the 2007 NBA Draft by the Utah Jazz. Rice named former Cal Bears head coach Ben Braun as head basketball coach to succeed Willis Wilson, fired after Rice finished the 2007–2008 season with a winless (0–16) conference record and overall record of 3–27. Rice's mascot is Sammy the Owl. In previous decades, the university kept several live owls on campus in front of Lovett College, but this practice has been discontinued, due to public concern regarding animal welfare. Rice also has a 12-member coed cheerleading squad and a coed dance team, both of which perform at football and basketball games throughout the year. Notable people , Rice has graduated 98 classes of students consisting of 51,961 living alumni. Over 100 students at Rice have been Fulbright Scholars, 25 Marshall Scholars, 25 Mellon Fellows, 12 Rhodes Scholars, 6 Udall Scholars, and 65 Watson Fellows, among several other honors and awards. Rice's distinguished faculty and alumni consists of five Nobel laureates, a Turing Award winner, two Pulitzer Prize award winners, six Fulbright Scholars, 29 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Recipients, 14 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1 Abel Prize winner, 3 members of the American Philosophical Society, 35 Guggenheim Fellowships, 12 members of the National Academy of Engineering, 2 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 10 members of the National Academy of Sciences, five fellows of the National Humanities Center, and 86 fellows of the National Science Foundation. In science and technology, Rice alumni include 14 NASA astronauts; Robert Curl, Nobel laureate discoverer of fullerene; Robert Woodrow Wilson, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation; David Eagleman, celebrity neuroscientist and NYT bestselling author; and NASA former Apollo 11 and 13 warning systems engineer and motivational speaker Jerry Woodfill. In business and entrepreneurship, Rice alumni include: Thomas H. Cruikshank, the former CEO of Halliburton John Doerr, billionaire and venture capitalist Howard Hughes, film producer and aviator Fred C. Koch, chemical engineer and entrepreneur Elizabeth Avellán, co-founder of Troublemaker Studios Tim and Karrie League, founders of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and Drafthouse Films Brian Armstrong, founder and CEO of Coinbase Burt McMurtry, Silicon Valley venture capitalist In government and politics, Rice alumni include: Alberto Gonzales, former Attorney General Charles Duncan, former Secretary of Energy William P. Hobby, Jr., former lieutenant governor of Texas John Kline, Member of the House of Representatives George