Sports Briefs

Hatchell signs a 4-year extension

CHAPEL HILL -- North Carolina has given Sylvia Hatchell, its women's basketball coach, a four-year contract extension through the 2014-15 season.

Hatchell will make an average of $330,000 during the next seven years, plus supplemental income averaging more than $65,000 a year. She will be entering her 23rd season at North Carolina in the fall, her 34th as a college coach and is 16 victories shy of 800 for her career.

Hatchell coached the Tar Heels to the NCAA championship in 1994.

Her team went 33-3 last season and won the ACC Tournament for the fourth year in a row.

Hatchell was mentioned as a candidate for the vacancy at South Carolina but withdrew from consideration in May, saying: "North Carolina is my home."

The extension amends the six-year contract that Hatchell signed in 2002 and had amended in 2006.

More basketball

■ Nearly a month since becoming a restricted free agent, Emeka Okafor is not close to a new deal with the Charlotte Bobcats.

Yet General Manager Rod Higgins said he remains confident that Okafor will remain a Bobcat.

Higgins said yesterday that talks haven't reached a stalemate. He said he's spoken to Okafor's agent, Jeff Schwartz, as recently as Thursday and said the team is not entertaining sign-and-trade offers for their starting big man.

Okafor, the Bobcats' first draft pick and the second selection in 2004, turned down Charlotte's offer last summer worth more than $12 million per season.

Okafor averaged 13.7 points and 10.7 rebounds a game last season, and led the team in blocked shots (1.7 per game) and field-goal percentage (53.5).

■ Ryan Hollins , a restricted free agent, has signed a one-year qualifying offer that will keep him with the Charlotte Bobcats. Hollins averaged 2.5 points and 1.8 rebounds in 60 games last season.

■ Elmer Martin Jr., who played on Arkansas' 1994 NCAA championship basketball team, received a 15-year prison term after pleading guilty to drug charges in Fayetteville, Ark.

Martin pleaded guilty to delivery of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, possession of drug paraphernalia and misdemeanor marijuana possession, deputy prosecutor David Harris said. Martin, 36, was sentenced to 30 years with 15 suspended.

College football

■ Coach Phillip Fulmer of Tennessee said that a subpoena for his testimony in a lawsuit stemming from a decade-old Alabama recruiting scandal is aimed at distracting him from the coming season. Fulmer was in Birmingham, Ala., on Thursday when he got the subpoena to provide testimony in Wendell Smith's lawsuit against the NCAA.

Fulmer issued a statement calling the incident a publicity stunt and said he won't let it divert his attention from football. Smith, a former Alabama booster, is suing the NCAA for defamation, claiming it and several members of the infractions committee slandered him in accusing him of providing money to a high-school recruit.

■ Coach Bobby Bentley of Presbyterian shuffled some staff members yesterday, moving operations director B.J. Connolly to defensive-line coach to fill the spot previously held by Reuben Wright and making tight-ends coach Brandon Sarver the team's video coordinator. Sarver spent the past five seasons working at Wake Forest.

■ Florida was picked to win the Eastern Division, and Auburn was favored in the Western Division yesterday in the Southeastern Conference's preseason media poll. Following Florida were Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky and Vanderbilt. In the West, it was Auburn, LSU, Alabama, Mississippi State, Mississippi and Arkansas.

■ Football coaches in the Big South yesterday picked Liberty as the favorite to repeat as the conference champion. Liberty received 12 of 13 votes to finish ahead of Coastal Carolina, Gardner-Webb, Stony Brook, Charleston Southern and VMI.

Stony Brook will join the conference as a football-only member this fall.

■ Kenny Kelly, a former quarterback at Miami, has been charged with three third-degree felonies -- possession of marijuana and purchase and solicitation to deliver marijuana -- in Plant City, Fla. The charges stem from a five-month investigation resulting in dozens of arrests.

Kelly led the Hurricanes to a Gator Bowl win over Georgia Tech in 1999 and then played baseball after college, reaching the majors in 2000 and 2005 with Tampa Bay, Cincinnati and Washington. At the time of his arrest, he was the quarterbacks coach at Plant City High.

Ice hockey

■ The Nashville Predators signed center Rich Peverley to a two-year deal and goaltender Pekka Rinne to a one-year contract extension yesterday. Peverley will be paid $475,000 at the NHL level and $100,000 at the minor-league level in the first year of the contract.

■ The Colorado Avalanche signed forward Marek Svatos to a two-year contract, avoiding arbitration yesterday. Svatos scored 26 goals last season despite missing the final 16 games with a torn knee ligament and tied for the club lead with six game-winning goals.

Miscellaneous

■ Megan Jessee, a former goalkeeper at Connecticut, has joined the women's soccer staff at Wake Forest as an assistant, Coach Tony da Luz announced yesterday.

Jessee, who will be the Deacons' goalkeeper coach, was a graduate assistant at Slippery Rock last season and also coached in Connecticut's Olympic Development Program. She was a four-year letterwinner at UConn and second-team All-Big East in 2004.

■ Danish cyclist Michael Rasmussen plans to appeal a ruling by a Dutch court ordering his former employer to pay him only $1 million in compensation for last year's wrongful dismissal.

Rasmussen told the Danish news agency Ritzau yesterday that he would challenge the July 2 ruling by the court in the Dutch city of Utrecht, which fell far short of the $8.5 million he had asked for in compensation from Rabobank, a Dutch team.

Rasmussen was ousted from last year's Tour de France by Rabobank amid doping suspicions; he was leading the Tour at the time.

■ NBA star Steve Nash said yesterday he will invest in the Vancouver Whitecaps' bid to buy a Major League Soccer franchise. The Whitecaps are currently a Canadian pro team in the United Soccer League's first division. They're bidding to join MLS in 2011.

Nash said he will not be a majority owner but will put a significant amount of money toward the project, joining current owner Greg Kerfoot. An MLS franchise will cost at least $30 million.