LUBBOCK, Texas — Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt interviewed former Kentucky basketball coach Billy Gillispie in Florida on Wednesday.
Red Raiders spokesman Blayne Beal said Hocutt, who took over the program this month, met with Gillispie in Palm Beach.
No announcement on Pat Knight‘s successor will be made until next week, Beal said. Gillispie, who also coached at Texas-El Paso and Texas A&M, was fired at Kentucky in 2009 after two seasons.
• Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton said he does not know if Bruce Pearl will be the Volunteers’ coach after this season.
Hamilton said he, chancellor Jimmy Cheek and school trustees will evaluate Pearl after the season ends. The ninth-seeded Volunteers play eighth-seeded Michigan on Friday in the NCAA Tournament.
• Former Duke standout Grant Hill is criticizing former Michigan star Jalen Rose for saying the Blue Devils “only recruited black players that were ‘Uncle Toms.’ ” Rose made the comments in a recent ESPN documentary about Michigan’s Fab Five, a class of talented freshmen in the early 1990s.
In a column that appeared on The New York Times’ website, Hill cautions his “fabulous five friends to avoid stereotyping me and others they do not know in much the same way so many people stereotyped them back then for their appearance and swagger.”
Hill, whose Duke team beat Michigan in the 1992 national title game, wrote that it’s a “sad” and “pathetic” turn of events to see friends disparaging black athletes at Duke.
NFL targets illegal hits.
The NFL will be more aggressive in suspending players next season for illegal hits, and also could make changes to instant replay and kickoffs.
Ray Anderson, the league’s chief disciplinarian, said repeat offenders or players committing flagrant illegal hits will have a much greater chance of being suspended during the 2011 season.
At next week’s owners meetings in New Orleans, the competition committee will propose moving the kickoff up to the 35-yard line, and bringing a touchback out to the 25. There would be no changes for touchbacks on any other plays, with the ball coming out to the 20.
Footnotes.
San Jose Sharks right winger Dany Heatley was suspended for two games without pay by the NHL on for elbowing Dallas’ Steve Ott in the head Tuesday night. The suspension will cost Heatley $80,645.
• The St. Louis Blues and the Scottrade Center were put up for sale.
• North Carolina released top five-star recruit Delvon Simmons from his national letter of intent, and the defensive lineman was considering Southern California and Oregon, among others.
• LSU women’s basketball coach Van Chancellor, who had a 90-40 record with the Lady Tigers, decided to step down and become a special assistant to athletic director Joe Alleva through the end of the 2011-12 academic year.
• Atlanta Braves minor-league manager Luis Salazar has lost his left eye after he was struck in the face by a line drive while watching a spring-training game March 9.
The Associated Press
