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College-Basketball Notebook: South Florida is new WNIT champion
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Published: April 5, 2009
■ South Florida 75, Kansas 71: Jazmine Sepulveda scored 18 points and Shantia Grace had 16, leading South Florida to a victory over Kansas yesterday in the WNIT finals in Lawrence, Kan., giving the school its first postseason championship of any kind.
Jessica Lawson added 13 points for South Florida, including a key free throw in the final minute as the Bulls (27-10) held off a late Kansas run and won their third game in three different states in six days. South Florida had to win three straight road games to win the tourney.
Danielle McCray had 24 points for Kansas (22-14) and pushed her tournament total to 147, a WNIT record.
The game attracted 16,113 fans, the largest home crowd for a women's game in Big 12 history. The Jayhawks averaged only 2,555 at home in the regular season.
The record crowd got a quick-paced, hard-fought game. In one furious possession in the first half, the Jayhawks missed four straight shots from point-blank range but each time got the offensive rebound. Finally, McCray got a put-back.
■ Oregon State 81, UTEP 73: Rickey Claitt was 5 of 6 on 3-point attempts and finished with a game-high 28 points for Oregon State, carrying the Beavers to a victory over UTEP in Game 3 of the College Basketball Invitational championship series on Friday night in El Paso, Texas.
Oregon State made 12 of 19 3-point shots for a 2-1 series win, which clinched its first postseason title in school history. Lathen Wallace added 13 and Roeland Schaftenaar scored 12 for the Beavers.
Stefon Jackson, the all-time leading scorer for UTEP (23-14) and Conference USA, led the Miners with 26 points. Arnett Moultrie added 19, and Randy Culpepper had 16.
Oregon State shot 56 percent from the field compared to 50 percent for the Miners.
Beavers coach Craig Robinson's team was 0-16 in the Pac-10 last season.
■ Duke senior Chante Black, for the second season in a row, has been named honorable mention All-America, which was released yesterday by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association at the Final Four in St. Louis, Mo.
Black helped lead the sixth-ranked Blue Devils to a 27-6 overall record and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Black, from Winston-Salem, finished the year averaging 14.2 points, 8.4 rebounds, 2.1 blocks, 1.5 assists and 1.4 steals. She grabbed 278 rebounds during her senior year, which ranks as the fourth-highest single-season total in school history.
The 10 members of the State Farm All-America team were Jayne Appel (Stanford), DeWanna Bonner (Auburn), Tina Charles (UConn), Marissa Coleman (Maryland), Jantel Lavender (Ohio State), Angel McCoughtry (Louisville), Renee Montgomery (UConn), Maya Moore (UConn), Courtney Paris (Oklahoma) and Kristi Toliver (Maryland).
■ Joe Callero was introduced Friday as Cal Poly's new coach, ending his eight-year tenure with Seattle University that included a winning season in its return to Division I competition.
Callero takes over a struggling program that finished 7-21 last season under Kevin Bromley, who left Cal Poly last month.
Callero was 117-105 at Seattle, including five winning seasons and a 13-8 record against Division I opponents last season. Callero coached the Redhawks to a 16-11 record in 2002-03, the school's first winning season in nine years.
Before coaching Seattle, Callero led Puget Sound to a 22-25 record in two seasons. In his second year, the team was 14-10, the first winning season in nine years.
■ Longtime assistant David Carter was promoted Friday to replace Mark Fox as Nevada's coach.
Carter, 42, has been an assistant at Nevada since then-coach Trent Johnson hired him in 1999. He was elevated to associate head coach in 2004 when Johnson was hired by Stanford and Fox took over.
Nevada has posted six consecutive 20-win seasons and seven straight postseason appearances, four in the NCAA tournament.
The terms of Carter's five-year contract were not immediately released.
Fox told reporters during the announcement of his hiring at Georgia on Friday morning that he expected Carter to get the job. Fox also announced that he is taking assistant coach Kwanza Johnson with him to Georgia.
Carter also served as an assistant at Eastern Washington and Saint Mary's, where he played in the late 1980s and was inducted into the school's athletic hall of fame.
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