U.S. Olympic Festival Roundup : Lane Leads Undefeated East Basketball Team to 96-89 Victory

The East, led by Pittsburgh’s Jerome Lane, moved into the favorite’s role in U.S. Olympic Festival basketball Monday with a 96-89 victory over the West.

The third day of Festival action featured play in 18 sports in hot Houston, where the temperature climbed to 99 degrees but attendance remained high. Perhaps the hottest thing in town, though, was Lane, the sharpshooting sophomore forward who scored 24 points to boost the East’s record to 2-0. Lane had 18 in the second half.

“Today those guys just lost track of me,” Lane said. “They just didn’t want to guard me and I was open every play.”

East Coach Gary Williams of Ohio State knows about Lane from Big East play when Williams was coaching Boston College.

“I thought Lane was a pretty good player who played well some of the time,” Williams said. “Now he is starting to realize he can be a real good player if he puts his mind to it.”

He had his mind on basketball Monday, scoring 12 points in the last 6 1/2 minutes as the East pulled away.

Villanova sophomore Doug West added 17 points for the East. Steve Thompson, a Los Angeles native who will attend Syracuse this fall, led the West with 19 points.

“I think I would have to give the East the nod in effort and reacting to the ball today,” West Coach Ladell Anderson of Brigham Young said. He felt his team was off-form after upsetting the South the previous night.

“The South is probably the favorite of the tournament,” he said. “We knocked them off and there was an obvious letdown.”

In women’s play, Deanna Tate and Monique Tompili triggered a second-half surge that lifted the East to a 74-72 victory over the West. The game was close until the East, 1-1, reeled off 13 straight points--including four apiece by Tate and Tompili--to turn a 57-56 deficit into a 69-57 lead with 6:42 to play.

Three-point shots by Karon Howell and Dora Doma helped bring the West back within two in the final seconds. But the West, 0-2, never got a chance for a tying shot.

Tompili, a junior at East Carolina, finished with 13 points, while UCLA sophomore Doma topped the West with 17.

“Defense was the key today,” the East’s Dawn Bryant said. “At the end, we were the team in control.”

U.S. Olympic Committee officials and the Houston organizers said they expected to pass the Festival total ticket sales record of 250,000 Monday, but official figures would not be available until to-day. This is the eighth Festival--the record was set in 1982 at Indianapolis.

Dante Muse of Des Moines, became a four-time gold medalist when he won the 500-meter final in 54.52 seconds, then helped the North to a win in the 4,000-meter relay.

Earlier, Muse won the 1,000 and 1,500 races.

Three Goodwill Games winners were named to the Soviet team which will fight American boxers from the Festival in an exhibition on Saturday. Israel Akopkokhian, Ruslan Taramov and Viacheslav Yakolev will fight at 156, 165 and over 201 pounds, respectively. Akopkokhian and Yakolev are 1985 World Cup champions. Yakolev lost to Teofilo Stevenson of Cuba in the World Championships earlier this year, but he did beat Stevenson by decision in a tournament last year.

Eight of the 10 boxers appeared in the U.S.-USSR Invitational last week in Sacramento, which the Soviets won 6-2.

Three-time world champion Rick McKinney, Gilbert, Ariz., took a four-point lead over two-time Olympic gold medalist Darrell Pace Monday after two rounds of the archery finals. Sharon Riley of York, Pa., stormed from 10th place after the first round to take the lead in the women’s event.