Off the wire
Posted on Friday, March 28, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Sports/221068/
BASEBALL SEC coach resigns Mississippi State’s Ron Polk, the SEC’s winningest baseball coach, has resigned. Athletic Director Larry Templeton said in a news release that Polk’s resignation would take effect at the end of the season. Polk is in his 29 th season as coach at Mississippi State and in the 35 th overall. The Bulldogs are 10-13, 1-5 in the SEC. He ranks among the nation’s top 10 in career victories with 1, 360 and has the fifth-most victories among active coaches. Polk guided the Bulldogs to the College World Series last season and has taken 23 of 34 teams to NCAA regional play, including five consecutive. Polk has never had a losing season in two stops at Mississippi State and stints at Georgia and Georgia Southern. He appeared as an assistant or head coach at the College World Series in five decades and guided teams to eight trips to Omaha, Neb., though he has never won a national title. He is 69-53 in the postseason and 7-16 in the Series.
FOOTBALL Player found dead Heath Benedict, 24, a two-time Little All-American offensive lineman from Newberry College in South Carolina, was found dead Wednesday evening on a couch in his home in Jacksonville, Fla. Jacksonville police said no foul play is suspected in the death of Benedict, a 6-6, 326-pounder who finished his senior season in the fall and left school to train for next month’s NFL Draft. He was nine hours short of a business degree. Benedict took part in the Senior Bowl in January, the first NCAA Division II player to do so since 2004, and was invited to last month’s NFL Combine. Benedict, who redshirted at Tennessee in 2002 before moving to Newberry, was a native of the Netherlands. He played high school football at the Peddie School in Hightstown, N. J. Jacksonville police spokesman Ken Jefferson said Benedict’s body was taken to the medical examiner’s office to determine the cause of his death.
Former St. Louis Rams defensive lineman Tyoka Jackson was ordered by a federal jury to pay a flight attendant $ 3, 000 for pushing him on a plane. Jurors on Wednesday ordered Jackson to pay Northwest Airlines attendant Gary Rihn to cover medical expenses for the 2005 incident. Rihn claimed Jackson shoved him across an aisle and into another passenger over the proper stowing of a laptop bag. Jackson claimed he acted only after Rihn poked and prodded him. LSU quarterback Ryan Perrilloux is off suspension but still cannot practice with the team. LSU spokesman Michael Bonnette said there is no timetable for Perrilloux, who finished last season as the expected heir apparent to the starting job, to return to the field. LSU Coach Les Miles suspended Perrilloux indefinitely in February, shortly before spring practices began, for unspecified team violations. Perrilloux’s former high school coach, who remains close to the quarterback and his family, has said Perrilloux missed a mandatory team meeting, then missed classes to attend his father’s funeral without notifying coaches. In May 2007 he was suspended from the team indefinitely after he was cited for trying to illegally get on a riverboat casino in Baton Rouge by using his older brother’s driver’s license. He was reinstated in August. In October, the week before the Alabama game, he was barred from practice for his role in a nightclub brawl.
SOFTBALL U. S. streaks ends at 185 The mighty U. S. Olympic softball team struck out. Virginia Tech’s Angela Tincher pitched a no-hitter in a 1-0 victory over the three-time defending gold medalists Wednesday night, ending the U. S. team’s 185-game winning streak in pre-Olympic exhibitions. It was the American team’s first loss in a pre-Olympic exhibition since May 3, 1996. During that span, the U. S. team outscored opponents 1, 475-24. Tincher struck out 10 and allowed one base runner on a one-out walk to Kelly Kretschman in the second inning. The Hokies scored in the second inning off Jennie Finch, one of 12 players on the U. S. squad that won gold at the 2004 Athens (Greece ) Games. Kelsey Hoffman led off with a double and was replaced by pinch runner Anna Zitt, who moved to third on Finch’s illegal pitch. Caroline Stolle’s two-out bloop single scored Zitt.
