Evans Appears to Be Arizona State Coach

Rob Evans is leaving Mississippi to become the basketball coach at Arizona State, The Associated Press reported Monday night.

Arizona State scheduled a news conference today in Tempe to officially announce the hiring a coach, presumably the 51-year-old Evans.

Evans, who has been coaching Arizona State athletic director Kevin White’s son at Mississippi, replaces Don Newman, the interim coach who took over for Bill Frieder. Frieder resigned under pressure last September.

Evans, a native of Hobbs, N.M., was the Southeastern Conference coach of the year for the 1996-97 season. He had an 86-81 record at Mississippi, but his last two teams were a combined 42-16 with back-to-back SEC West titles and NCAA tournament berths.

Newman took over a 10-20 team with only eight scholarship players and Arizona State finished this season at 18-14 with an NIT bid.

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Once a star player and a classroom problem at Iona, Jeff Ruland has been named coach of the Gaels. He had been an assistant to his predecessor, Tim Welsh, who left to coach at Providence.

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Sophomore guard Corey Benjamin of Oregon State has scheduled a Wednesday news conference in Riverside, where he is expected to declare himself eligible for the NBA draft, The Oregonian reported.

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BJ McKie, the Southeastern Conference’s leading scorer, decided to return for his senior season at South Carolina rather than try his hand at the NBA.

Women’s Basketball

The WNBA announced the signing of six players to league contracts, among them All-American Alicia Thompson, a 6-foot-1 forward from Texas Tech. Also signing were guards Julie Krommenhoek and Alli Bills, from Utah; forward Mfon Udoka, from De Paul; and guards Nadine Domand, from Iowa, and Sonia Chase, from Maryland.

Tennis

Australian Sandon Stolle upset fifth-seeded Vincent Spadea of the United States, 6-1, 6-3, in the first round of the Salem Open in Hong Kong.

In other first-round matches, third-seeded Thomas Johansson of Sweden beat American Steve Campbell, 6-7 (2-7), 6-0, 6-3, and American David Wheaton beat France’s Arnaud Boetsch, 7-5, 3-1, when Boetsch retired after pulling a leg muscle.

Pete Sampras has pulled out of the tournament because of a shoulder injury.

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No. 12-seeded Joanette Kruger of South Africa was among the three seeded players upset in opening round play of the Bausch & Lomb women’s championships at Amelia Island, Fla.

Kruger fell to Elena Likhovtseva of Russia, 6-4, 6-2; 13th seeded Brenda Schultz McCarthy of The Netherlands lost to Rachel McQuillan of Australia, 6-1, 2-6, 7-6; and No. 16 Maria Alejandra Vento of Venezuela lost to Maria Antonia Sanchez Lorenzo of Spain, 7-5, 7-5.

Jurisprudence

University of New Mexico basketball player Kenny Thomas, named most valuable player of the Western Athletic Conference tournament last month, will be arraigned April 22 on drunken driving and other charges after his car crashed into the rear of another car stopped at a red light.

Ryan Taylor, a defensive end on the Lobo football team who led the WAC last season in sacks with 11, also spent Saturday night in Albuquerque’s jail after being charged with aggravated battery against his girlfriend.

Miscellany

Kirby Puckett, who retired from the Minnesota Twins after glaucoma left him blind in his right eye, was at home in Edina following a weekend car crash that hospitalized him with cuts on his arm and head. The Minnesota State Patrol said no drugs or alcohol were involved in the crash, and that Puckett’s eyesight was not a factor. . . . Trainer Bob Baffert announced officially that Prosperous Bid will run in Saturday’s $500,000 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct. . . . Rodney Jones (20-2) won his 15th straight fight with a unanimous decision over Luis Vasquez (28-16) in middleweight action at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim. . . . Twenty-four Chinese athletes, 18 of them women, committed drug offenses in 1997, and they and their coaches were punished, sports officials said. . . . Division II Savannah State University in Georgia was put on four years’ probation and ordered to cut scholarships by the NCAA because of past aid excesses and lack of institutional control of the athletic program. The Committee on Infractions ordered the school to forfeit all victories from the 1993-94 academic year through the 1995-96 year in football, women’s basketball and men’s track and field.

Necrology

Services for Carol Fletcher Metten, the youngest member of the 1924 U.S. Olympic team at 17 and a bronze medalist in springboard diving at Paris, will be held at 11 a.m. today at Pacific View Memorial Park in Newport Beach. She died Friday.