Williams Offered Tar Heel Job

Kansas basketball Coach Roy Williams said Friday that he will meet with North Carolina administrators and decide soon whether to take the prestigious job vacated by Bill Guthridge.

“I thought for my family I should not just say no,” said Williams, who was an assistant at North Carolina under the legendary Dean Smith for 10 years. “I should talk to them. It will not be drawn out.”

Williams said he will have an answer no later than July 7, when he returns from vacation.

“It’s got to be a gut feeling of what’s best for me, what’s best for my family. I’m very happy here,” Williams said. “This is a day I hoped would never come so I wouldn’t have to make this decision.”

The position opened up Friday when Guthridge resigned, three years after replacing Smith. Williams and Guthridge were on the same staff from 1978-88 before Williams left for Kansas.

Williams said he was not going to try to draw Kansas and Carolina into a bidding war over him.

“I don’t think I’m going to make it an analytical approach,” Williams said. “I’m going to go with a gut feeling. It’s not going to be, ‘Well, they offered this. Will you offer this plus one?’ It’s not going to be like that.”

Guthridge, 62, an assistant under Smith for 30 years before he replaced him in 1997, stepped down saying the demands of the job wore him down.

“I just ran out of energy. Now I know what Dean felt three years ago. I was exhausted,” Guthridge said. “I went on vacation in May to recharge my batteries, but when I got back, I felt I could not continue.”

Motor Sports

Dario Franchitti edged Michael Andretti for the provisional pole at the Marconi Grand Prix of Cleveland.

Franchitti turned in a fast lap of 130.805 mph, covering the 2.106-mile, 10-turn temporary road course only .014 of a second quicker than Andretti, whose speed was 130.774 mph.

Franchitti can wrap up his first pole since October in Australia if he can stay out front today in the final round of qualifying.

Kenny Brack was third Friday at 130.607 mph, followed at 130.432 and 130.398, respectively, by Marlboro Team Penske drivers Helio Castroneves and Gil de Ferran.

David Coulthard will stay with the Formula One team McLaren-Mercedes next season.

“We are taking an unprecedented early decision to retain David’s services,” McLaren director Ron Dennis said.

The decision means Coulthard’s partnership with Mika Hakkinen will extend into a record sixth season in 2001. The pair already have been the longest driver partnership in Formula One.

Toyota Motor Corp., Japan’s largest automaker, will join Formula One racing in 2002.

Akihiko Saito, chairman of Toyota’s Motorsports Committee, said his company accelerated research and development through its German-based motorsport subsidiary, Toyota Motorsport GmbH.

Rookie Kurt Busch beat Randy Tolsma by one-thousandth of a second to win the pole for the Craftsman Truck Series’ DieHard 200 at West Allis, Wis.

The margin between the front-row qualifiers is the smallest in the series’ 136 races.

Pro Football

The Green Bay Packers signed 1996 Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Danny Wuerffel to a one-year contract.

Wuerffel, 26, led NFL Europe’s Rhein Fire to a 13-10 win over the Scottish Claymores in the league championship game on June 25.

The New Orleans Saints signed quarterback Pat Barnes. Barnes completed 138 passes in 250 attempts for 1,954 yards and 18 touchdowns with NFL’s Europe’s Frankfurt Galaxy. . . . The Atlanta Falcons signed running back Ron Rivers and waived quarterback Wally Richardson.

Miscellany

Former Auburn football coach Terry Bowden, who agreed not to make derogatory comments about Auburn after resigning in 1998, had unflattering things to say about his predecessor, Pat Dye, and influential trustee Bobby Lowder.

In an interview with the Auburn Plainsman, Bowden said Dye should have “retired and moved on” rather than remain a figure at the university. He said Auburn could begin solving its problems by removing Lowder from the board of trustees.

Bowden, whose comments were published Thursday by the school paper, was interviewed June 23 at a football camp in Troy, Ala.

Detectives in Sanford, Fla., plan to subpoena telephone records as part of the investigation into how the son of basketball Hall of Famer Julius Erving disappeared.

Investigators didn’t say whose phone records they were pursuing. But they hoped to create a timeline for Cory Erving’s whereabouts in the hours before he disappeared May 28, said Seminole County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Steve Olson.

Former Los Angeles Ram lineman Doug France, who killed a motorist in an alcohol-related crash nine years ago, was sentenced to two years in prison because of a second drunk-driving case in Newport Beach.