Pan Am Women’s Basketball Called Off

The women’s basketball tournament at the Pan American Games has been canceled because too few teams were available to play after Puerto Rico’s withdrawal, officials said Friday.

The decision eliminated one of the brightest gold-medal hopes for the United States, which was sending a team led by Sherryl Swoopes and Dawn Staley to the games starting in Argentina next week.

“We were really pumped,” said Walter Brown, executive director of USA basketball. “The team thought it had a chance to go down there and do some good things.”

The U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Basketball had been told Tuesday that Puerto Rico had dropped out of the field, leaving only four teams, one fewer than Pan Am rules allow.

College Basketball

Duke sophomore forward Greg Newton was declared academically ineligible and will sit out the rest of the season, the school announced.

The NCAA has denied an appeal by Coastal Carolina to lessen the penalties imposed from wide-ranging violations by the men’s basketball program. Coastal was hit with a four-year ban on postseason play by the NCAA for 11 violations by the program when it was led by former coach Russ Bergman

Miscellany

. . . Race officials said they had lost radio contact with a 70-year-old British sailor taking part in the third leg of the BOC around-the-world sailing race. Henry Mitchell, on board the Henry Hornblower, was last in contact with race officials about 1,450 miles west of Cape Horn, South America, a press statement said.