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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Winters won’t return with WNBA’s Fever

The Spokesman-Review

Brian Winters is out as coach of the Indiana Fever after leading the team to the WNBA Eastern Conference finals for the second time in three years.

The Fever declined their option on Winters’ contract Friday. He was 78-58 in four seasons, with three playoff appearances.

“All I’ll say is, hey, I had one year left on the contract. It was an owner option,” Winters said. “They chose not to renew it. So I’ll move on and they’ll move on. I wish the Fever and the Pacers well. I enjoyed my four years there, but it’s time to move on.”

General manager Kelly Krauskopf said the decision to replace Winters, the most successful coach in the Fever’s eight-year history, was based on a desire “to go in a different direction.”

Indiana was 21-13 for the third straight season in 2007.

•Takais Brown, Georgia’s leading scorer last season who already was suspended for the first nine games this season, was dismissed from the team for breaking team rules.

Brown, a forward, led Georgia with 14.2 points per game last season.

•Nineteen-year-old William B. Holmes III, the gunman who wounded five Duquesne University basketball players after a school dance last year pleaded guilty in Pittsburgh and will spend up to 40 years in prison.

Tennis

Davydenko fined

Nikolay Davydenko, already at the center of a betting investigation, was fined $2,000 for lack of effort in a loss at the St. Petersburg (Russia) Open.

The ATP said the fourth-ranked Russian was fined for lack of “best effort” in his 1-6, 7-5, 6-1 loss to Marin Cilic on Thursday.

The top-seeded Davydenko won the first set in 27 minutes, but drew a rebuke from chair umpire Jean-Philippe Dercq in the third set. Davydenko double-faulted four times in the second set and six times in the third.

“When I made a double-fault, he gave me a notice for a wrong behavior on the court as if I was throwing the match,” Davydenko said. “I was surprised. I’ve never heard anything like this before.”

Miscellany

Lysacek falls, rebounds

U.S. figure skating champion Evan Lysacek crashed hard on his opening jump, a planned quadruple toe loop-triple toe loop combination, rallied nicely but finished a distant second to the dynamic Diasuke Takahashi in the men’s short program at Skate America in Reading, Pa.

Takahashi, with a hip-hop version of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake,” turned on the crowd with his jumps, spins and footwork. The judges certainly were impressed, too, at the first Grand Prix series event of the season, awarding the Japanese skater 80.04 points. Lysacek finished with 67.70.

•Light welterweight Javier Molina and bantamweight Gary Russell both advanced in the World Boxing Championships at Chicago.

•U.S. skier Bode Miller said he expects to compete in the season-opening World Cup race this weekend at Soelden, Austria, despite a back injury.

•North Dakota officials have three years to persuade Sioux tribes to support the Fighting Sioux nickname, under a settlement reached with the NCAA.