Saturday, April 21, 2007
The Georgetown men's basketball program lost its second assistant coach yesterday when Sydney Johnson was named Princeton's new head coach. Johnson, a three-time captain for the Tigers, replaces Joe Scott, who resigned on March 20 to become the head coach at the University of Denver.
"I had a lot of excitement and nervous energy when I accepted the position," Johnson said in a statement released by Princeton. "But that has quickly turned into a feeling of relaxation of knowing that this is the right place to be."
Johnson, 32, was the 1997 Ivy League player of the year. He was playing professionally in Europe when John Thompson III persuaded him to retire as a player and join his staff at Georgetown in 2004.
"I'm ecstatic," said Thompson, who was an assistant at Princeton when Johnson played there. "As John Thompson, Princeton class of '88, this is a really exciting time."
Earlier this month, assistant Kevin Broadus left the Hoyas to become the head coach at Binghamton. Thompson said that he is in no rush to fill the two openings. . . .
Greg Oden is through with school.
The 7-foot freshman said he is leaving Ohio State and will enter the NBA draft. He led the Buckeyes to the national title game in his only year of college.
Freshman teammates Mike Conley Jr. and Daequan Cook also said they will make themselves available for the draft.
Unlike Oden, however, they have opted not to hire an agent for now -- meaning they will retain the option of returning to school in the fall.
"This is a very tough decision for me," Oden said in a statement released by Ohio State. "I love OSU and love being a Buckeye, but I also have a great opportunity to take my game to the next level and compete with the best players in the world."
· HOCKEY: Islanders defenseman Sean Hill was hit with a 20-game suspension by the NHL, hours before New York faced elimination from the playoffs, for violating the league's drug policy.
He is the first player to be suspended under the NHL's performance-enhancing substances program. A second infraction would result in a 40-game suspension.
· TENNIS: Roger Federer won his 500th career match, a 6-4, 6-0 victory over David Ferrer in the quarterfinals of the Monte Carlo Masters.
"I am very happy to have done it here," said Federer, who reached the final in Monte Carlo last year. "That is a lot of games. I'm glad they are victories."
· CRICKET: No one, it seems, can stop two-time defending World Cup champion Australia.
South Africa, West Indies, England and Sri Lanka were all beaten by huge margins and neutral fans were looking to New Zealand to halt captain Ricky Ponting's team. The result? New Zealand's biggest loss in one-day cricket.
Australia raced to 348 for six in Grenada and then bowled the Kiwis out for 133 for a 215-run victory to take its World Cup winning streak to 21 games.
"Right at the moment we're very confident," Ponting said.
· AUTO RACING: Sebastien Bourdais won the provisional pole for the Champ Car World Series Grand Prix of Houston; he circled the 1.69-mile course in 58.376 seconds.
The defending champion hit 103.789 mph on his fastest lap in his Panoz DP01 to clinch a front-row start tomorrow.
Two weeks ago in Las Vegas, Bourdais had three flat tires, then hit the wall and finished 13th in what he called the worst performance he could remember. . . .
Clint Bowyer won a stirring duel with Matt Kenseth, taking the lead with 14 laps to go and holding on in the Busch Series race at Phoenix International Raceway.
Kenseth, who won the Busch race last weekend in Texas, appeared on the way to another victory when he made a strong pass on the outside to take away the lead from Bowyer 31 laps from the end of the 200-lap Bashas' Supermarkets 200.
The former Nextel Cup champion started to pull away, but Bowyer didn't give up.
-- From News Services and Staff Reports
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