University Of San Francisco

It would be nice after all this time if \o7something\f7 could have been worked out to bring Bill Russell back into the fold at the University of San Francisco. It would be nice if grown men would act like grown men. But nearly 50 years have passed since the summer of 1957, when the spindly center, who led San Francisco to consecutive NCAA basketball championships in 1955 and 1956, returned to campus to complete work on his degree.

Eddie Sutton will coach his first game for the University of San Francisco tonight at Weber State, but he has yet to set foot on campus, and met his team for the first time Thursday in Utah. "I have seen pictures of the campus," said Sutton, 71, the former Oklahoma State coach who has come out of retirement to try to satisfy his urge to coach and get the two wins standing between him and 800. "I'm looking forward to getting a tour."

A former dean at the University of San Francisco's School of Education pleaded guilty Tuesday to a child pornography charge under a deal with prosecutors that probably will send him to prison for more than five years. William T. Garner, 66, of San Francisco acknowledged in the plea agreement, reached last month, that he knowingly possessed more than 15,000 images of minors engaged in sexually explicit acts, federal prosecutors said.

Once, they were just young boys with big dreams. John Cox wasn't a high-scoring guard at the University of San Francisco about to forge his professional career. And Kobe Bryant was merely his cousin. Back then those summers in and around Philadelphia were mostly about growing up and being together. "We'd hang out like any cousins would," Cox said. "We did a little bit of everything from baseball and swimming to playing basketball. We'd go to the movies." Basketball was different.

Alfred Fromm, 93, a winemaker and philanthropist who founded the Wine Museum of San Francisco. Born in Kitzingen, Germany, Fromm was a fourth-generation winemaker at Bingen on the Rhine. When he fled the Nazis and came to the United States, he joined Franz W. Sichel to found Fromm & Sichel Inc., distributor of Christian Bros. wine and brandy. In the 1950s, Fromm took over the Paul Masson vineyards in Saratoga, Calif.

Phil Mathews, basketball coach at University of San Francisco, and Utah assistant Dony Daniels will meet in the first round of the NCAA tournament Thursday, and it's not the first time they've been involved in a special event together. Each coach served as the best man at the other's wedding. Daniels recruited Brandon Jessie for Utah in 1994 when the forward played for Mathews at Ventura College.

Here's this week's theme for the University of San Francisco women's basketball team, which plays USC today in the first round of the NCAA tournament: Here comes the Judge. They get the Judge, also known as Tina Thompson, and four teammates perched on her broad shoulders. USC, third-place finisher in the Pacific 10 Conference, takes on the West Coast Conference champion in a Mideast Regional game, the winner moving on to play the Florida-Florida International winner Monday.

USC (19-8) vs. San Francisco (25-5) Mideast Regional, Gainesville, Fla. Saturday, Noon * USC AT A GLANCE: Established itself as a top Pacific 10 team during late January, in a five-game win streak that began with a surprisingly lopsided, 87-72 victory at Arizona. The Trojans defeated Arizona State, UCLA and both Oregons. USC was only 3-3 down the stretch, but the midseason streak carried it into the tournament * UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO: Making its third consecutive tournament trip.

Gerald Zimmerman, the one they call Pops, took the plunge at the risk of being called nuts. The same with Damian Cantrell, Jamal Cobbs, Hakeem Ward and Charles Woodard. All had seen, lived, felt the fiery coaching style of Philip Mathews at Ventura College. Yet they wanted to play basketball again for the man, this time at the University of San Francisco. To some, that kind of thinking would require time with a shrink. But these guys are neither crazy nor foolish.