Kentucky's Calipari lands coveted recruit

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- DeMarcus Cousins, a highly touted power forward, has signed a national letter of intent to play at Kentucky, the first one secured by new Coach John Calipari.

Cousins had previously committed to play for Calipari at Memphis, but now is joining the Wildcats since Calipari was named earlier this month to replace Billy Gillispie.

Rivals.com has ranked Cousins, a senior from Mobile, Ala., as the top power forward in the country. He averaged 26 points and 12 rebounds this year in leading his high-school team to the state semifinals.

Along with Cousins, Kentucky announced that Jon Hood of Madisonville, Ky., and Daniel Orton of Oklahoma City as members of the signing class.

More recruiting

■ UNC Greensboro added a top prospect to its basketball program yesterday with the signing of Kyle Randall, a 6-0 point guard from Kennedy Catholic High in Hermitage, Pa.

Randall, rated No. 30 among point guards in the Class of 2009 by ESPN and Scouts Inc., was the Class A player of the year in Pennsylvania this past season after averaging 26.5 points and 5.5 assists. He was the leading scorer in Pennsylvania as a junior (26.5 ppg) and set school and Mercer County career records with 2,022 points.

The NCAA signing period for basketball opened yesterday and will close May 20.

More basketball

■ Tony Bennett, the new men's coach at Virginia, has filled out his staff, hiring Ron Sanchez and Jason Williford as assistants and Brad Soucie as the director of operations.

Sanchez spent the past three seasons as an assistant to Bennett at Washington State. Williford, a former Virginia player, has been an assistant for nine seasons, the past four at American under Jeff Jones. Soucie was a longtime assistant to Ritchie McKay at Liberty and follows McKay, the first assistant Bennett hired, to Virginia.

■ Gonzaga forward Austin Daye will make himself available for the NBA Draft, but will not hire an agent and thus leave open his option of returning to school.

Daye averaged 12.7 points and 6.8 rebounds as a sophomore.

Other players who announced yesterday that they will enter the draft but will not hire agents were point guard Jeremy Wise of Southern Mississippi, swingman Damion James of Texas and forward Patrick Patterson of Kentucky a Wise and James are juniors; Patterson is a 6-9 sophomore.

Wise averaged 16.9 points and 4.69 assists this past season. James averaged 15.4 points and ranks third in Texas history with 968 rebounds. And Patterson averaged 17.9 points and 9.3 rebounds.

■ Isiah Thomas will work for free in his first season as the men's basketball coach at Florida International.

At his introductory news conference yesterday, Thomas said that he would donate his salary -- between $200,000 and $300,000, according to the school -- for the first year back to FIU's athletics department. He was fired last year as coach of the New York Knicks, and the team still owes him about $12 million.

Athletics Director Pete Garcia of FIU said that when Thomas learned about layoffs and budget cuts, he told the university president that the school should keep his salary. Thomas said he took the job because he enjoys challenges.

■ Georgetown said that sophomore guard Omar Wattad will transfer after this semester.

Wattad averaged 2.6 points and 1.4 rebounds this past season for Georgetown, which was ranked as high as No. 9 by The Associated Press but lost 12 of its last 16 games to finish 16-15.

■ Geno Auriemma, introduced yesterday as the coach of the U.S. women's basketball team through the 2012 Olympics, said he will also continue to coach his Connecticut women's team.

Auriemma said that the only difference in his schedule will be no longer having any time off.

■ Coach Andy Kennedy of Mississippi is nearing a resolution on a misdemeanor assault charge against him in Cincinnati. Kennedy wants to avoid a trial, and his attorney Mike Allen said in a phone interview with The Associated Press yesterday that "the case will be resolved." Allen would not confirm a report that there will be a plea deal made Monday.

Kennedy faces up to six months in jail if convicted of punching a cab driver Dec. 18 while his team was in Cincinnati to play Louisville.

■ Gene Bartow, a former men's coach at UCLA and Alabama-Birmingham, has stomach cancer and is scheduled to start outpatient treatment at the Kirklin Clinic in Birmingham, Ala., next week.

Bartow, now 78, succeeded John Wooden as UCLA's coach in 1976 and led the Bruins to the Final Four then left after two seasons to start UAB's program. He is now the president of the company that owns the Memphis Grizzlies and is to be inducted in the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in November.

Miscellaneous

■ Twin sisters Donna Christy and Sondra Christy Wilson will be inducted into the Greensboro College Athletics Hall of Fame on Saturday, and Freddy Johnson, the boys basketball coach and athletics director at Greensboro Day School, will receive the college's professional-achievement award.

The Christy sisters, graduates of Northwest Guilford High and 1988 graduates at Greensboro, were multi-sport stars. Donna played basketball, softball and volleyball and is among the school's career leaders in seven categories in basketball. Sondra played volleyball and tennis and was all-conference in both sports.

Graham Andrews (golf), Dayna DeFalco (tennis) and Richard Ronemus (soccer) also will be inducted, along with the 1985 men's basketball and men's tennis teams.

■ Bethanie Mattek-Sands will make her Fed Cup debut next weekend when the United States plays the Czech Republic in a semifinal match on indoor carpet at Rondo Arena in Brno. Another Fed cup rookie, Alexa Glatch, will join teenager Melanie Oudin and No. 1-ranked doubles player Liezel Huber as other members of the U.S. team announced yesterday by captain Mary Joe Fernandez.

No. 25-ranked Iveta Benesova will lead the Czech team, which also includes No. 45 Petra Kvitova, No. 49 Lucie Safarova and doubles specialist Kveta Peschke, for the matches April 25-26.

■ The Wake Forest men's soccer team will close its spring exhibition season at 4 p.m. Friday with a match against Maryland at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., playing the opener of a doubleheader. D.C. United and the New England revolution, featuring former Deacons Wells Thompson and Pat Phelan, will play at 7 p.m. in a regular-season MLS match.

■ The home arena of the NHL's Boston Bruins and NBA's Boston Celtics will have a shorter name starting in July. Delaware North, owner and operator of the facility now known as the TD Banknorth Garden, said in a statement yesterday that the arena will be known as the TD Garden.

■ The University of Maine, scrambling to ease a projected $871,000 shortfall in its athletics budget, is suspending its women's volleyball and men's soccer programs as of June 30, moves that are expected to save about $600,000 the first year and more than $900,000 a year after that. Maine offers 12 scholarships in women's volleyball and 7½ in men's soccer and said that it will honor the scholarships to players who want to continue working toward degrees.

■ Broadcaster Merle Harmon, who in a career bning more than 40 years called professional and college sports for NBC and ABC, died yesterday after a long illness. He was 82.

Harmon's son, Keith Harmon, who works with the Milwaukee Brewers radio network, said his father had been hospitalized for a couple of weeks and died from complications stemming from pneumonia.

■ Justin Gatlin, a former Olympics 100-meter champion who was suspended for the 2008 Beijing Games, has reached an out-of-court settlement with the U.S. Olympic Committee, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, USA Track & Field and the International Association of Athletics Federations.

He sued the groups in federal court, saying his rights were violated under the Americans with Disabilities Act and that he was discriminated against because his first of two doping violations, in 2001, was for taking prescribed medication to treat attention-deficit disorder. Gatlin's attorney said yesterday that the settlement documents are not final.