THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, MAY 1, 2007
SPORTS
NCAA BASKETBALL
7B
Jeff Roberson/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Majerus returns to coach SLU
Rick Majerus speaks during a news conference introducing him as the new basketball coach at Saint Louis University Monday in St. Louis. Majerus agreed to a six-year contract with the school, which hasn't been to the NCAA tournament since 2000, and comes to Saint Louis with a career record of 422-147 with 15 postseason appearances.
BY R.B. FALLSTROM ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST. LOUISE — Rick Majerus got out of coaching three years ago because of health concerns. Now his biggest worry is how long it'll take to put Saint Louis back on the basketball map.
Still round and nearly bald, the 59-year-old Majerus was introduced at a news conference Monday and thought his appearance "eerily" similar to the school's gnome-like Billiken mascot. He joked that his last name means "sausage eater," and said there was no chance of squeezing into the jersey that's standard for such ceremonies.
"It was nice to get the jersey" he said, "even if it doesn't fit."
Majerus said he feels fit and is ready to take on the challenge of leading a school that last made it to the NCAA tournament in 2000.
"I'm never going to wear a 42 regular," Majerus said. "But I swim one mile every day, and on a good day a mile-and-a-half. I think my health is good, or I wouldn't do this. It wouldn't be fair to them."
Majerius, who agreed to a six-year contract on Friday, has a career record of 422-147 with 15 postseason appearances. He had been an analyst with ESPN the last three years.
"I saw this as an opportunity," Majerus said. "I don't think I forgot how to do it. I love practice and I love the kids and I like the game."
The Rev. Lawrence Biondi, the university president, hired Majerus to elevate the school to Top 50 status. Neither Biondi nor Majerus believed there was a fast track to success.
"Rick, I am sure, will tell you it won't happen overnight," Biondi said. "But it will happen. This is a truly exciting day for men's basketball."
Majerus got a sneak peek at his team, which has four returning starters, by conducting a pair of brief weekend practices.
"I just don't know the guys well enough." Majerus said. "You don't
want to panic in these situations. It's not about this year, it's about laying the groundwork for the program."
If he doesn't know his roster yet, they know all about him.
"I think he's going to move the program in the right direction," said forward Luke Meyer. "He's a big name, and his reputation precedes him."
Majerus replaces Brad Soderberg, who won 20 games in the last of his five seasons but failed to generate even an NIT bid his last three years. Soderberg, fired earlier this month, was 80-74 overall.
Athletic director Chieryl Levick wanted to give Soderberg one more season but was overruled by Biondi, who envisioned the high-profile hire
of Majerus as a complement to the school's new $85 million on-campus arena set to open in 2008.
"I'm a big supporter of Brad, but that has nothing to do with Rick." Levick said. "He'll take this program to the next level as we open this new arena. It's the perfect combination."
Majerus coached Utah to the NCAA tournament final in 1998, losing to Kentucky, and stepped down in January 2004 because of health reasons. He accepted the Southern California position in December 2004 only to change his mind three days later.
Last year, he turned down an offer to become an assistant coach with the Denver Nuggets.
close friend of Majerus, said staying in the Midwest was a much wiser choice. Majerus has lived in Milwaukee, where his mother lives, while working for ESPN.
Nuggets coach George Karl, a
So far, so good. Fans and students attending Monday's news conference cheered wildly when Majerus entered the room.
"I don't think going to L.A. would have been the right choice, and I think he knew that — the press, the stress, talk radio."
"Today a new chapter in Billiken basketball begins with the hiring of one of the most successful coaches of all time," Biondi said. "Rick is a coach who lives and breaths basketball and who sees the future of what we have at SLU."
》 CRICKET
BY ANDREW O. SELSKY ASSOCIATED PRES$^c$
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The top Jamaican policeman investigating the homicide of Pakistan's cricket coach said on Monday he has not confirmed that Bob Woolmer was incapacitated by a drug before
being strangled.
An employee who answered the phone at the laboratory's headquarters in Birmingham, England, after business hours said nobody was available to comment.
