In brief: Balsillie won’t quit in quest for Coyotes

Hockey: Jim Balsillie seems to have as much determination as he does money.

The Canadian billionaire is not giving up his quest to buy the Phoenix Coyotes and move them to Hamilton, Ontario, despite the rejection of his bid by a U.S. bankruptcy judge.

While the NHL praised Judge Redfield T. Baum’s decision and says it is pursuing a buyer who would keep the team in Arizona, Balsillie’s representative Richard Rodier painted the ruling as nothing more than a minor setback.

“The process ebbs and it flows,” Rodier said in a conference call on Tuesday. “This is a bit of an ebb, but so what? It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.”

Rodier said Balsillie would either amend his bid or submit a new one, pending talks with Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes.

•Bruins extend GM Chiarelli: Peter Chiarelli inherited a Boston Bruins team that had the NHL’s fifth-worst record and needed only three seasons to build a club that finished second-best.

Now he has five more years to try to put together a Stanley Cup champion.

Boston’s general manager received a four-year extension on top of the one season remaining on his original four-year deal after what he and the team called smooth negotiations.

Prince will skip senior season at Rutgers

Women’s basketball: Rutgers star Epiphanny Prince is skipping her senior season to play professionally in Europe.

Prince said she has not signed with an agent or chosen a team. She plans to enter the 2010 WNBA draft.

Prince averaged more than 19 points last season as a junior and was a third-team All-American. She guided Rutgers to the regional semifinals of the NCAA tournament last season.

•Appel has another surgery: Stanford star Jayne Appel has undergone left knee surgery for the second time in less than a year.

The 6-foot-4 Appel, a second-team All-America selection, averaged 16.1 points and 9.2 rebounds during her junior season.

Viewership slips for NBA Finals

NBA: Television ratings for the NBA Finals were down from last year.

The five games on ABC between the Los Angeles Lakers and Orlando Magic averaged an 8.4 rating. That’s down close to 10 percent from last season’s 9.3 for the six-game Lakers-Celtics series, which was boosted by Boston’s large market and traditional rivalry with LA.

•O’Brien invites Bryant: Kobe Bryant is going to visit the “Tonight Show” with Conan O’Brien today.

Bryant led the Los Angeles Lakers to their 15th NBA championship on Sunday with a five-game victory over the Orlando Magic.

Earlier today, Bryant will join the rest of the Lakers at a victory parade and rally from Staples Center to the Coliseum in Los Angeles.

Hamilton receives eight-year ban

Olympics: Olympic champion Tyler Hamilton received an eight-year ban from cycling, all but ending his drug-tainted career after he admitted to taking a steroid.

The penalty handed down by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency came two months after Hamilton acknowledged taking an herbal product to combat depression, knowing it included a steroid.

“There’s nothing to fight about,” Hamilton said in an April interview with the Associated Press.

This was Hamilton’s second anti-doping violation. At age 38, an eight-year ban for Hamilton is effectively a lifetime ban, said Travis Tygart, the CEO of USADA.

•Group campaigns against Chicago’s bid: A group opposing Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Summer Games took its case to International Olympic Committee headquarters at Lausanne, Switzerland.

Three activists from the No Games Chicago organization sought a meeting with IOC president Jacques Rogge and a chance to address more than 90 IOC members at a key meeting today for Chicago’s bid campaign.

Marshall says adieu to Broncos fans

Miscellany: Brandon Marshall is saying his good-byes to the Denver Broncos and their fans even as coach Josh McDaniels talks about seeing his holdout Pro Bowl receiver at training camp next month.

Marshall posted a farewell on his blog, four days after requesting a trade during a private meeting with team owner Pat Bowlen.

•NCAA approves release of letter: The NCAA is allowing Florida State to release a version of its letter to the school on a disciplinary case resulting from an academic cheating scandal, officials said.

The school must first retype the report from a computer format and redact names, Florida State general counsel Betty Steffens said.

The letter details the NCAA’s response to Florida State’s appeal of sanctions resulting from the cheating. The school would be stripped of wins in 10 sports, including football. That would seriously hurt Bobby Bowden’s bid to become college football’s all-time winningest coach.

•Kuznetsova loses in first round: French Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova lost in the first round of the grass-court tournament at Eastbourne, England, falling 6-0, 6-3 to Aleksandra Wozniack of Canada.