Notebook: M. Hoops hungry for opener

It's barely November, and the Penn campus is already abuzz with the imminent start of the college basketball season. The 1999-2000 edition of the Quakers men's basketball team (21-6, 13-1 Ivy League in 1998-99) has already garnered much praise this off-season, including being unanimously picked to defend its Ivy League title in the preseason Ivy media poll. Needless to say, the Quakers are also lusting hungrily for the upcoming season. "I think we look at it as last year we had a taste of the NCAA Tournament and this year that's just made us even more hungry to get back there -- and we're not going to give it up," Penn center Geoff Owens said. "We're just going to go and work as hard as we can to get back to where we were because that was a great season last year." Of all people, Owens should know about working as hard as he can. As fans will remember, the 6'11" big man broke his jaw diving for a loose ball in a win at Dartmouth last February. Like a true fighter who does not stay down, Owens had his jaw wired shut, and while subsisting on liquid meals consumed through a straw, returned to play in four of the Quakers' final five games. · The captains of this year's edition of the Red and Blue will be senior guards Michael Jordan and Matt Langel. Jordan, who was a tri-captain on the '98-99 squad, led Penn in scoring (15.3 points), assists (4.7) and steals (1.3) per game a year ago. Langel, who finished sixth in the nation in three-point accuracy two years ago, brings his 11.3 points per game and his 43 percent shooting from behind the arc back as well. "This is my second year as a captain and I'm honored because it's the guys that pick you," Jordan said. "It shows me that the guys respect my work ethic and the things that I can do on the court. So I'm proud that they selected me as captain and hopefully I can fulfill that to the best of my abilities." · Season tickets for the Quakers' 13 home games went on sale amid great fanfare yesterday morning. According to the Penn ticket office, 228 students were camped out in "the Line" in the hallways of the Palestra as of 6 p.m. Sunday night, which was the deadline to enter the lottery for tickets to away games at Temple, La Salle and Princeton. Many groups of students also joined the line after 6 p.m. but before the tickets went on sale. This is an increase of almost 50 percent from last year's numbers and represents an extremely strong showing of support for the team. Latest numbers indicated that over 100 additional Penn students purchased season tickets yesterday. · An Ivy League ruling this past offseason allowed each men's basketball team to schedule an additional, 27th regular-season game beginning this fall. In response to this decision, the Quakers added a game at the Arby's Hardwood Classic in Birmingham, Ala., on December 11, where Penn will face the defending SEC champion Auburn Tigers (29-4 in '98-99). In addition, because the Pre-Season NIT -- in which the Quakers will face off with Kentucky -- is a tournament exempt from this 27-game limit, Penn will be playing at least 28 contests this winter. This represents the highest number of regular-season games ever for the program. · Penn opens its season in Kentucky's historic Rupp Arena on November 17 at 9 p.m. in the first round of the Pre-Season NIT. This game will be broadcast live on ESPN. The Wildcats (28-9 in '98-99), who made it to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament last March, have once again been predicted to be a top 10 team by a slew of college basketball magazines. But this does not deter the Quakers, who narrowly lost to No. 8 Kansas, 61-56, and defeated No. 6 Temple, 73-70, to start the '98-99 campaign. "I'm looking forward to Kentucky," Jordan said. "I've never played in Lexington. It's the whole mystique of Kentucky and this is little old Penn, so it's like David and Goliath all over again. We're going to go down there and try our best. "We get challenged early and often this year, but if you want to play with the big boys, you've got to travel. You've got to go to Kentucky. You've got to go play at Auburn. That's why we came here. Coach [Fran Dunphy] plays some tough non-conference games and Kentucky's the first one of a long list." The final time to catch the Quakers in action before Kentucky is in a scrimmage against a local club team, the Nantucket Nectars, at 4 p.m. on November 12. · The word out of practice so far this fall is that the squad has remained relatively injury-free. Owens (leg) and freshman forward Andrew Coates (head) missed the Quakers' annual Red and Blue scrimmage on October 23, but both returned for last Saturday's Coaches versus Cancer open practice. Also, forward Josh Sanger -- who went down with an apparently serious injury to his right knee two weeks ago in practice -- will be returning sooner than expected. "In all honesty, if you had come to me after that afternoon and said that the diagnosis is that he has a strained ligament and will be out for two weeks, I would have said that's tremendous," Quakers coach Fran Dunphy said of the surprising current state of Sanger's health. "I thought he was a goner. I thought that he'd either torn his ACL or had a broken leg. It was pretty nasty. "So I think he'll be able to give us minutes versus Kentucky, so we're grateful for that. And yet he will have missed a couple of weeks of practice, which will put him behind, and he was playing pretty well."

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