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College basketball briefs

Compiled from Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 30, 2001

Notre Dame sweeps player, coach of year

ST. LOUIS -- Ruth Riley remembers watching Notre Dame in the 1997 Final Four as an eager recruit and wishing she could be there playing.

Thanks in large measure to Riley's contributions, Notre Dame is in another Final Four and this time, she'll get her wish.

Riley received the Associated Press Player of the Year Award in women's basketball as part of a clean sweep for the Irish. Notre Dame's Muffet McGraw was chosen the coach of the year.

The two lead the Irish against Connecticut in the national semifinals tonight.

McGraw already had signed Riley when she took Notre Dame on its '97 Final Four trip to Cincinnati. It made quite an impression on the 6-foot-5 center watching in Macy, Ind.

"It was so exciting to watch knowing that was where I was going to go," Riley said. "You just can't help but wish that you were a year older and be a part of that already. But I think it showed a lot of potential. It showed me that was possible for where I was going."

Riley edged Southwest Missouri State's Jackie Stiles for the player of the year and became the first player from a school other than Connecticut or Tennessee to receive the AP honor, which was started in 1995.

McGraw, in her 14th season at Notre Dame, was an overwhelming choice in the voting by AP member newspapers.

"I just look at my staff and think, I know I've got the best staff in the country," McGraw said. "It's a team award and I think that's the way we look at it. I would not be here if it was not for my staff and my team."

Riley received 30 votes, Stiles 26. Last year's winner, Tennessee's Tamika Catchings, had 19 votes. Catchings injured her knee Jan. 15 and missed the rest of the season.

McGraw received 60 votes for the coaching award. Tennessee's Pat Summitt was next with 12.

McGraw has led Notre Dame to the NCAA Tournament eight of the last 10 years. She's 320-117 at Notre Dame with 12 20-win seasons and is 408-158 in 19 seasons overall, including five at Lehigh. This season's team set a school record for victories.

Men

CINCINNATI: Bob Huggins, who has built the sport into the school's featured athletic program and taken the team to the NCAA Tournament for 10 consecutive years, wants a contract extension.

He asked athletic director Bob Goin if they could discuss extending his coaching contract. They are to talk after the spring recruiting period ends.

Huggins, 47, who is mentioned annually as a possible candidate for coaching jobs in the NBA, said he wants to stay at the Conference USA school He said he is weary of the annual rumors that he might leave, and said they hurt his efforts to recruit players.

Huggins' contract runs through June 30, 2005, with a base salary of $150,000. After next season, he can collect an annuity expected to be worth more than $1-million.

INDIANA: Bob Knight could be back in Bloomington in late 2002 -- if Indiana and Texas Tech keep their date to play at Assembly Hall.

Indiana athletic director Clarence Doninger, who signed the deal in 1999, said he expects the game to be played although no date has been set.

"I don't know why it wouldn't be," Doninger said. "It's scheduled and I don't know any reason why you wouldn't play it."

LAS VEGAS: Charlie Spoonhour is no Rick Pitino, and that's just fine with him.

Hopefully, it will be fine with UNLV fans, too.

Rejected by Pitino, UNLV turned to the 61-year-old Spoonhour to become the third coach of the Runnin' Rebels within the last four months.

Shortly after Spoonhour was given a three-year contract to try to lead the once vaunted program out of the depths of recent mediocrity, he was answering questions about how fans will accept him after UNLV's failed pursuit of Pitino.

Spoonhour, who took Saint Louis to three NCAA Tournament appearances in seven years, was lured out of retirement with a contract that will pay him about $400,000 a year -- about a fourth of what was being offered Pitino to come to the desert.

It didn't take long to convince Spoonhour about the job, considering he is a frequent visitor to Las Vegas and had planned to retire in the area.

Spoonhour, who retired in 1999 after a 15-16 season at Saint Louis, has been doing some regional television commentary since leaving coaching. He said he hadn't planned to return, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to coach at UNLV.

MARQUETTE: Mississippi State center Robert Jackson, who sat out the final six games of the season, is transferring to Marquette in his hometown of Milwaukee.

The 6-foot-8 junior averaged 11.3 points and 7.3 rebounds in 2000-01, but was benched for most of a game Feb. 24 at LSU and did not play again.

Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury did not explain why Jackson was no longer with the team, saying at the time that the 22-year-old did not quit and was not kicked off the team.

Jackson will sit out next season, then is expected to play for coach Tom Crean in 2002-03.

MICHIGAN: Passion, preparation and respect for tradition will be the hallmarks of the program under Tommy Amaker, the new coach pledged in Ann Arbor.

The 35-year-old Amaker agreed to a multiyear contract with Michigan, but the university released no details of the deal that lured him from Seton Hall.

Reports earlier said Amaker would receive a guaranteed contract of $500,000-$600,000 per year and, with incentives, could earn as much as $900,000 per season.

Athletic director Bill Martin said he expected Amaker to sign a contract today. He did say Amaker would be paid slightly more than Brian Ellerbe, who was fired two weeks ago after Michigan posted its third consecutive losing season.

NEW ORLEANS: Monte Towe, the little man who helped North Carolina State win a national title more than a quarter-century ago, was hired as coach. Towe, listed at 5 feet 7 when he played two seasons of pro basketball in Denver in the 1970s, coached at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville the past two seasons. The 47-year-old Towe had been an assistant at North Carolina State, Florida and North Carolina-Asheville.

OHIO: Tim O'Shea, who's never been a college head coach, was hired and charged with ending the school's six-year postseason hiatus.

O'Shea, an assistant at Boston College the past four seasons, agreed to seven-year contract with a base salary $150,000 and other incentives that would make the deal worth $250,000 a year.

PURDUE: Gene Keady, whose name invariably is mentioned whenever a major-college coaching vacancy occurs, received a two-year contract extension through the 2004-05 season.

The contract for Keady, the longest-serving Big Ten basketball coach and the winningest coach in Purdue history, was to expire after the 2002-03 season. No terms were disclosed.

WISCONSIN: Bo Ryan was Plan B for the coaching job after Utah's Rick Majerus turned it down.

"I don't know if I was my wife's first choice, either," Ryan said. "But we've had a great marriage."

Ryan was hired as coach, although he won't sign his contract until the Board of Regents meets next month.

Terms won't be made public until then, but his compensation package is expected to be about $2-million over five years, double what he was making at Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

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