When Villanova returns to the hardwood this November for its 2003-04 basketball season, they now have a clearer idea who will be able to suit up in the Wildcats uniform. After an internal audit detected abnormalities in the usage of an university telephone access code, 12 members of the men’s basketball team were suspended March 8 for making unauthorized telephone calls. In the last three games of the season ‘Nova dressed only seven players, while the remaining students began to serve their suspensions.

Villanova soon began an intensive investigation in accordance with the NCAA regulations of extra benefits and detailed its findings to the NCAA review committee last spring.

The University announced Wednesday that the NCAA completed its own review outlining which athletes still have sentences to serve and the length of the specified suspensions in accordance to the NCAA’s own sanction schedule for such disobedience.

The following basketball players involved in the breach of conduct who have remaining games to serve are: senior forward Andreas Bloch who has an eight game suspension, with five games yet to serve, junior forward Marcus Austin, who has yet to serve all eight games of his suspension, and senior guard Derrick Snowden and sophomore forwards Chris Charles and Curtis Sumpter, who each have a three game suspension to serve. Sophomore forward Jason Fraser also had a three game suspension, but was able to serve his three games at the end of last season. In the report, sophomore guards Randy Foye and Allan Ray do not have any suspensions to serve.

All of the suspensions will take place at the beginning of the 2003-04 season, which will get underway at the end of November. The Wildcats are slotted to travel to Hawaii over the Thanksgiving break to compete in the EA Sports Maui Invitational hosted by Chaminade University Nov. 24-26. The entire schedule is yet to be released, but ‘Nova is expected to play a few games before the tournament begins.