Krzyzewski Decides to Remain at Duke

Mike Krzyzewski resisted the lure of the NBA Tuesday when he announced that he would remain Duke’s basketball coach.

“I’m very comfortable and happy at this level--that doesn’t mean one level was lower or higher,” Krzyzewski said at a news conference that was broadcast live on radio across North Carolina and on many television stations.

“I have a lot of respect for the talent level, the coaching level and how they handle everything in the NBA,” he said.

Thus ended a week of speculation centered on recent meetings between Krzyzewski and NBA officials. Krzyzewski reportedly could have his pick of jobs in Portland, Miami, New Jersey and with the Clippers.

“There has never been a concrete offer from a specific team,” he said. “I talked to a lot of NBA people in the last couple of weeks, but not all of it was about me.”

Krzyzewski coached Duke to successive national championships in 1991 and ‘92, and brought them to the ’94 championship game against Arkansas. But he was reportedly unhappy with a lack of access to professors to find out how his players were doing in class. A trip to Australia was recently canceled because some players were struggling through the spring semester.

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The NCAA has discovered numerous violations in Coastal Carolina’s basketball program, including paid plane tickets for athletes and their parents and phony course work approved by coaches. Coastal, the 1993 Big South Conference champion, forfeited 14 games and removed itself from this season’s league tournament in hopes that the NCAA will show mercy.

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Minnesota Timberwolves co-owner Harvey Ratner indicated Tuesday that the team’s move to New Orleans might not be a done deal after all.

Ratner and co-owner Marv Wolfenson announced last week that they had sold the team to a New Orleans group for $152.5 million. Since then, a Minnesota group led by Gov. Arne Carlson has been scrambling to put together a package to keep the team in Minneapolis.

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The New Jersey Nets’ Derrick Coleman pleaded innocent to charges that he assaulted three teen-agers outside a Manhattan nightspot. . . . John Bach, 68, an assistant coach who helped make the Chicago Bulls one of the NBA’s top defensive teams, has been released.

Soccer

President Clinton won’t intervene in the decision by police in Washington and Dallas to erect fences around the fields for World Cup games, the White House said.

Clinton “conveyed enthusiastic support” for the tournament and intends to go to the opening game between defending champion Germany and Bolivia in Chicago on June 17, the White House said. Vice President Al Gore will attend the final at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on July 17.

After months of controversy, Russian Coach Pavel Sadyrin left four star players off what he said is his team’s final World Cup roster.

The players dropped are among Russia’s best--wing Andrei Kanchelskis and forwards Sergei Kiryakov, Igor Kolyvanov and Igor Shalimov.

The four are the final holdouts from a mutiny launched by many of the team’s veteran players in December. They demanded that Sadyrin be fired.

Although a predicted boon to the San Francisco Bay area economy, World Cup soccer might cost Stanford as much as $1 million, school officials said.

Golf

Seve Ballesteros, winner of three British Opens and two Masters, and Ben Crenshaw, who won the Masters in 1984, were given special exemptions to play in this year’s U.S. Open.

Both Ballesteros, who has played in 15 consecutive Opens, and Crenshaw, a veteran of 20 Opens, would have had to play in regional qualifiers if not granted the exemptions.

Miscellany

Wide receiver Alvin Harper, who was almost traded several times this year, signed a one-year deal to stay with the Dallas Cowboys that will make him a free agent after this season.

The U.S. Auto Club, which legislated the last radical innovation in race engines out of existence, will take a close look at Roger Penske’s new Mercedes-Benz engine this summer after Sunday’s overwhelming performance in the Indianapolis 500.

Alberto Salazar, former marathon world record-holder, won a major race for the first time n nearly a decade, taking the 50-mile Comrades Marathon at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.