Basketball Team

Steve Lavin underwent nearly seven hours of surgery for prostate cancer in October, knowing that the college basketball season was just around the corner but counting on his energetic ways to carry him to a recovery full enough that he could coach this season. He wanted to be on the court as St. John's tried to build on the momentum it achieved last year when the Red Storm qualified for the NCAA tournament after becoming perhaps the biggest surprise of the Big East Conference season.

He's a one-named wonder in the women's basketball universe, tantamount to Pele, Magic and Michael in their domains. Geno doesn't need the last part of his name for identifying purposes, but it's Auriemma, for the record. These days, only one thing still pushes him outside his comfort zone. "I have never felt more pressure in my life than coaching an Olympic gold-medal game for the U.S.," said Auriemma, who was an assistant coach in 2000 when the Americans won gold and is charged with heading the 2012 Olympic women's team.

Bob Costas, the television sports analyst widely considered one of the best in the country, was no different from many athletes, sports fans and basketball experts 20 years ago Monday when Magic Johnson held a news conference to tell the world he was HIV-positive. "I was stunned," Costas said, "and my immediate thought was, knowing what we thought we knew about HIV, we would watch Magic Johnson die a public death, that he would waste away. This was what we thought we understood about the virus, that his days were numbered.

No. 12 Philadelphia Eagles: DT Fletcher Cox, Mississippi State - - At 6-4, 295, Cox is lighter than most elite defensive tackles and has very good range. He blocked five kicks in college. He has great feet, something that was evident in high school when he played power forward on the basketball team and was a member of the 4x100 relay team in track. Comment: The Eagles have their ends, and now they've added a key piece to the interior of their defensive line. Philly had long targeted this pick.

Sheila Nelson spoke to Ben Howland on Friday morning, and it wasn't an easy telephone conversation. The UCLA basketball coach told Nelson that her son Reeves Nelson had been dismissed from the Bruins basketball team. "Reeves behaved poorly," Sheila Nelson said later in the day during a telephone conversation. "He admits to that and he's taking full responsibility for his actions. He still wants to be on the team. But quite frankly, I love my son, but he just turned 20 and he's been a boy in a man's body since he was 14 and there are things he needs to work on, and he will work on them.

KATIN REINHARDT, SANTA ANA MATER DEI, SENIOR The 6-foot-5 Reinhardt, a Nevada Las Vegas signee, averaged 18.6 points and was a prolific shooter from three-point range for the Monarchs. XAVIER JOHNSON, MATER DEI, SENIOR Consistency was the strength of the 6-7 Colorado-bound Johnson, who averaged 18.4 points and 9.3 rebounds for the Division I state champion 34-2 Monarchs. MARQUEZE COLEMAN, MISSION HILLS ALEMANY, SENIOR The 6-4 senior who signed with Nevada averaged 21.1 points and 7.0 rebounds.

The chant suddenly engulfs the nearly empty Galen Center on a Thursday night, loudly, laughingly, a band of outsiders prodding at the open wound of a proud university. The chant is being sung by dozens of Colorado fans, some of whom traveled more than 1,000 miles to be here. The chant echoes off seats left vacant by USC students who couldn't be bothered to cross the street. "Let's go Buff-a-loes … let's go Buff-a-loes …" Nobody tries to drown it out with a Trojans cheer.

Los Angeles City Section basketball has produced the likes of NBA players Jordan Farmar (Taft), Trevor Ariza (Westchester) and Craig Smith (Fairfax) in recent years, but the absence of a bona fide standout player and team this season has made it a guessing game as to which schools might end up playing for the Division I title in March. That made Saturday's matchup between longtime powers Taft and Fairfax in a nonleague game all the more important in trying to bring some clarity to the pecking order.

USC Coach Stan Morrison will introduce his 1985-86 basketball team to the public tonight in an intrasquad game at the Harold Hutton Sports Center on the Chapman College campus. Tom Lewis, Rich Grande, Eric Gathers and Greg Kimble are among the highly recruited newcomers who'll play in the game that begins at 8 p.m. Morrison has two returning starters, guard Larry Friend and forward Derrick Dowell, from last season's team that shared the Pacific 10 championship with Washington.

They got name. Moriah Johnson's father, Marques, was a five-time NBA All-Star and former national college player of the year at UCLA. Geoffrey Allen's dad, Lucius, won three national college championships with the Bruins and spent three of his 10 NBA seasons with the Lakers. They got fame. Moriah has top billing on "Baldwin Hills," a highly rated reality show on Black Entertainment Television that centers on black youths in Los Angeles.