The BBC's Panorama program did not identify the drug or the source of its information, and said toxicology tests were due
The British Broadcasting Corp.reported that a toxicology test on Woolmer's body shows the presence of a drug that would have incapacitated him.
"No results and we have NOT confirmed anything. Work is ongoing."
MARK SHIELDS
Jamaican deputy
police commissioner
Mark Shields, the deputy police commissioner in Jamaica, emphatically said his investigators have not concluded that Woolmer was drugged.
Woolmer, 58, was found unconscious in his room in Jamaica and within an hour declared dead in a hospital on March 18, the day after his squad was upset by Ireland and eliminated from the World Cup. Police said he was strangled.
Shields said toxicology tests were done in Jamaica and sent with British police officers to a government-owned laboratory in their country, The Forensic Science Service, to be "independently verified."
"No results and we have NOT confirmed anything," the former Scotland Yard policeman, Shields, said in a text message to The Associated Press from his cell phone. "Work is ongoing."
Shields has not yet heard back from the British laboratory. He would not discuss whether the toxicology tests indicated the presence of a drug that could have incapacitated Woolmer.
to be given to Jamaican police next week. In London, Scotland Yard said it has no information and that the investigation and all inquiries are being handled by police in Jamaica.
Shields has
said in the past that foreign investigators would examine theories that Woolmer may have been drugged. He said that would have made it easier to strangle a man as large as Woolmer, a former England test batsman.
"A lot of force would be needed to do that," Shields told the BBC. "Bob Woolmer was a large man and that's why one could argue that it was an extremely strong person, or maybe more than one person, but equally the lack of external injuries suggests that there might be some other factors and that's what we're looking into at the moment."
Security video from the Kingston hotel where Woolmer died was sent to a laboratory in Britain for review. Some images of the footage were obtained by the BBC.
One image shown on a BBC Web site showed Woolmer, dressed in a white T-shirt, talking with two people as he headed to an elevator in the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, hours before he was killed in his room. The BBC identified the two people as fans.
》 STEROIDS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Doctor pleads guilty to health fraud
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A former doctor will plead guilty to illegally
prescribing anabolic steroids and human growth hormone to patients she never met or examined, her lawyer said Monday.
Ana Maria Santi reached an agreement with prosecutors and
Santi, but Roy said he did not know what that would be. Santi also is awaiting sentencing in New York in a state case involving similar allege-
Prosecutors say Santi and other doctors were enlisted by Daniel McGlone ... to write prescriptions for bodybuilders and other customers from April 2004 until August 2006.
plans to plead guilty June 1 to 29 counts of health care fraud, conspiracy and illegal drug distribution in federal court in Providence, said her attorney, Edward C. Roy.
Prosecutors say Santi and other doctors were enlisted by Daniel McGlone, the president of New Jersey-based American Pharmaceutical Group, to write prescriptions for bodybuilders and other customers from April 2004 until August 2006.
"It's in her best interests." Roy said.
Santi, who was stripped of her New York medical license in 1999, forged the signature of a doctor living in a California nursing home on the prescriptions she wrote, prosecutors said. She is suspected of earning $25 for each prescription.
The plea agreement says Santi wrote prescriptions on behalf of at least three companies besides American Pharmaceutical Group.
tions.
The maximum prison sentence for all 29 counts is 155 years.
Prosecutors have agreed to recommend a reduced sentence for
Tom Connell, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Rhode Island, declined to comment on the
plea agreement.
McGlone is charged with adver
tising steroids and human growth hormone to bodybuilders and other customers and then paying doctors to write unnecessary prescriptions. He has披led not guilty.
Another doctor, Victor Mariani,
pleaded guilty in March for his role.
Prosecutors say that once McGleone received the prescriptions from Santi and Mariani, he would send them to be filled by other pharmacies, including Orlando, Fla.-based Signature Pharmacy.
Linked to that case, in various reports, are a number of sports stars, including baseball's Gary Matthews Jr., former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield and 1996 Olympic wrestling gold medalist Kurt Angle.
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