DALLAS -- American Airlines Flight 1319 arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport at 1:58 p.m. yesterday, carrying some pretty unwelcome guests to the state of Texas.
The 15th-seeded Penn men's basketball team arrived on time -- actually five minutes early --and has begun preparations to face No. 2-seed Texas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament tomorrow night.
Last night, the Quakers held practice at a high school in Dallas, and today the team will have its NCAA-mandated open practice at the American Airlines Center, the home of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and the site of the first-round game.
But first, coach Fran Dunphy will take his team to the site of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, which took place here in November 1963. Dunphy also had the team visit Pearl Harbor when the Quakers made their winter-break trip to visit Hawaii and BYU-Hawaii.
Number one fan?
The cheerleading squad arrives in Dallas today, but the Quakers will be without one of their best cheerleaders when they take the court tomorrow.
University president Amy Gutmann, who has been known to come to more than a fair share of home games, will not be at the American Airlines Center this weekend.
Gutmann is in Asia this week doing work to spread Penn's name abroad.
Gutmann attended multiple games this year, getting an exuberant reaction from the Red and Blue Crew and often going into the student section to slap hands with the Penn fans.
Last year, when the Quakers lost to Boston College in the first round of the Tournament, Gutmann stayed back at Penn. Faculty and students can say what they will about Gutmann, but Penn rarely loses when she is in the house and has made the NCAA Tournament in both years of her tenure.
This week in steals
As the season winds down for the Quakers, junior guard Ibrahim Jaaber is in a tie for second place in the nation in steals.
Jaaber and East Tennessee State's Tim Smith are neck-and-neck, with 3.4 takeaways per game. Usually this would involve rounded numbers, but the two are in fact in a literal deadlock, each with 95 steals through 28 games this season. They come a hair shy of Obie Trotter of Alabama A&M;, who grabs 3.44 steals per game.
Temple guard and Philadelphia native Mardy Collins is in ninth with 2.8 per game but was still some 20 steals away from catching Jaaber, Smith and Trotter at the top.
After abusing young Ivy point guards, Jaaber led the nation for a short period of time last month but has since dropped back to second.
The junior had a five-game stretch where he totaled 23 steals (4.6 per game), including six off of Harvard freshman Drew Housman. Jaaber got as high as 3.5 per game while leading the nation, but he cooled off over the next five games to end the season, averaging less than three per game in those contests.
Jaaber would need seven steals against the Longhorns tomorrow night to catch Smith, whose season is finished.
And if not, he could always make up the difference in Penn's second round game against California or North Carolina State.
All it would take is the biggest upset in Penn history.
