Madison, Wis. – The Wisconsin Badgers hired former Colorado assistant coach Mike Hankwitz as defensive coordinator, new football coach Bret Bielema announced Sunday.
Hankwitz worked the past two seasons as defensive coordinator and outside linebackers coach at Colorado. He served as Colorado’s interim head coach until Boise State coach Dan Hawkins permanently took over for Gary Barnett, who was forced to step down Dec. 8.
Hankwitz, previously a CU assistant under coach Bill McCartney, also has held coaching jobs at Arizona, Texas A&M, Kansas, Western Michigan and Purdue. He has coached in 15 bowl games and for seven conference championship teams in the past 18 years.
Southern California lost two more juniors to the NFL draft. All-America safety Darnell Bing and tackle Winston Justice informed the school they were leaving.
Florida State quarterback Wyatt Sexton has decided to quit football after sitting out the past season because of illness.
WINTER SPORTS
Rocca joins elite company, wins fifth consecutive slalom
Italian Giorgio Rocca won his fifth consecutive slalom race, joining Alberto Tomba, Ingemar Stenmark and Marc Girardelli as the only men to accomplish that feat in a single season.
Rocca finished with a combined time of 1 minutes, 42.28 seconds in Wengen, Switzerland.
Overall World Cup champion Bode Miller was 20th in the opening run. He switched to a different pair of skis and delivered the day’s fastest second run to finish in eighth place with a time of 1:43.67.
“I still felt really awkward, but at least I won the second run,” Miller said.
Rocca, who had 0.30 seconds to make up after the second run, fought back from fourth place to win.
American Ted Ligety, was third after the opening leg but dropped to fifth after committing several minor technical errors throughout his second run.
Three-time Olympian Janica Kostelic captured her first World Cup super-G in Bad Kleinkirchheim, Austria, becoming the first woman to claim wins in six disciplines on the skiing circuit.
Kostelic finished in 1 minute, 9.41 seconds on a demanding slope, 0.10 seconds ahead of Austrians Michaela Dorfmeister and Alexandra Meissnitzer, the season’s top two super-G racers who shared second.
Kirsten Clark of the United States was fourth in 1:09.63, for her best finish in more than two years.
Among her 24 World Cup wins, Kostelic has captured all five main disciplines, the giant slalom, downhill, slalom, super-G and combined. She also has a victory in the new super-combi race.
Hannu Manninen of Finland clinched his seventh World Cup victory of the season in nordic combined, beating Austrians Mario Stecher and Felix Gottwald in a 7.5-kilometer event in Predazzo, Italy.
Pierre Lueders of Canada won his second straight World Cup bobsled event in a four-man race.
Lueders, who won the two-man race, teamed with Ken Kotyk, Morgan Alexander and Lascelles Brown to finish in a combined time of 1 minute, 37.26 seconds in Koenigsee, Germany. The Canadian quartet set the track record on the first run with a time of 48.42 seconds.
Todd Hays of the United States was fourth after the first run but finished second as his unit clocked 1:37.46. Rene Spies of Germany took third in 1:37.57.
FOOTNOTES
U.S. basketball opens with Puerto Rico
The U.S. team led by LeBron James will face Puerto Rico at the world basketball championships in August, providing a chance to avenge its lopsided loss at the Athens Olympics.
The opening game Aug. 19 in Sapporo, Japan, will be a rematch of a 92-73 loss to Puerto Rico at the 2004 Olympics. That opening-game loss marked only the third Olympic defeat for the Americans, and first since adding professional players.
Sunday’s draw put the top-seeded U.S. team in Group D along with Slovenia, Italy, China and Senegal.
Haile Gebrselassie shattered the world half marathon record by 21 seconds while running the last half of the Rock ‘N’ Roll Arizona marathon in Tempe, Ariz.
He also broke the 20-kilometer world mark en route. His half marathon time of 58 minutes, 55 seconds on a clear day broke the mark of 59:16 set by 18-year-old Kenyan Samuel Wanjiru in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, last Sept. 11.
His 20-kilometer time, also officially clocked, was 55:48. That broke the world record held by his longtime rival, Paul Tergat of Kenya, of 56:18 set in the Stramilano, Italy, half marathon April 4, 1998.
French driver Luc Alphand won the Dakar Rally after finishing the final non-timed leg of the race in Senegal.
Alphand led heading into the final stage, which race organizers said would not be timed to honor two boys killed during the race.
Alphand, a former ski champion, was clocked at 53 hours, 47 minutes, 32 seconds at the end of Saturday’s penultimate stage. He was 17:53 ahead of Giniel de Villiers of South Africa and 1:50:38 ahead of Nani Roma of Spain.
The Cincinnati Reds agreed to one-year contracts with outfielder Wily Mo Peña and catcher Javier Valentin, avoiding arbitration with both players.
