North Carolina Gets Stronger by Subtraction

The top-ranked North Carolina basketball team is even better than last year’s Tar Heel national champions, Don Markus of the Baltimore Sun writes:

“While North Carolina lost forward George Lynch, last year’s leading rebounder and the school’s all-time steals leader, it also has added three of the nation’s top freshmen: Jerry Stackhouse, 6-foot-10 Rasheed Wallace and point guard Jeff McInnis.

“The No. 1 recruiting class in the country joins a roster that already includes 7-foot, 270-pound consensus All-American Eric Montross, Final Four MVP Donald Williams and one of the nation’s best defensive point guards in Derrick Phelps. Kevin Salvadori, a 7-foot senior who has backed up Montross the past two years, would start at all but two other ACC schools.”

Trivia time: Which major leaguer hit the most home runs in his final season?

Harshest critic: London’s Daily Mirror is at it again.

After offering members of the Polish team $15,000 to beat the Netherlands in an attempt--a vain one, it turned out--to keep alive England’s hopes in World Cup soccer, the tabloid has turned its attention to British Coach Graham Taylor.

Poland’s players didn’t get their incentive pay and Taylor is out of World Cup business, eight months before his contract runs out. He insisted Thursday that he would not leave the team, however. So the Daily Mirror is asking its readers to buy out his contract.

Friday, the paper asked each reader to send in $1.50 to pay off the estimated $112,500 left on his contract.

Swept off her feet: Christy Stubblefield thought she had been randomly selected to ride the Zamboni machine between the second and third periods of a Huntington (W.Va.) Blizzard minor league hockey game Thursday night.

After one turn around the rink, however, Alan Gianettino walked out and handed her a bouquet of flowers.

“Is this the last place you expected this to happen?” Gianettino, 25, of Huntington asked before dropping to one knee. “Will you marry me, Christy?”

Add Zamboni: The answer was yes. He slipped a ring on her finger, and off went the Zamboni to finish resurfacing the ice as the crowd cheered.

“I wanted to get off that thing,” said Stubblefield, 21. “It stopped and I saw Alan with the flowers and I thought, ‘Isn’t that nice.’ I had no idea he was going to give me a ring.”

Gianettino said he originally considered proposing at a Cincinnati Bengal game, but decided on a smaller forum. He called Blizzard marketing director Jim Burlew the day of the game and told him what he had in mind.

“They were amazingly cooperative,” Gianettino said.

The wedding is planned for June.

Now hear this: Dick Davey, basketball coach at Santa Clara, said he had numerous requests to speak before service groups after his Broncos upset Arizona in the NCAA tournament last season.

“It was kind of embarrassing, because I don’t have any message,” he told Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury News.

Trivia answer: Dave Kingman, with 35 in 1986.

Quotebook: Joe Garagiola, who campaigns against baseball players chewing tobacco, on the Philadelphia Phillies during the World Series: “Their dugout was like a toxic waste dump.”