Janet Harris

Christine Aceves Hansbrough watched quietly for 10 years as the man she believes killed her son at a Highland Park party became famous. Mario Rocha was found guilty of the Feb. 16, 1996, murder of Hansbrough's son, Martin Aceves, but the conviction was overturned, and Catholic and Hollywood figures have proclaimed his innocence. Now, as a judge today considers releasing Rocha on bail, Hansbrough has decided to break her silence. "All I want is another trial.

Mario Rocha spent his first night out of prison lying on a blanket on the roof of his cousin's El Sereno garage, reading by flashlight -- Luis Rodriguez's gang memoir "Always Running" and the writing handbook "The Elements of Style," by William Strunk and E.B. White. Just a boy of 16 when he was locked up 10 years ago, Rocha, now 27, fell asleep savoring the starlit sky and awoke Friday to face the limelight.

Marianne Stanley, women's basketball coach at Old Dominion University, recalled with great agony her experience of having to watch last year's NCAA women's Final Four from the bleachers in Pauley Pavilion. It was only the second time since Stanley became the Lady Monarchs' coach in 1977 that her team had not reached the national semifinals, and that feeling alone was enough incentive to get her back to the Final Four this season.

The Cal State Long Beach women's basketball team accomplished all the goals that Coach Joan Bonvicini set for the 1984-85 regular season by winning the Detroit Invitational and Long Beach Dial tournaments and the Western Collegiate Athletic Assn. championship. But those achievements won't seem as significant to Bonvicini unless the 49ers can obtain what she calls "the ultimate goal."

A half hour before the University of Georgia women's basketball team was to play USC Sunday, the Bulldog cheerleaders passed out thousands of small, circular fans. On one side was a picture of Trojan star Cheryl Miller with a red, ghostbuster-like line drawn through her face. The print on the Budweiser-sponsored promotion read: "It's NEVER Miller time at Georgia." There is some truth to advertising.

Customers pulling into Steve's Detailing are greeted by a young woman they often mistake for the receptionist. But minutes after meeting with owner Jana Fair, even the most finicky car nut is impressed by her knowledge of cleaning and "detailing" cars. "Sometimes there is an advantage to being a woman in a man's field," said Fair, who works in the parking garage of the First Interstate Bank building in Hollywood. "But the bottom line is: You produce or you don't survive."

It didn't matter that the Cal State Long Beach women's basketball team was riding a crest of confidence heading into Saturday's NCAA West Regional final against Georgia. It didn't matter that, in Coach Joan Bonvicini's opinion, this year's edition of the 49ers was more determined to reach the Final Four than any of her past teams. And it didn't matter that the third-ranked 49ers, playing in UCLA's Pauley Pavilion, had more fan support than the eighth-ranked Bulldogs.

Former UC Berkeley zoology department Chairman Richard Marshall Eakin worried that his basic lecture course in general biology could put his students to sleep. Stamens and pistils and bacilli and blood circulation and the migration of beetles, he knew, did not top collegians' list of fascinating topics. Absenteeism ran rampant. So one day in 1970, he walked into his Zoology 10 class dressed in the Elizabethan garb of William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of blood.

By following Edward Humes' footsteps through the Los Angeles County juvenile courts and jails, we can time travel back to the 19th century. That's the path Humes takes us on in his powerful new book, "No Matter How Loud I Shout," about a year in the life of a "broken, battered, outgunned" L.A. County juvenile justice system. It is a system, he says, that is returning to older, crueler times when children were imprisoned with adults and even executed.

The sport may be called women's college basketball, but there is nothing ladylike about the way Old Dominion University plays the game. The Lady Monarchs, thanks to their relentless pounding on the offensive backboard, completely outmuscled Georgia Sunday to claim a 70-65 victory and the NCAA championship in front of 7,597 fans in the Frank Erwin Special Events Center. Old Dominion outrebounded Georgia, 57-30, with a 30-8 advantage on the offensive boards.