Fowlkes Becomes a Bulldog

Tremaine Fowlkes, the 1995 Pacific 10 freshman of the year at California, said Thursday he will transfer to Fresno State so he can play basketball for Coach Jerry Tarkanian.

Fowlkes, a 6-foot-7 sophomore forward, will have to sit out next season under NCAA rules and will have two years’ eligibility left for the Bulldogs, starting in the 1997-98 season.

Fowlkes was suspended for 14 games last season for allegedly accepting money from a former agent. He later was suspended for one game for violating a team rule, which was never specified.

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USA Basketball named 18 finalists for the 1996 women’s Olympic team: guards Jennifer Azzi, Ruthie Bolton, Teresa Edwards, Nikki McCray, Edna Campbell, Teresa Weatherspoon and Dawn Staley; forwards Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo, Katrina McClain, Carla McGhee, Katy Steding, Shanda Berry, Katie Smith and Sheryl Swoopes, and centers Sylvia Crawley, Venus Lacy and Kara Wolters.

In Sydney, Australia, Swoopes scored 12 points in a 72-50 victory over Ukraine in the Opals World Challenge tournament, running the U.S. record to 42-0.

Jurisprudence

Denny McLain, who won 31 games for the Detroit Tigers in 1968, bought a condominium in Puerto Rico and covered expenses for his private plane with funds stolen from the pension fund of a meat company he and two business partners owned for nine months in 1994, a federal indictment alleges.

McLain, 52, and his associates are accused of transferring more than $12 million of pension-plan money from Peet Packing Co. in Chesaning, Mich., to Michigan National Bank, then converting $3 million of that for personal and Peet Packing use.

Tennis

Top-seeded Boris Becker, who has never won a tournament on clay, lost to 16th-seeded Gilbert Schaller, 6-2, 6-2, in the third round of the German Open on clay in Hamburg. Other seeded players failing to reach the quarterfinals included No. 8 Marc Rosset and No. 7 Arnaud Boetsch.

Steffi Graf beat Paola Suarez, 6-2, 6-4, on clay in the Italian Open in Rome. Graf next will play Martina Hingis, a 15-year-old who eliminated 31-year-old Sandra Cecchini, 6-2, 6-3, in a match pitting the oldest and youngest players in the tournament.

Top-seeded Julie Halard-Decugis beat Anne Kremer, 7-5, 6-2, in the WTA’s Lotto Open in Budapest, Hungary, to advance to the quarterfinals.

Football

Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, trying to get an NFL team to replace the Tennessee-bound Houston Oilers, is ready to pitch a plan worth up to $400 million to refurbish the Astrodome and build a new dome next door to it.

The Chicago Bears have extended Coach Dave Wannstedt’s contract four more years, until the 2000 season.

Miscellany

Sven Teutenberg of Germany completed a 105-mile leg from Blowing Rock, N.C., to Charlotte in 3 hours 47 minutes 15 seconds and won the ninth stage of the Tour DuPont cycling race by six feet. Lance Armstrong retained his overall lead for the eighth day, after which it was announced that his sponsor, Motorola, was dropping the team.

Arie Luyendyk, who holds the record for the fastest Indianapolis 500, turned the fastest unofficial lap in the history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 237.774 mph, in practice in a Reynard-Ford. The previous fastest was run last month by Scott Brayton, 237.555, in a Lola-Menard.

Lanee Butler of Aliso Viejo built a one-point lead over Jayne Fenner-Benedict of Salt Lake City in the women’s Mistral class of the U.S. Olympic yachting trials off Savannah, Ga.

Names in the News

Bob Drum, a longtime golf writer and broadcaster died in Pinehurst, N.C., at 78 after a lengthy illness. . . . Galaxy forward Jose Vasquez, who has two goals and an assist, will be out six to eight weeks after surgery today for a broken bone in his right foot.