Basketball

Bob Cantu, a longtime USC basketball assistant who served as interim coach after Kevin O'Neill was fired in January, will not be retained as part of new Coach Andy Enfield's staff, the school announced. Cantu had been at USC since 2001 and served under four coaches. “I want to thank everyone I worked with at USC the past 12 years,” Cantu said in a statement posted on USC's website. “It was a great experience.  We had some memorable moments. I look forward to following the future success of the program.” Jason Hart, a Pepperdine assistant who played high school basketball in the Southland and also at Syracuse and in the NBA, will join the USC staff, Pepperdine Coach Marty Wilson announced via Twitter.

Vin Scully is luring us back to the Dodgers with wonderful old stories and the promise of a new season, and the Angels will introduce new acquisition Josh Hamilton to their home fans Tuesday, but winter sports haven't relaxed their hold on us just yet. Sunday is rivalry day in Southern California, a gift from the schedule makers of the NBA and the NHL. It's enough to keep us indoors when summer sports are trying to draw us out into the sunshine....

Rank; Team (Division, Record) 1. MATER DEI (SS-1AA, 34-2) SS Division 1AA runner-up, Open Division State champion (2) 2. ETIWANDA (SS-1AA, 28-3) SS Division 1AA champion, Open Division SoCal runner-up (6) 3. LONG BEACH POLY (SS-1AA, 28-4) SS Division 1AA semifinalist, Open Division SoCal semifinalist (3) 4. ST. JOHN BOSCO (SS-3A, 24-7) SS Division 3A champion, Open Division SoCal quarterfinalist (8) 5. PACIFIC HILLS (SS-4A, 29-4) SS Division 4A champion, Division IV State champion (13)

Two weeks before official practice started in November, L.A. Windward first-year girls' basketball Coach Vanessa Nygaard gave birth to twins. Talk about time-management issues. Nygaard not only balanced being a new mother with her coaching duties, she managed to guide the Wildcats to 32 consecutive victories and a Southern Section Division 4AA championship. She has been named the Southern California coach of the year in girls' basketball by The Times. A former WNBA player, Nygaard had wanted to be a head coach for years and delivered for the Wildcats, whose only loss was to Oakland Bishop O'Dowd in the CIF state championship Open Division final.

It appears in the aftermath of Mike Rice getting fired as Rutgers basketball coach for his abusive behavior toward players and Tim Pernetti being subsequently forced to resign as athletic director over the fiasco, that university President Robert Barchi is really the one to blame for this debacle. When Barchi announced Friday during a news conference that Pernetti was resigning by mutual agreement -- that's a covert way of saying someone must take the blame -- the president clearly implicated himself as a culprit in the scandal.

How is it that a coach entrusted with the well-being and development of a team of exceptional athletes could stoop to abusing them the way fired Rutgers men's basketball Mike Rice did? Certainly, such abuse is not unprecedented (see: Bobby Knight, Woody Hayes ). But Rice was a relatively new coach at Rutgers, and certainly not one in whom Rutgers had the kind of deep institutional investment that an Indiana University had in Knight or an Ohio State had in Hayes.

Michigan point guard Trey Burke, who helped the Wolverines reach the Final Four for the first time since 1993, and Miami's Jim Larranaga have been selected the Associated Press' player and coach of the year. Burke garnered 31 of 65 votes from the same media panel that selects the weekly top 25. He is the first Michigan player since Cazzie Russell in 1966 to win player of the year. The 6-foot sophomore averaged 19.2 points, 6.7 assists and 3.1 rebounds while often playing with four freshmen.