• Had also had six games with at least three steals last season, including a career-best six steals against UIC, where he also scored 30 points. 
• In his career, he has recorded a steal in 70 of his 94 career games, including 32 multi-steal contests and 16 with at least three takeaways.

1,000 & COUNTING

• Senior Josh McFolley became the 42nd Titan in school history to reach 1,000 last year and he did so in dramatic fashion scoring Detroit Mercy's first 12 points and ending with a career-high 34 against Green Bay in the regular season finale. 
• He is now 38th all-time on the Titan scoring list with 1,052 career points, seven behind former all-time great Larry Salci '68 for 37th. 

G-FORCE

• The Titans will need senior Gerald Blackshear Jr. to be a force inside this season as injuries limited his junior year.
• He appeared in 20 games with nine starts last year - playing double-digit minutes just eight times - and did not play after the January 20 meeting against Oakland. 
• When healthy, he is an athletic big man who can grab rebounds and score around the basket, highlighted by his career .592 field goal percentage. 
• He shot 64.1 percent from the field in 2017-18 (25-of-39) and that was after 61.3 percent (73-of-119) as a sophomore and 55.2 percent from the field (48-of-87) in his rookie year.