UNR basketball picked by coaches, media to win WAC

The UNR men's basketball team has been tapped by coaches and media to win the Western Athletic Conference title.

Seven of nine coaches picked UNR to win the title in the preseason poll released Tuesday.

In the media poll, the Wolf Pack received 20 first-place votes.

UNR sophomore guard Armon Johnson was selected by coaches as preseason Player of the Year.

Freshman forward Luke Babbitt, a former Galena High School standout, was picked by the media as Newcomer of the Year.

UNR shared the 2007 regular-season title with Boise State, Utah State and New Mexico State.

• LOUISVILLE -- Senior forward Terrence Williams, who averaged 11.1 points, 7.2 rebounds and 4.5 assists last season, injured his right knee in a pickup game and will be out four to six weeks.

Williams tore the medial meniscus in his right knee and will have surgery in the next few days, the school said in a statement.

• SETON HALL -- A federal judge in Providence, R.I., dismissed a lawsuit against the NCAA and Big East Conference filed by a former Seton Hall basketball recruit who was declared ineligible.

Michael Glover, a 6-foot-6-inch forward from the Bronx, N.Y., was ruled ineligible last fall after enrolling at Seton Hall, a member of the Providence-based conference.

He argued in a lawsuit in August that the NCAA never gave a reason for invalidating his entire senior year transcript from American Christian Academy in Pennsylvania.

FOOTBALL

• OHIO STATE -- Buckeyes defensive end Lawrence Wilson will undergo surgery for torn ligaments in his left knee and will miss the rest of this year.

Coach Jim Tressel announced Wilson's injury in his news conference Tuesday.

Wilson missed all of last season with a broken right leg.

The 6-4, 274-pound junior from Akron injured his knee in the Buckeyes' 16-3 victory over Purdue on Saturday.

He was the Buckeyes' sixth-leading tackler with 18, including 21/2 for loss with one sack.

• MIAMI -- Miami running back Javarris James is expected to play Saturday against Duke after missing four games with a high left ankle sprain.

James, the Hurricanes' first-string tailback entering the season, had 84 total yards and two touchdowns in a season-opening win against Charleston Southern. He got hurt after two carries for 4 yards the following week at Florida and hasn't played since.

• TOLEDO -- Two players arrested outside a bar just hours after the Rockets beat Michigan on Saturday will not start this weekend against Northern Illinois.

Wide receiver Nick Moore, who caught 20 passes for 162 yards in the 13-10 victory over the Wolverines, was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Police said the senior and team captain was involved in a fight.

Defensive end Albertson Alexandre was charged with obstructing official business, also a misdemeanor.

According to a police report, officers had to use mace to break up a rowdy crowd of about 40 people outside a Toledo bar Saturday night.

NCAA

• GRADUATION RATES UP -- NCAA president Myles Brand sees the progress.

College athletes are earning degrees at record rates, according to an NCAA report, and at higher percentages than the overall student body.

Brand, who has made academic reform his priority, was encouraged by new NCAA figures that show 79 percent of all student-athletes who entered school in the fall of 2001 have graduated and 78 percent of those who entered college between 1998 and 2001 earned degrees within six years. Both are one-point increases over last year's report and all-time highs.