Report: New Job for Doherty

Former North Carolina coach Matt Doherty will be the new basketball coach at Florida Atlantic, two newspapers reported Saturday.

The Palm Beach Post and the Boca Raton News, citing unidentified sources, reported on their websites that a formal announcement of Doherty’s hiring could come as soon as Monday.

Florida Atlantic would be the third coaching stop for Doherty, 43, who lasted three seasons as Bill Guthridge’s successor at North Carolina before being forced to resign.

Doherty, a starter on North Carolina’s 1982 national championship team, was 53-43 as Tar Heel coach before resigning after the 2002-03 season. Many of his top recruits helped North Carolina win this year’s NCAA title.

He had previously served as head coach at Notre Dame for one season (22-15), and was an assistant for seven seasons at Kansas under current North Carolina Coach Roy Williams.

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Dave Leitao was hired as Virginia’s basketball coach, leaving DePaul for the Atlantic Coast Conference and hoping to revive a team that went 14-15 last season. He succeeds Pete Gillen, who resigned after seven seasons and only one NCAA tournament appearance. Leitao, 44, the first black head coach at Virginia in any sport, agreed to a five-year contract at $925,000 annually.

Tennis

Justine Henin-Hardenne advanced to the final of the Family Circle Cup in Charleston, S.C., in only her second event since returning from illness and injury, defeating Tatiana Golovin, 7-6 (4), 7-5.

Henin-Hardenne spent most of last year ranked No. 1 but after last year’s U.S. Open suffered a viral illness and then a knee injury. She is ranked No. 43 and was unseeded going into the Family Circle.

Henin-Hardenne will play second-seeded Elena Dementieva, who defeated eighth-seeded Patty Schnyder, 3-6, 6-4, 6-0.

Rafael Nadal rallied past Richard Gasquet, 6-7 (6), 6-4, 6-3, at the Monte Carlo Masters in Monaco, reaching his fourth final of the season and earning a shot at defending champion Guillermo Coria.

Coria, seeded sixth, defeated two-time champion Juan Carlos Ferrero, 6-2, 7-5, and will play for an ATP title for the first time this year in the clay-court event leading to the French Open.

Motor Racing

Kasey Kahne got past 19-year-old rookie Reed Sorenson just before the last caution and held on in the final two laps after the restart to win the NASCAR Busch Series O’Reilly 300 at Texas Motor Speedway.

After starting 25th in a Dodge, Kahne was in the top 10 midway through the 200-lap race and passed Sorenson’s Dodge on the backstretch on the 194th lap, less than two laps before the yellow flag flew for the ninth time.

Greg Biffle, driving a Ford, finished second, three-tenths of a second behind Kahne.

Austin Grabowski, a 16-year-old sophomore at Damien High, won the Auto Club Late Models Series race at Irwindale Raceway.

Grabowski overcame a shifting problem at the race’s start and took the lead with three laps to go when Scott Youngren’s car brushed the wall.

Joe Ruggles won the Grand American Modifieds Series race and Chris Johnson the Jasper Engines West Coast Pro Trucks Series race on the half-mile track.

Pro Football

Four months before he was killed in Afghanistan, Pat Tillman was told that he could opt out of extending his military service because NFL clubs were interested in him.

Tillman chose to stay in the Army Rangers, and on April 22, 2004, he was shot by a fellow U.S. soldier who mistakenly fired on a friendly Afghan soldier in Tillman’s unit. Other U.S. soldiers then fired in the same direction.

Tillman starred at Arizona State and was a starter for the Arizona Cardinals. He walked away from a $1.2-million-a-year contract to join the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In December 2003, when Tillman was back home from his initial tour overseas, in Iraq, his agent had begun fielding calls from teams interested in acquiring his client for the 2004 season.

“And they all said the same thing: ‘Frank, this kid can get out of it. He’s already served in a war. Just file his discharge papers,’ ” the agent, Frank Bauer, told the Arizona Republic.

He urged Tillman to consider seeking a discharge.

“He said ‘No, I’m going to stay. I owe them three years. I’ll do one more tour,’ ” Bauer said.

Keith Walters, a first lieutenant in a Phoenix-based Army Reserve unit, beat more than 5,200 other competitors in the inaugural Pat’s Run, a 4.2-mile race in Tillman’s memory in Tempe. Walters, 28, finished in 21 minutes 2 seconds, beating 17-year-old Dane Wood by 1:18. Arizona State’s Jessica Crate, 19, was the women’s winner in 24:13. She was 24th overall.

Miscellany

Knives, clubs and a banner were confiscated from fans entering AS Roma’s Serie A soccer game against Reggina, the first high-profile match since Italy adopted tougher steps to curb violence.

Two fans had knives confiscated, and a banner supporting hard-core fans -- or “ultras” -- was taken by police, the ANSA news agency reported. A police helicopter patrolled the stadium. Reggina won, 2-1.

At Messina’s game against Udinese in Sicily which Messina won, 1-0, ultra fans boycotted the first 15 minutes and entered the stadium late to protest police handling of fans during last weekend’s game against Palermo.

Brett McMillan’s single in the top of the eighth inning drove in the winning run and gave UCLA a 9-8 victory over UC Santa Barbara, ending the Bruins’ school-record 19-game losing streak.

Andy Kelly threw six touchdown passes to help the New Orleans VooDoo defeat the visiting Columbus Destroyers, 64-28, in an Arena League game.

Passings

Peter Cargill, a member of Jamaica’s 1998 World Cup soccer team, died Saturday in an automobile accident in Kingston, Jamaica. He was 41.