Murray Rose Swimmer won Olympic gold medals Murray Rose, 73, a four-time Olympic gold medal swimmer from Australia who also competed at USC while studying acting in the late '50s, died Sunday in Sydney of leukemia, Swimming Australia said. Rose became a national hero at 17 after winning three gold medals at the 1956 Melbourne Games, in the 400- and 1,500-meter freestyle events and the 4x200-meter freestyle relay. Four years later, in Rome, he won the 400 freestyle, took silver in the 1,500 freestyle and bronze in the 4x200 freestyle relay.

Shabazz Muhammad, who signed with UCLA on Wednesday, has sat atop the high school basketball world all season. Where he falls in his family's pecking order is still to be determined. Muhammad, a 6-foot-6 forward from Las Vegas Bishop Gorman, has plenty of in-house competition. There is his mother, Faye Muhammad, who was a basketball and track star at Long Beach State. There is his father, Ron Holmes, who was a four-year starter at USC. There is his aunt, Robin Holmes, who was a four-year starter at Cal State Fullerton.

The Dallas Mavericks and Lamar Odom have parted ways. The NBA's reigning sixth man of the year and the defending NBA champions who are trying to make sure they get back to the playoffs made it clear Monday that their partnership is over after an underwhelming 50-game stint. "We've got to be able to look down that bench and count on folks to be consistent," General Manager Donnie Nelson said. "Unfortunately, with him in his state right now, he's just not capable of doing that.

KATIN REINHARDT, SANTA ANA MATER DEI, SENIOR The 6-foot-5 Reinhardt, a Nevada Las Vegas signee, averaged 18.6 points and was a prolific shooter from three-point range for the Monarchs. XAVIER JOHNSON, MATER DEI, SENIOR Consistency was the strength of the 6-7 Colorado-bound Johnson, who averaged 18.4 points and 9.3 rebounds for the Division I state champion 34-2 Monarchs. MARQUEZE COLEMAN, MISSION HILLS ALEMANY, SENIOR The 6-4 senior who signed with Nevada averaged 21.1 points and 7.0 rebounds.

I am from Louisville. I am not from Kentucky. My birth certificate is clear, but my heart contradicts, and will pound appropriately Saturday during the most deeply personal of basketball games. I am Louisville. I am not Kentucky. The two schools play in an NCAA national semifinal basketball game that, to the rest of the nation, might seem like little more than an odd rivalry between two campuses separated by about 75 miles of the same backwoods state. Yet for those who have lived there, it is about a cultural divide that can define a life.

Few players have benefited more from the state basketball playoffs than Marquis Salmon, a 6-foot-7 senior at Sun Valley Village Christian. When the Crusaders' season was extended by an at-large berth to the Division V playoffs, Salmon got a second chance to impress college recruiters. "He's been phenomenal these last four weeks," Coach Jon Shaw said. "He's impacted the team at both ends of the floor. " In a Southern California Regional semifinal upset, the Crusaders knocked off top-seeded Playa del Rey St. Bernard, 75-65, behind Salmon's 29 points.

It's beginning to look like he hoped it would from the start. The intense defense, consistent shooting, unselfish play, clutch shots--the Long Beach State men's basketball team is doing it all. It took awhile, but Long Beach State Coach Seth Greenberg believes this bunch has turned a corner. A two-game trip to Northern California inspired Greenberg's excitement about the 49ers . . . finally. "For the first time, we really played together," Greenberg said.

Mater Dei High Coach Kevin Kiernan has one concern heading into the girls' basketball season. Even though he returns almost every player from a team that last season won Southern Section 2A and state championships and was ranked best in the nation, he does have one unusual disadvantage. His players didn't play together much as a team over the summer. That's because three of his starters made the United States under-17 team that won a gold medal in France in July. OK, so maybe that situation doesn't inspire loads of sympathy.

After all the UCLA men's basketball team has been through this season, now comes this: The Bruins were left out of the NIT, the tournament in which 32 teams that didn't make the cut for the 68-squad NCAA tournament finish out their seasons. It was a disappointing year for the Bruins, who were a preseason pick to win the Pac-12. But they finished tied for fifth in the conference, the only team in the top seven not to make either tournament. Their 19-14 record gave them the same number or more wins than six NIT teams and the same number or fewer losses than four NIT teams.