New Mexico State Basketball Gets Probation

The NCAA put New Mexico State on three years’ probation Tuesday and hit at the core of Coach Neil McCarthy’s recruiting strategy by suspending scholarships for junior college players for two seasons.

McCarthy has built a 229-114 record in 11 seasons with the Aggies--including five NCAA tournament appearances--largely by using junior college transfers.

School president J. Michael Orenduff said he would not appeal the sanctions. He said the school moved swiftly to address its own problems.

An internal investigation resulted in self-imposed sanctions in September. Many of those sanctions were accepted by the NCAA, but they did not include the junior college bans and called only for two years’ probation.

The investigation began in 1994 and focused on two former assistant coaches accused of providing test answers and papers for players to gain fraudulent eligibility through correspondence courses at Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God in Lakeland, Fla.

The report placed most of the blame on restricted-earnings coach Chris Nordquist, “who assumed he was expected to establish eligibility without regard for NCAA or institutional rules.”

Nordquist now teaches and coaches girls’ basketball at Channel Islands High in Oxnard.

Jurisprudence

The trial of four Clemson football players who a woman said gang-raped her in a campus dorm abruptly ended when the woman said she did not want to testify.

Other details were not immediately available, but news reports said the charges had been dropped.

Jury selection was to have begun Tuesday in Pickens, S.C., Circuit Court and solicitor Joe Watson had said he expected the trial to be over in a day.

The woman, then an 18-year-old freshman, told police she was forced to have sex with the players on Feb. 15. She said she had been drinking gin and having sex with a player when another one came out of a closet. “I tried to sit up and I told him ‘No,’ ” she said.

Then another player came out of the closet and a fourth eventually came into the room, she said, recalling that she started crying.

The four, all freshmen--were arrested Feb. 20 on felony charges of first-degree criminal sexual assault and conspiracy to commit first-degree criminal sexual assault.

Coach Tommy West suspended the four from the team indefinitely, and school administrators ousted them out of campus housing. The players have remained in school.

New York state investigators are looking into whether heavyweight boxer Bobby Czyz was entirely truthful last May when he claimed a foreign substance on former champion Evander Holyfield’s gloves caused his eyes to burn and forced him to quit.

“The state athletic commission will consider whether the comments by Mr. Czyz were made in good faith,” commission spokeswoman Gwen Lee said.

She said investigators have found no evidence of any foreign substance, other than petroleum jelly--standard in boxing--on Holyfield’s gloves.

During the fight against Holyfield on May 10 in Madison Square Garden, Czyz reportedly complained of an injured back between the fifth and sixth rounds.

But his trainer, Tommy Parks, insisted to the fighter that it was his eye that was hurt, presumably because Holyfield had liniment on his gloves.

“My back’s out,” Czyz was heard to say on the video aired by ESPN.

“It’s not your back,” Parks responds. “I said it’s your eye. Let me do i . . . if I say it’s your eye, that’s what it is. You ain’t fighting no more.”

Tennis

Wade McGuire, two-time NCAA finalist at Georgia and now ranked 629th in the world, upset 10th-seeded Carlos Costa, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5), in the first round of the Legg Mason Classic in Washington.

Nicolas Pereira, coming off a victory in last week’s Hall of Fame Championship at Newport, R.I., also advanced with a victory over No. 11 Daniel Vacek, 6-3, 6-3.

Germany’s Marc Goellner upset third-seeded Marcelo Rios of Chile, 6-0, 7-6 (7-5), in the second round of the Mercedes Cup at Stuttgart.

Russian Yevgeny Kafelnikov, No. 2 seed and ranked sixth in the world, made easy work of Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil, 6-1, 6-4.

Pro Football

UCLA’s Jonathan Ogden, the NFL’s No. 4 draft choice, signed with the Baltimore Ravens.

A source said Ogden signed for $19.5 million for five years--and a $6.8 million bonus. The Ravens also signed their second first-round choice, 26th pick Ray Lewis, linebacker from Miami.

Ogden, an an All-American offensive tackle, was voted the Pac-10’s top blocker and named the Outland Trophy winner as the nation’s best interior lineman after not allowing a sack in 1995.

The New Orleans Saints extended defensive end Wayne Martin’s contract another five years, what Martin describes as the rest of his career.

Martin came to camp at La Crosse, Wis., on the final year of a four-year deal signed in 1993. His new five-year contract is worth an estimated $17.4 million.

Specifics of Martin’s new deal are unknown, although it is believed to include a signing bonus that rivals the $5 million given to tackle Leon Searcy by the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Also, the Saints signed veteran wide receiver Haywood Jeffires, free agent from Houston.

Jeffires, nine-year veteran, becomes one of the two most experienced players on the roster of the Saints.

Miscellany

Tony Linehan, 71, USC football player in the late 1940s who later coached and taught at Pasadena City College for 40 years, died last Friday on the first green at the El Camino Country Club golf course in Oceanside. Services will be Monday at 9:30 a.m. in the St. Bartholomew Catholic Church in Long Beach.