Sales Gets 2 Cents Worth Over 2 Points

Connecticut guard Nykesha Sales, speaking publicly Thursday for the first time since the controversy over her breaking the school’s scoring record last month, said she was “amazed” at the amount of attention the matter had received.

“It all just got a little out of hand. It was just something we did for Connecticut,” Sales said after being named to the Kodak All-America team. “I even heard about it on the Miss USA Pageant.”

Sales, a 6-foot senior, ruptured her Achilles’ tendon late in the season, finishing two points shy of the career scoring record. Her coach, Geno Auriemma, arranged with Villanova coach Harry Perretta for Sales to score an uncontested layup at the beginning of the next game, touching off a furor over whether the act compromised the integrity of the game.

Survival training

Before Rick Majerus and Bill Guthridge began the first in a long line of official Final Four interviews the other day, they talked a little strategy.

Not about X’s and O’s, certain players or recruiting, though.

They talked about surviving.

“I’ve told Dean Smith, ‘I’d love to get through it like you guys do,”’ Majerus, the Utah coach, told Guthridge. “Everyone wants a ticket or a hotel room. I don’t know how you do it.”

For example, Stanford athletic director Ted Leland told the San Francisco Examiner that one man called the athletic ticket office and asked if he could buy 50 tickets for $500,000.

The answer was no.

Just win, and win some more

Stanford’s lack of prominence in men’s basketball and football - the Cardinal last reached the Final Four in 1942 and last played in the Rose Bowl in 1972 - obscures the fact that it wins in so many other sports.

Stanford won six NCAA championships last year - men’s and women’s tennis, men’s and women’s volleyball, and men’s and women’s cross country. It also had three runners-up, three third-place finishes, 16 teams in the top five, 19 in the top 10, and 23 in the top 20. So far this year, Stanford has won three NCAA titles. No school has won more NCAA team championships than Stanford over the last five years (21), 10 years (36) and 15 years (48).

Guthridge returns

North Carolina’s Bill Guthridge will become the sixth head coach to also have played in a Final Four.

Well, sort of, according to Guthridge.

“My role as a player in the Final Four was to sit on the bench,” Guthridge said of Kansas State’s appearance in 1958. “But I was there, and it was an exciting time.”

Guthridge paused, then added: “I had no role actually.”

Guthridge’s former boss, Dean Smith, played for Kansas in the 1952 and 1953 Final Fours and coached in 11 Final Fours.

Others who played and later coached are Bones McKinney, Bobby Knight, Dick Harp and Vic Bubas.

Guthridge is only the seventh rookie coach to reach the Final Four. Only one, Steve Fisher of Michigan in 1989, has won the championship.

Tennessee, Arkansas stand together

Of the more than 300 Division I NCAA schools, only a few still have separate athletic departments for both men and women. And two of them are in the women’s Final Four - Arkansas and Tennessee. The Vols believe it gives them a big advantage.

“We don’t have to wait behind anybody for services … strength training, weight training. We go first to our athletes,” said Debby Jennings, Tennessee’s assistant athletic director for media.

Money-spending fans

Businesses that cater to out-of-towners are expecting the Final Four to have a $13.9 million economic impact on the city of San Antonio.