Badgett

COLLEGE PARK -- When his uncle asked him if he wanted to go to Pitt, Dan Prunzik shrugged. He hadn't heard a word from Pitt's recruiters. No, don't bother to put in a good word.His uncle, Frank Gustine, is a Pitt alumnus, a quarterback who played for the Panthers in the late 1960s. When Prunzik was growing up in Pittsburgh, Uncle Frank took him to the school's football and basketball games."We used to go in the locker room and meet all the players," Prunzik said. "I grew up a Pitt fan. I loved Pitt."

COLLEGE PARK -- He is following in the footsteps of James Milling, Ferrell Edmunds, Barry Johnson and Gene Thomas.Marcus Badgett is now Maryland's big-play performer.It's a title he cherishes."I admit, I kind of like it," said Badgett, a 6-foot-1, 185-pound senior wide receiver.Badgett has picked up where he left off last season. He's making diving catches. He's leaping over defenders, snatching one-handed passes with those long, skinny fingers. He's going over the middle, turning short slant-ins into long gainers.

ELMONT, N.Y. -- "I hear McAnally's horse worked pretty fast," Jack Van Berg said around his breakfast chicken wings.Everybody at Belmont Park had heard that the champion mare Bayakoa, trained by Ron McAnally, worked fast in her final exercise before the $1 million Breeders' Cup Distaff on Saturday. In gossipy racetrack tradition, they were suggesting she worked too fast for her own good."I told [jockey Aaron] Gryder to let her do what she wants," McAnally said. She wanted to run: seven furlongs in 1:22 4/5, the kind of time that wins races.