Snatching a Tie From the Jaws of Victory

Four bodyboarders who had advanced to the final of last week’s T&C; Women’s Pipeline Pro at Banzai Pipeline on Oahu decided to share the prize money rather than compete.

A touching display of sportsmanship? Hardly. A seven-foot shark began thrashing the surface near the lineup as the final was about to get underway, forcing an ocean closure.

“I never saw bodyboarders paddle so fast toward the shore,” said Betty Dipolito, the contest director.

*

Trivia time: Bradley University, in the Sweet 16 for the first time in 51 years, has never won the NCAA tournament. How many National Invitation Tournament titles has the private school won?

*

Living proof: Ernie Ball, 95, the last surviving member of the first Masters in 1934 (then called the Augusta National Invitation Tournament), shared with Golf Digest the secret of growing old: “Have a good wife and a couple scotches every night.”

*

For what it’s worth: The website 82games.com lists the Nuggets’ Carmelo Anthony as the NBA’s best shooter in the final 24 seconds of a game, stating that in two-plus seasons he has made 10 of 16 game-winning or game-tying shots during that span.

His .625 percentage is more than twice the league average and far better than the .250 percentage (seven for 28) logged by the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant.

*

The perfect fruit? Mauli’a LaBarre, a middle blocker for the Hawaii men’s volleyball team, has gone bananas -- literally. His pre-match ritual is to consume seven bananas in 60 seconds.

“And it has to be Chiquita bananas, the long ones, not the Dole,” he told the Honolulu Advertiser.

Through Monday, with LaBarre as a starter, the Warriors had won 11 consecutive matches.

*

Blasphemy: Jim Moore of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was persuaded to attend church Sunday by his wife, who felt he was too caught up in the NCAA basketball tournament. “She obviously did not have Bradley and the points,” Moore lamented.

*

At peace: Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post writes that it’s good for the Broncos that Terrell Owens went elsewhere because his presence “would have made for the biggest freak show in Our Town since the days of the Elway Watch.

“How crazy did things get on that front?” Armstrong continued. “At one point, Dan Reeves looked up at the TV helicopters hovering over the field in Greeley and proclaimed, ‘It’s like ... Vietnam out here.’ ”

*

Fall guy: It doesn’t have to be March (or involve basketball) to be madness. The April issue of Men’s Journal reports how Australia’s Gary Cunningham spent New Year’s Eve day: parachuting from Malaysia’s 1,381-foot Kuala Lumpur Tower 133 times.

It’s a BASE-jumping record. It’s also 183,673 feet, or the equivalent of 6 1/2 Mt. Everests.

*

Trivia answer: Four, most recently in 1982.

*

And finally: From the apparently rotund Jerry Greene of the Orlando Sentinel: “The L.A. Angels list pitcher Bartolo Colon as weighing 250 pounds. Yeah, right. Me, too.”