Arkansas to Open Season No. 1 in Basketball Poll

Arkansas, the defending national champion with five returning starters, was the overwhelming top choice Monday in the Associated Press preseason college basketball poll.

The Razorbacks, whose 31-3 record last season included a title game victory over Duke at Charlotte, N.C., received all but three of the 66 first-place votes cast by the national media panel.

Rounding out the top five are North Carolina, Massachusetts, Kentucky and Arizona.

UCLA is ranked sixth.

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Pepperdine will play High Five America in an exhibition game at 2 p.m. today at Firestone Fieldhouse in Malibu. Admission is free.

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St. Louis, Marquette and Alabama Birmingham have agreed to switch to a new conference that will also include Louisville, Cincinnati, Memphis, Houston, Southern Mississippi and Tulane. DePaul will decide Wednesday whether to join.

Competition is scheduled to begin with the 1995-96 season in all sports except football, which would start the next year.

The 38th annual Southern California Intercollegiate tennis championship will start today at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. Players from USC, Pepperdine, Arizona and UC Irvine will compete in the event, which runs through Sunday.

Hockey

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is expected to speak to Bob Goodenow, executive director of the NHL Players Assn., today in Toronto before the NHL’s Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. Bettman will deliver a counterproposal to the union’s last initiative, in which players accepted some limitations on entry-level salaries.

Club executives called those compromises insignificant and not enough reason to end the lockout, which has wiped out 249 games in 45 days. The league is expected to lower the rate of its proposed payroll tax from its present peak of 122%, but will not eliminate the tax. Players contend it is a form of salary cap and therefore unacceptable.

Players are asking Goodenow to set a deadline for an agreement so they can decide whether to sign with European or minor-league clubs.

Jurisprudence

Former USC and San Francisco 49er guard Jeff Bregel, 30, was arrested in Granada Hills on outstanding warrants for driving under the influence of intoxicants, police said. He faces two felony and three misdemeanor counts of driving under the influence. He played in the 1988 and 1989 Super Bowls for the San Francisco 49ers, but a back injury ended his career.

Former Washington Redskin defensive end Dexter Manley, who was banned for life from the NFL for drug use, was arrested in Houston for possession of crack cocaine, police said.

Miscellany

Angel third baseman Spike Owen, who hit a career-high .310 last season, has asked to be traded because the team won’t guarantee he’ll start. . . . Boston Red Sox chief executive officer John Harrington confirmed that baseball owners will propose a luxury tax on revenues or payrolls when labor talks with players resume this week in Washington.

The English Football Assn. will allow goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar to continue playing despite leveling a bribery charge against him for which he could be banned for life and jailed. The Zimbabwean has 14 days to answer bribery and disrepute charges brought by the governing body. A British tabloid reported that he collected $64,000 from a betting syndicate for letting in three goals in Liverpool’s 3-0 loss to Newcastle last season.

Tanya Hughes, a four-time high jump champion and one of the leading anti-drug activists in college sports, was honored as the NCAA Woman of the Year.

Former NBA star Darryl Dawkins has passed up an opportunity to play in the Continental Basketball Assn. to join the Harlem Globetrotters.