Wake Forest Keeps Prosser

Skip Prosser signed a 10-year contract Friday to stay at Wake Forest, turning down overtures to coach basketball at Pittsburgh. He was Pitt’s top choice to succeed Ben Howland, the new UCLA coach.

“Tough, tough, this was a tough one,” Prosser said of his decision.

Pitt gave Prosser, the Atlantic Coast Conference coach of the year, until Friday to decide whether he was interested in the job in his hometown.

Athletic Director Ron Wellman refused to say what the private university will pay Prosser or how much of a raise he received. It is believed that Prosser made $800,000 a year under his old deal.

*

Texas A&M; basketball player Andy Slocum was sentenced to 90 days in jail after pleading no contest to charges of steroid possession.

Motor Racing

NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon finally beat Ryan Newman.

After being knocked off the pole by Newman in last year’s Winston Cup race at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, then again last month at Bristol, Tenn., Gordon turned the tables, winning the pole for Sunday’s Virginia 500.

Gordon’s lap at 94.307 mph easily beat Newman’s 93.678, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s 93.863, giving Gordon the 43rd pole of his career, his fourth on the series’ shortest, tightest oval and first this season.

Randy LaJoie won his first pole since last July, setting a track record in qualifying for the NASCAR Busch series race at Nashville Superspeedway. LaJoie had a lap at 163.324 mph in a Chevrolet.... Ted Musgrave won his second consecutive pole for a NASCAR truck series race at Martinsville, Va., turning a fast lap at 91.297 mph in a Dodge.

Giancarlo Fisichella, a driver for the Jordan team, was declared the winner of Formula One’s Brazilian Grand Prix, five days after the race. The sport’s governing body ruled that Fisichella was leading before the race was stopped because of numerous crashes and spinouts on the rain-soaked Interlagos track. McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen, previously declared winner, was dropped to second.

Tennis

Andre Agassi and Lleyton Hewitt abruptly withdrew from the $2.45-million Monte Carlo Masters tournament, which starts today.

Lindsay Davenport continued a strong showing in her first clay-court tournament in three years with a 7-6 (3), 6-3 quarterfinal victory over Vera Zvonareva in the Family Circle Cup at Charleston, S.C.

Davenport will play Serena Williams, a 6-2, 6-2 winner over Jelena Dokic.

Yevgeny Kafelnikov lost to Nikolay Davydenko, 6-2, 6-4, in the quarterfinals of the Estoril Open at Oeiras, Portugal.... Defending champion Younes El Aynaoui beat Nicolas Massu, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5, in the Grand Prix Hassan II quarterfinals at Casablanca, Morocco.

Miscellany

King left wing Craig Johnson will play for the United States at the World Championship in Finland on April 26-May 11. Johnson had four assists for the U.S. at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.

Colorado College forward Peter Sejna of Slovakia, who had 82 points in 42 games this season, won the Hobey Baker award, the first European honored as college hockey’s top player.

Featherweights Marco Antonio Barrera (56-3, 39 knockouts) and Kevin Kelley (54-5-2, 36), combatants in tonight’s main event at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, both weighed exactly on target at 126 pounds.

California’s Natalie Coughlin has been voted the nation’s most outstanding collegiate woman in swimming and diving in balloting of NCAA member schools.

In Arena football, Orlando defeated visiting Buffalo, 66-23, before a season-high crowd of 15,016, and Tampa Bay kept Carolina winless with a 45-38 overtime win at Charlotte, N.C.