The Associated Press

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - The Notre Dame men's basketball team received a surprise when it flew home from Providence, R.I., and landed - it wasn't in South Bend.

Instead of landing at South Bend Regional Airport, the team's charter plane landed about 12 miles away at Elkhart Municipal Airport.

Irish coach Mike Brey said he was unaware the Irish were not in South Bend until the Rev. Peter Jarret, who accompanied the team on the trip, looked outside.

"Father says, 'This does not look like South Bend.' And it was not," Brey said. "I was just glad it wasn't Cedar Rapids."

The Irish landed in Elkhart about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday after beating Providence 71-65 on Tuesday night. The flight then continued to South Bend.

The university was still trying to determine Thursday why the airplane landed at the wrong airport.

"We're still looking into the incident and still trying to gather facts," university spokesman Dennis Brown said. "We can't say much until we know exactly what took place."

Telephone messages seeking comment were left Thursday by The Associated Press at Charter Search of Boston, the company that organized the flight.

The towers at both airports were closed at the time the plane landed. But pilots are able to land at closed airports by using radios to activate runway lights.

South Bend airport director John Schalliol and Elkhart airport director Andrew Maksymovitch were unaware of what had happened until contacted Thursday by a reporter.

ALABAMA: No. 1 with a bullet, No. 15 with a whimper. Alabama (12-4, 2-3 Southeastern Conference) has been in a rankings freefall since topping the rankings for the first time Dec. 23, losing three of its last four games and still seeking its first road win.

Coach Mark Gottfried is far from declaring his team's "complete doom" and figures the 15th-ranked Crimson Tide's problems are fixable. The defending SEC champions need to fix them soon, with No. 8 Kentucky (14-3, 4-0) visiting Saturday night.

"More than anything, we seem to hurt ourselves, and I think we're just kind of creating more problems for ourselves, whether it's turnovers, missed opportunities, missed foul shots or easy shots," Gottfried said Thursday.

The Tide's two-week run at No. 1 seems like a distant memory, and there are two clear reasons for the slide: continued road woes and offensive problems.

Alabama ranks near the bottom in virtually every league offensive statistic, scoring just 67 points a game.

The Tide are 0-4 this season on the opponent's home court, including losses to unranked Utah (51-49) and Mississippi (76-57) and to No. 24 Auburn (77-68). That's nothing new: Alabama is 8-35 on the road during Gottfried's four-plus seasons.

DUKE: Duke plans to honor Jay Williams by retiring the former All-American's No. 22 jersey next month.

Duke will retire Williams' jersey Feb. 5, the night the Blue Devils host rival North Carolina. He will be the 11th Blue Devils player to have his jersey retired, the most recent being Shane Battier two years ago.

Williams was a two-time All-American during his three-year career at Duke, leading the Blue Devils to the 2001 NCAA championship and winning national player of the year honors the next season.

He was the No. 2 pick in the draft and plays for the Chicago Bulls.

Williams earned his sociology degree in three years.