California State University At Fresno

An attorney for two Fresno State basketball players alleged to have shaved points for friendly gamblers this season said a Times story Wednesday that quoted bookmakers and others on the purported scheme was "trumped-up garbage." "I find it a little bit incredulous that someone would say they now have more than a rumor when what [The Times did is] quote an anonymous illegal bookie and that bookie is saying he or she has a reliable source. Is that a reliable source?"

FRESNO -- The Fresno State Bulldogs logo is a fierce-looking creature, even with a collegiate red sweater with a green "V" on his chest. The "V" represents the Central Valley and its blue-collar workers -- among them hardworking Latinos, many of whom came to the valley to work in the agricultural fields and who have adopted the Bulldogs as their athletic team of choice.

Melvin Johnson, a Fresno State offensive lineman from Lynwood, and his girlfriend, Lisa Kelly, were shot and killed in an apparent domestic dispute on Thursday, police said. Police discovered the bodies of Johnson, 21, and Kelly, 19, at Kelly's mother's Fresno apartment. Police are seeking two juveniles in connection with the case, Lt. Roger Enmark said. Police said one of the juveniles was allegedly Kelly's former boyfriend.

A student at Cal State Fresno fatally shot one man and wounded two others in a dispute over a video game console, police said Tuesday. Despite a cordon of more than 50 Fresno police officers that converged within minutes of the incident late Monday at a student housing complex just off campus, the alleged gunman managed to elude police. Accompanied by an attorney, he surrendered outside a friend's apartment shortly before noon Tuesday.

Derek Mahoney was a Fresno State Bulldog for all of two days when he made his first homesick call from a pay phone outside Coach Jim Sweeney's office. "I don't know two people in Fresno," he told his girlfriend. "There's nothing to do here. It's 115 degrees." "Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I should have gone to UC Irvine to play soccer." He hung up wondering whether things could possibly get worse. At that moment, Sweeney wandered past and answered Mahoney's question.

A federal subpoena demands any city records of pawn shop deals with Fresno State basketball guard Chris Herren, the Fresno Bee reported Friday in a copyright story. The subpoena specifically asks for records of any transactions between Herren and United Loan and Jewelry of Fresno. Herren, the leading scorer for the Bulldogs during a 20-12 season, denied pawning any items or buying anything from United Loan or its owner, Dan Jelladian. "I'm not worried about [the subpoena]," Herren said Thursday.

A screeching howl echoes across the Fresno State softball field, surely the plaintive wail of a soul in mourning. As it turns out, however, it's just Martha Noffsinger "singing" Happy Birthday to a teammate. If you live in Fresno, further explanation is probably not necessary. Those unfamiliar with the team, however, will need to understand that Noffsinger, a senior shortstop from Huntington Beach, is much more than just an offensive catalyst and a defensive key.

The University of Nevada, which has one of the nation's top Division I-AA football programs, will join the Big West Conference beginning in 1992-93, conference and school officials said Thursday. The Wolf Pack, formerly known as Nevada Reno, will replace Fresno State, which announced in June that it will move to the Western Athletic Conference in 1992.

Trent Dilfer was so lightly regarded as a high school quarterback, the few schools that recruited him told him they would probably make him a tight end or a linebacker. But where others saw only a skilled athlete who could blend into a team, Rich Olson, Fresno State's former offensive coordinator, saw the 6-foot-5, 225-pound Dilfer as a leader. Olson uncovered Dilfer at Aptos High in the coastal community of the same name in Santa Cruz County. "I felt like I had a diamond in the rough," he said.

A student at Cal State Fresno fatally shot one man and wounded two others in a dispute over a video game console, police said Tuesday. Despite a cordon of more than 50 Fresno police officers that converged within minutes of the incident late Monday at a student housing complex just off campus, the alleged gunman managed to elude police. Accompanied by an attorney, he surrendered outside a friend's apartment shortly before noon Tuesday.

Pat Hill conducted the interview stretched out on the grass, elbows tucked beneath him, following an upbeat practice in a downbeat season. It is not often you find the 10th-year Fresno State football coach in back-down mode. "That's not me," he said from under his red Bulldogs cap, staring out at a blue Fresno sky.

Paul Pinegar is disarmingly honest. Yes, he says, if not for the torn thumb ligament he suffered during his senior high school season in Woodland, Calif., that caused so many of his passes to flutter, and if those wobbly balls hadn't discouraged the coaches at California and Oregon, he might have been a Pacific 10 Conference quarterback. Instead, Pinegar, a 6-foot-4, 230-pound senior, will lead Fresno State against top-ranked USC Saturday night at the Coliseum.

Cal State Fresno will see reductions in teachers, courses, student enrollment and staff, including layoffs, to deal with an $11-million shortfall in next fiscal year's budget. Enrollment will fall by 900 next academic year, allowing for further faculty reductions. Class sizes will grow as the number of courses is reduced, university President John Welty said. About 200 fewer classes will be offered next year, Welty said.

It was the first day of class in Victor Davis Hanson's final course at Cal State Fresno, where he has taught classical history, Greek and Latin for two decades. The subject, Hanson told the 40 undergraduates, was the 431-404 BC Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. "It's a good time to talk about a war, because we are in a war," he said. For Hanson, ancient reports on the Peloponnesian War are just as relevant today as recent Fox network newscasts on a suicide bombing of a Baghdad hotel.

Fifty-FOUR numbered bottles of Syrah were arrayed in a long line on tables in a classroom at Cal State Fresno, and 16 students poured, sniffed and sipped their way through them. Each bottle represented a different barrel or stainless-steel tank in which the wine had been aging since the students vinified it last fall. Now the fledgling winemakers had a decision to make. Could the Syrah stand on its own? Should it be blended with some Petite Sirah for depth and smoothness?

The men's soccer and women's swimming and diving programs at Fresno State have avoided elimination after athletes raised more than $700,000 to save their teams. Athletic Director Scott Johnson said last month that the department would cut the men's soccer, cross-country and indoor track and field programs and the women's swim and dive programs next semester in an effort to save $557,000.

A 16-year-old boy has surrendered to police investigating the shooting deaths of a Fresno State football star and his girlfriend. The youth was booked into Fresno County Juvenile Hall for investigation of murdering Melvin Johnson, 21, and Lisa Kelly, 19, police said. The Fresno Bee published an interview with the suspect's older brother, Tony Phelps, 26.

Boyd Grant quit basketball, just shy of a nervous breakdown. Well, that may be overly dramatic. But Grant, the best thing to happen to Fresno since someone figured a way to get raisins into a cereal box, was surely on some kind of downward road. Steep? It was just about free-fall. There were the telltale signs, variously grouped under burnout, the catch-all sickness for our age: --He once became confused trying to sign his own name to a check. Oh, yes. Boyd .

University officials have turned over to federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania a videotape from a February academic conference at Cal State Fresno on radical environmentalism. The two-day conference featured former members of groups linked to firebombings and vandalism committed in the name of animal rights and environmental protection.

They call it the House That Tark Built, a $100-million palace that rises out of an old alfalfa field at the edge of Fresno State University. That the patrons of this farming capital have dug deep in their pockets to erect not a concert hall or museum but a Taj Mahal for college basketball says something about the state of culture and entertainment here.