UConn Women to Play at University of Hartford Next December

Jennifer Rizzotti's Hartford Hawks will play the UConn Huskies at Chase Family Arena on Dec. 22, 2012.

For the first time since taking over the Hartford Hawks women’s basketball program in 1999, Head Coach Jennifer Rizzotti will have the opportunity to play her alma mater on the Hawks' home court, the Chase Family Arena at the Reich Family Pavilion. The University of Hartford and the University of Connecticut will begin a new three-game women’s basketball series with the initial game scheduled to be played at Chase Family Arena on Dec. 22, 2012.

The series, which will continue through the 2014-15 season, will include two additional games played either at Gampel Pavilion on the UConn campus or the XL Center in downtown Hartford.

The series, which began during the Hawks' second year in Division I, dates back to Dec. 3, 1985, with the Huskies winning all 12 of the previous meetings. After Rizzotti took over the Hawks program, Hartford began a six-game series with Connecticut, with all six games played at the XL Center. In addition to those six games, the Hawks also played UConn in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in March 2011. Overall the Hawks are 0-12 against Connecticut.

The December 2012 meeting at Chase Arena in the Reich Family Pavilion will not be the first against Connecticut on the University of Hartford campus, as the Hawks and Huskies played twice in West Hartford during the early years of the series. The first meeting on the Hartford campus was on Dec. 12, 1987, at the then Physical Education Center, and the teams played again in West Hartford on Dec. 23, 1990, at the newly opened University of Hartford Sports Center.

Season tickets for the 2012-13 season go on sale approximately July 1, 2012. Fans interested in being among the first to purchase tickets for the Connecticut game should contact the Malcolm & Brenda Berman Athletics Ticket Office at 860.768.HAWK (4295) or tickets@hartford.edu, to be included on a waiting list. Fans on the waiting list will be the first to be contacted as soon as ticket information becomes available this summer.