Couldn’t someone warm up?

Call it rout 66.

The coach of a Japanese high school baseball team asked for a game to be halted this week with his team trailing, 66-0.

The starting pitcher for Kawamoto Technical High had needed more than 250 pitches . . . to record four outs.

His coach wanted the game stopped with one out in the bottom of the second inning to spare the pitcher’s arm. He had given up 26 runs in the first inning and 40 in the second.

“At that pace the pitcher would have thrown around 500 pitches in four innings,” the Kawamoto coach said, according to Reuters. “There was a danger he could get injured.”

Mercifully, the opposing Shunshukan team was officially credited with a 9-0 victory. No word on whether the Kawamoto coach plans to juggle his rotation.

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Trivia time

Shooting guard DeMar DeRozan’s arrival at USC this fall will give the Trojans McDonald’s All-Americans in consecutive seasons for only the second time in the basketball program’s history. Who was the school’s other pair of back-to-back McDonald’s All-Americans?

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No frills

Former Missouri basketball coach Quin Snyder’s fall from grace seemed complete earlier this month when the team he coaches in the NBA Development League had to share a practice facility with a group of homeless people waiting to shower in the gymnasium’s bathroom.

That was fine with Snyder, who departed Missouri midway through the 2005-06 season amid a losing record and allegations of impropriety that dogged the program.

“Basketball at its most basic is my love,” Snyder, who now coaches the Austin Toros, told ESPN.com’s Jeff Pearlman. “I don’t need fancy to feed my love of the game.”

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Too soon?

It’s apparently never too early for ESPN “bracketologist” Joe Lunardi to make NCAA men’s basketball tournament predictions.

Lunardi’s 2009 NCAA bracket features four Pacific 10 Conference teams, including seventh-seeded UCLA playing 10th-seeded Missouri in Dayton, Ohio, and ninth-seeded USC playing eighth-seeded Mississippi in Kansas City, Mo.

Lunardi also lists Maryland as one of the “last four out” teams. Based on what? Guard Greivis Vasquez’s inability to make the big shot in an April pickup game?

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Just weight

UC San Diego baseball Coach Dan O’Brien might be glad he’s not the biggest loser in a wager he made with his team before the season started.

O’Brien bet his players that he would lose more pounds than the Division II Tritons won games.

With 12 regular-season games remaining, the Tritons have already piled up 34 victories, three short of the school record. By comparison, O’Brien has lost only 15 pounds.

“Guess I picked the wrong year,” O’Brien told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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Trivia answer

Rodrick Rhodes was a McDonald’s All-American in 1992 and Avondre Jones in 1993.

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And finally

The academic pursuits of Chris Anthony, a New York Dragons wide receiver who plans to leave the Arena Football League for medical school next fall, apparently haven’t rubbed off on his teammates.

“Every time he has 15 minutes free, he has his face in his books,” quarterback Juston Wood told the New York Times. “It reminds me of how glad I am to be done with school.”

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ben.bolch@latimes.com