THE UNIVERSITY DIARY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16.2008
SPORTS
9B
COLLEGE BASKETBALL
Former KU player to coach at USF
Former NBA player and Florida Atlantic coach Rex Walters holds up a jersey with University of San Francisco Athletic Director Debra Gore-Mann. Gore-Mann introduced Walters as the new San Francisco men's basketball coach at a news conference in San Francisco Monday.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BY JOSH DUBOW ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN FRANCISCO San Francisco lured former NBA player Rex Walters away from Florida Atlantic to take over its struggling basketball program.
"The University of San Francisco is a national name and we need to be a national basketball program," Walters said. "The challenge of that really excited me."
Walters, who had a 31-33 record in two seasons for the Owls, was formally introduced at a news conference Monday.
Walters takes over for Jessie Evans, who was forced to take a leave of absence in the middle of last season and then was fired last month. Eddie Sutton took over the program on an interim basis for the remainder of the season as the Dons finished 10-21 in their third straight losing season.
USF has struggled in recent years to compete with West Coast Conference power Gonzaga, and has also fallen behind Saint Mary's, San Diego and Santa Clara in recent years in the conference.
Walters said his goal is "to hang banners" at a school that won NCAA titles in 1955 and '56 with Bill Russell but has not been to the NCAA tournament since 1998.
Walters will be the third new coach in the eight-team WCC, joining Tom Asbury at Pepperdine and Bill Bayno at Loyola Mountaint.
"There's something special here. There's something special about the city," Walters said. "I told the guys they will all come in with a blank slate. I don't worry so much about what happened in the past. I'm here to talk about USF basketball today and in the future."
Walters inherits a roster led by Dior Lowhorn, who was No. 1 in the WCC in scoring at 20.5 points per game last season.
Walters spent one year as an assistant at Florida Atlantic before taking over the program when Matt Doherty left to coach SMU. The Owls went 16-15 in Walters' first season, before falling to 15-18 this season. Walters previously spent two years as an assistant at
Valparaiso.
Walters began his college career at Northwestern. He transferred to Kansas and played his final two college seasons under Roy Williams. Walters averaged 15.6 points per game with the Jayhawks, helping
the team reach the Final Four in 1993.
Walters said he wouldn't be where he was if not for the time he spent with Williams. He also thanked some of his NBA coaches, Chuck Daly, Larry Brown and Pat
Riley, for helping his progress.
Walters was selected 16th overall by New Jersey in the 1993 NBA draft and played seven seasons for the Nets, Philadelphia and Miami. He averaged 4.6 points per game in his career.
NFL
Broncos move Williams again
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — D.J. Williams is used to moving around
the Denver Broncos defense, but he hopes this latest move sticks.
Williams has played all three linebacker positions in his four-year career, and for 2008 he is going from middle linebacker back to the weak
"I already feel like a knockaround guy, like hey, we can put him here, we can throw him there."
side, a position he played through college and in his rookie year of 2004.
"If I would have played (weak side) every year here, this would be my ninth year playing (it) because I played it all through college,"
"I enjoyed playing (middle) last year, I had fun," he said. "I thought I caught on well at the end, but the team decided to move me back to (weak side), so that's what I'm doing."
D.J. WILLIAMS
Denver Broncos linebacker
"I haven't been happy about the movement, but I like the organization, I like the city," Williams said Tuesday at the Broncos' practice facility. "I understand why I had to move; it made the team better. Sometimes it's always not best for you."
Switching positions has been an every year occurrence for Williams, but it hasn't been easy.
Williams' size — he's listed at 6-foot-1, 242 pound's — made him a versatile guy in the Denver defense.
"I already feel like a little knockaround guy, like hey, we can put him here, we can throw him there," he said. "Just as long as I was successful at each position."
Williams moved to strong-side linebacker his second year, back to weak side in his third year and last year he moved to the middle. He said his best position is weak side, but by moving around he has made himself a valuable player.
he said. "A lot of things come second nature. But at the same time, the fact that I changed a lot of positions, it puts your value up. You're a guy who can be put anywhere."
Despite a strong statistical year in 2007, Williams feels he's better at
Williams' best game came at Oakland on Dec. 6 when he had 16 tackles, 12 unassisted, and recovered a fumble. In two games against the Raiders, Williams had 29 tackles.
weak side linebacker than at middle linebacker. Williams was second in the NFL in tackles with 170, 121 unassisted. He easily surpassed his previous high of 114, 82 unassisted, that he reached as a rookie.
MLB
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Frank Gramarossa, project executive for the new Yankee Stadium, removes a Boston Red Sox Jersey with the name of player David Ortiz from the ground at the new Yankee Stadium in New York. Sunday.
Worker attempts to curse Yankee stadium with jersey
BY KAREN MATTHEWS ASSOCIATED PRESS
After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the concrete Sunday and pulled it out.
The team said it learned that a Sox-rooting construction worker had buried a shirt in the new Bronx stadium, which will open next year across the street from the current ballpark, from a report in the New York Post on Friday.
NEW YORK — A construction worker's bid to curse the New York Yankees by planting a Boston Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled Sunday when the home team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot.
"The first thought was, you know, it's never a good thing to be buried in cement when you're in New York," Levine said. "But then we decided, why reward somebody who had really bad motives
Yankees President Randy Levine said team officials at first considered leaving the shirt there.
and was trying to do a really bad thing?"
On Saturday, construction workers who knew the employee, Gino Castignoli, phoned in tips about the shirt's location.
"We had anonymous people come tell us where it was, and we were able to find it," said Frank Gramarossa, a project executive with Turner Construction, the general contractor on the site.
Trost said the Yankees had discussed possible criminal charges against Castignoli with the district attorney's office.
On Sunday, Levine and Yankees CEO Lonn Trost watched as Gramarossa and foreman Rich Corrado finished the job and pulled the shirt from the rubble.
It took about five hours of drilling Saturday to locate the shirt under 2 feet of concrete, he said.
"We will take appropriate action since fortunately we do know the name of the individual," he said.
In shreds from the jackhammers, the shirt still bore the letters "Red Sox" on the front. It was a David Ortiz jersey, No. 34.