TENNIS Davis Cup team named U. S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe reeled off the same four names for a record 10 th consecutive time. Andy Roddick and James Blake will play singles, and twins Bob and Mike Bryan doubles in the quarterfinal with France in Winston-Salem, N. C., on April 11-13. Roddick, Blake and the Bryans led the United States to its first Davis Cup title in 12 years in 2007. The foursome beat Austria 4-1 in the first round of this year’s competition in February. The United States and France have split 14 meetings. France won the last time they met, in the 2002 semifinals in Paris. Roddick will make his 21 st Davis Cup appearance, nine shy of John McEnroe’s American record. Andre Agassi played in 22 Davis Cup events, Pete Sampras 16 and Jimmy Connors seven. Marat Safin hit another low when he lost to American qualifier Bobby Reynolds 7-6 (3 ), 4-6, 7-6 (5 ) in the first round of the Sony Ericsson Open in Key Biscayne, Fla. Safin, a two-time Grand Slam champion, fell to 1-5 in 2008. The 28-year-old Russian hasn’t won a title since the 2005 Australian Open, and his ranking has fallen from 56 th to 90 th since the start of the year. Safin finished with 46 unforced errors, 12 more than Reynolds. Reynolds, ranked 104 th, snapped a four-match losing streak. Also eliminated was Mardy Fish, who beat world No. 1 Roger Federer en route to a runner-up finish last week at Indian Wells, Calif. Arnaud Clement caught Fish on the rebound and won 6-3, 6-3.
GOLF Jordan to assist Michael Jordan, a five-time NBA MVP who won six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls, will help keep the U. S. team motivated at the 2009 Presidents Cup golf matches, Coach Fred Couples said. “Jordan I’ve talked to, and he is in,” Couples said. “He’s one of the best athletes of all time. He is someone that if I was going to make a team and someone said Michael Jordan might be around, my eyes would light up.” Couples replaced Jack Nicklaus last month as captain of the U. S. Presidents Cup team, which won in Canada last year and in Virginia in 2005. The 2009 competition is scheduled to be played Oct. 8-11 at Harding Park Golf Club in San Francisco. Couples also introduced Jay Haas as his official captain’s assistant. Couples and Haas, the 2006-2007 Champions Tour Player of the Year, represented the United States at the first Presidents Cup in 1994. While Haas will help with strategic and organizational aspects of running next year’s team, Couples said Jordan’s role would be more motivational.
BASKETBALL Mercer names coach Former Arkansas Aeros Coach Bob Hoffman became men’s basketball coach at Mercer. Hoffman has a 400-171 record at Texas-Pan American and Oklahoma Baptist, his alma mater. He also guided the American Basketball Association’s Aeros to a 25-2 record in 2006-2007 and had a 17-29 mark with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, an NBA Development League franchise. He also did a three-year stint with the Southern Nazarene women’s team, compiling an 88-16 record and capturing the 1989 NAIA national title in his second season. He succeeded Mark Slonaker, whose contract was not renewed after going 11-19 this season and 6-10 in the Atlantic Sun Conference. Slonaker coached the Bears for 11 seasons beginning in 1997, and had a 128-189 record. Oklahoma Coach Jeff Capel, 33, agreed to terms of a contract extension amid speculation that he would leave to take a job closer to home at South Carolina. The deal would keep Capel, who took Oklahoma to the NCAA Tournament in his second season, at the school through the 2013-2014 season. Athletic Director Joe Castiglione said Capel’s contract calls for the coach to be paid $ 1, 050, 000 per year plus incentives. The contract includes a stay bonus of $ 100, 000 per year, payable at the conclusion of six years. After receiving a $ 100, 000 raise last year, Capel had been making $ 750, 000 annually on a contract that ran through June 30, 2012. He is 39-27 in two seasons. SWIMMING Two world records set Eamon Sullivan broke the 50-meter freestyle world record and Olympic teammate Libby Trickett did the same over 100 meters at the Australian Swimming Championships in Sydney. Sullivan finished in 21. 41 seconds to break the mark of 21. 50 set by France’s Alain Bernard at the European championships last weekend. Trickett, formerly Libby Lenton and competing for the first time under her married name, finished in 52. 88 to better the mark of 53. 30 set by Germany’s Britta Steffen in 2006.
CYCLING British ride high
Britain broke two world records and completed a gold-medal sweep in the World Track Cycling Championships in Manchester, England. The men set a team pursuit record and the women’s team broke the sprint mark. Former rower Rebecca Romero became a two-sport champion when she emerged victorious in the individual pursuit for Britain’s fourth gold in the velodrome. Bradley Wiggins, Paul Manning, Geraint Thomas and Edward Clancy powered ahead of Denmark to finish in 3 minutes, 56. 322 seconds in the 4-kilometer pursuit final. The Danes finished in 3: 59. 381. Victoria Pendleton and Shanaze Reade successfully defended their title in the sprint in 33. 661, after setting a world record of 33. 186 in qualifying. Two years after transferring from boat to bicycle, Romero beat two-time world champion Sarah Hammer by almost seven seconds. Romero clocked 3: 30. 501 to end the American’s supremacy in the individual pursuit and exact revenge after last year’s title defeat.