Sun Devils part ways with men’s coach Evans
Arizona State basketball coach Rob Evans won’t return for a ninth season.
The school made the announcement Friday, a few hours after the 59-year-old Evans had an hour-long meeting with athletic director Lisa Love.
Love didn’t say whether Evans had been fired or quit. She said the university would pay Evans for the final year of his contract. Evans spent eight seasons with the Sun Devils, compiling a 119-120 record.
ASU finished its season Wednesday night with a loss to Oregon State at the Pac-10 tournament in Los Angeles.
The Sun Devils finished the year with a losing record of 11-17, and Evans’ departure had been widely anticipated.
• Ohio State was placed on three years’ probation and ordered to erase all references to its 1999 trip to the Final Four and three other tournament appearances under former coach Jim O’Brien. The decision by the NCAA does not affect this season’s team, which is 24-4 and ranked seventh in the country.
GOLF
Mayfair leads at Honda
Billy Mayfair shot a bogey-free round of 67 and finished alone in second place at the Honda Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., one shot behind David Toms at the midway point.
•Annika Sorenstam shot a 5-under-par 67 in her first competitive round of the year to finish tied for the lead with Italy’s Silvia Cavalleri in the MasterCard Classic at Huixquilucan, Mexico.
Wendy Ward of Edwall, Wash., and Tracy Hanson of Rathdrum both shot 75s.
• Mitch Adcock shot a 5-under 67 to take the lead after the first round of the AT&T Classic Champions Tour event at Valencia, Calif., by one stroke over Ben Crenshaw and Jay Sigel.
MISCELLANY
Biffle wins Vegas pole
Greg Biffle won the pole for Sunday’s UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
•Iditarod musher Paul Gebhardt arrived first on the shores of the Yukon, the longest river in Alaska, before heading to the next checkpoint of Galena as several other mushers took their mandatory 24-hour breaks at the halfway point about 70 miles back.
• Leonard Scott ran the fastest time this year (6.50) to complete a U.S. sweep of the 60-meter sprints at the World Indoor Championship in Moscow.
•Olympic silver medalists Sasha Cohen, Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto head the U.S. team selected for this month’s World Figure Skating Championships in Calgary, Alberta.
•Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the United States won the bronze in ice dancing at the World Junior Figure Skating Championships in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
•Austrian Benjamin Raich won a men’s World Cup slalom event in Shiga Kogen, Japan, moving a step closer to his first overall title. American Ted Ligety was fifth.
•Janica Kostelic of Croatia won a World Cup slalom north of the Arctic Circle in Levi, Finland, finishing ahead of Olympic champion Anja Paerson of Sweden to close in on the overall title. American Lindsey Kildow was fourth.
•Four people were arrested in Germany’s latest game-fixing scandal as soccer authorities promise to resolve the case before the country hosts the World Cup beginning in June.