Football
Associated Press 17y

Knight takes a walk on the funny side

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Bob Knight certainly remembered his
dry sense of humor when packing for the NCAA tournament.

The Texas Tech coach was in postseason form during his news
conference Wednesday, stubbornly refusing to recount his memories
of his last NCAA visit here -- which included a long walk from the
arena to the team hotel after a loss. He also covered a range of
topics in typical Knight fashion, from expanding the 65-team field
to officiating and the NBA age-limit rule.

When asked about why he walked back to the hotel after Indiana's
80-62 loss to Colorado in the 1997 tournament here, Knight said,
"I like to walk. You don't have a law in North Carolina against
Yankees walking, do you?"

But the highlight came when Knight began a playful verbal joust
with Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe after the reporter tried to ask a
question.

"Where in the hell did you get that tan?" Knight asked.

Ryan responded that he had been in Florida covering the St.
Louis Cardinals during spring training, then tried to ask Knight
what he liked most about his team. Knight responded by asking Ryan
what he liked best about the Cardinals.

"Albert Pujols," Ryan said of the all-star first baseman.

The response appeared to catch Knight off guard.

"That's a brilliant answer for a writer, I want to tell you
that," he said. "You kind of stuck it in me with that answer. I
didn't think you could come up with anything that was that good."

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^COLLISON READY:@ UCLA point guard Darren Collison deemed
himself ready for the NCAA tournament Wednesday and hit the
practice floor in Sacramento nearly full speed, a day after
spraining his left ankle.

"It's nothing severe," said Collison, who sat out a game last
month at West Virginia with a shoulder injury. "I'm all right. I
just rolled it on somebody's foot. It's just a normal, routine
injury that everybody has when you're playing ball. I've been
playing with this injury throughout my whole career."

The second-seeded Bruins (26-5), two-time defending Pac-10
champions, open against No. 15-seed Weber State on Thursday at Arco
Arena -- the team's first game since a surprising 76-69 overtime
loss to California in the quarterfinals of the Pac-10 tournament
last week.

Collison, who has been receiving treatment on the ankle that he
hurt in practice Tuesday, is a sophomore averaging 12.6 points, 6
assists and 2.3 rebounds per game.

Coach Ben Howland held Collison out of a shootaround earlier
Wednesday as a precaution.

"We expect him to play," Howland said. "He's tough. He has
the heart of a lion."

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^PROUD PAPA:@ John Thompson spent 27 years as coach at
Georgetown, coaching star players like Patrick Ewing while winning
a national championship in 1984. Now he's reveling in the success
of his son, John III, who has Georgetown in the NCAA tournament as
a No. 2 seed.

Even if the elder Thompson admits getting a little too excited.

"I do scream at the television and I am all emotional about
it," Thompson said with a laugh. "That's why I sit most of the
time way up in the balcony when I go to the games because I can
talk to myself and talk to him and he doesn't have to hear me."

Thompson won 596 games at Georgetown, but don't expect any
return to coaching -- even if the NCAA tournament gets his heart
pumping.

"It's part of your lifestyle," he said. "I get excited about
the games but I don't miss the practices. I think there's always a
little special adrenaline flowing when you see the games, the
excitement, the bands, the referees start to blow their whistle and
you start to call them all dirty names. All that part is fun. But
in the same token, it's John's time."

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^BACK IN ACTION:@ A nearly two-week layoff has been far too long
for Duke freshman guard Gerald Henderson's liking.

Henderson, suspended one game for a flagrant foul that broke the
nose of North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough on March 4, will return
to play with the Blue Devils on Thursday when they face Virginia
Commonwealth in the first round of the NCAA tournament in Buffalo.

"I'm anxious to get back out there and play a game with the
guys," said Henderson, who spoke with reporters Wednesday for the
first time since he was suspended. "It was an unfortunate incident
and there's nothing we can do about it now. The NCAA tournament is
our focus."

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said the injury to Hansbrough was
unintentional.

"He's gotten attention that you wouldn't want to have for a
player," Krzyzewski said. "I've tried to make sure that I was
there for him because I didn't think he did anything
intentionally."

Henderson said he called Hansbrough the day before the ACC
tournament began last week to apologize, and both players consider
the incident closed.

"We're both moving forward," Henderson said.

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^BOOMER'S SCARE:@ Belmont center Boomer Herndon calls his return
to basketball a miracle.

Herndon was hospitalized last summer after complaining of
headaches and a fever, and when puzzled doctors took X-rays of
nearly his entire body, they discovered a baseball-sized mass in
his chest and feared the worst -- cancer.

A biopsy revealed the mass was non-cancerous, which might have
been caused by eating something -- maybe a tiny, inadvertent fish
bone during a trip to Taiwan -- that punctured his esophagus and
became infected.

"Even though they didn't take the mass out or anything like
that, my symptoms just totally, miraculously, stopped," Herndon
said.

Herndon recovered well enough to average 10.9 points and 5.1
rebounds and lead the Bruins to their second straight NCAA
tournament appearance. Belmont plays Georgetown in Winston-Salem,
N.C.

"To get that call that they thought he had cancer worried us a
lot," teammate Josh Goodwin said. "To find out that it was OK and
he was going to be fine, that took a load off us."

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^PLAYING NEITZEL:@ Coach Tom Izzo has no regrets about moving
Drew Neitzel to shooting guard.

Michigan State's ambidextrous scoring threat shifted from point
guard this season and averaged 18.1 points, leading the Spartans to
the No. 9 seed in the East Region and a first-round game against
Marquette in Winston-Salem, N.C.

"I've enjoyed the change and the challenge of becoming the No.
1 scoring option," Neitzel said. "I still don't see myself as a
shooting guard -- I think I'm more of a lead guard."

Neitzel started all 34 games at the point last season and
averaged 5.9 points while taking about eight fewer shots per game
than this season.

Neitzel "is averaging 18 a game, he's a candidate for the
Wooden Award. He better quit complaining and realize that he's
pretty lucky," Izzo joked.

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^COUNTING ON EXPERIENCE:@ Oral Roberts is hoping that playing a
tough nonconference schedule will take the Golden Eagles deep into
the NCAA tournament.

They have played Arkansas, Georgetown, Seton Hall, Brigham
Young, and Kansas. Oral Roberts is ready to use that experience
against Washington State in the first round of the NCAA tournament
Thursday.

"We thought a tough schedule would help us in the postseason,"
Oral Roberts senior Ken Tutt said. "The younger guys have now been
in games with a tough atmosphere. Beating Kansas has given us the
confidence that we know we can beat anybody when we play our
game."

Oral Roberts upset then-No. 3 Kansas 78-71 on Nov. 15 in
Lawrence. The Golden Eagles failed to do the same at Georgetown --
losing 73-53 -- and Arkansas -- 68-56 -- though the experience served
as an added incentive going into the Mid-Continent Conference. The
Golden Eagles were 7-6 before conference play and finished with a
23-10 overall record.

"I like to play the best because that is how you become the
best," senior forward Caleb Green said. "When we got through with
our nonconference schedule we knew we wouldn't see any teams that
were better than what we had already faced."

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AP Sports Writers Joedy McCreary, Janie McCauley and John Kekis
contributed to this report.

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