Dancy

California Cougars Coach -- Bernie Lilavois Last season -- 7-23, 11 games behind Outlook -- The Cougars were a mess, beset by front-office turmoil and the most grueling travel schedule, which led to a 1-14 road record. They surrendered 482 goals, by far the most in the league, and will need to vastly improve their defense. Already, misfortune struck when F Vicente Figueroa, a former rookie of the year, tore his anterior cruciate ligament in the preseason. Sanaldo will handle the goalkeeping.

ATLANTA -- Ashley Archibald was riding the school bus early yesterday when she saw smoke billowing from the doors and windows of Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in rural Boligee, Ala. The small, white wood-frame church was one of four Baptist churches in western Alabama that were set on fire early yesterday - less than a week after suspicious fires damaged five churches in central Alabama. "All we could see was smoke," said Archibald, 16. "That's the church I've been to my whole life.

Sports Movies: If you watched the most exciting Super Bowl ever, follow it up with Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 (****) (3 STARS), an engrossing documentary about the most exciting football game in Ivy League history. If that film carries too high a pedigree for your tastes, you can always take in The Wrestler (** 1/2 ), ( 2 1/2 STARS) a fictional film that applies documentary realism to the tawdry spectacle of professional wrestling. Oscar-nominated Mickey Rourke elevates every scene he's in. opening next friday Confessions of a Shopaholic : (Touchstone)

The Hurt Locker : **** ( 4 STARS) It hasn't had the benefit of big-studio promotion, but Kathryn Bigelow's incisive, thrilling account of a bomb-disposal unit in Iraq has satisfied more people more deeply than any action-franchise blockbuster. It's a real audience movie: it unites everyone in awe of its phenomenally courageous heroes. For decades, audiences and critics have complained that movies have fallen behind television in the treatment of vital contemporary issues. But this movie tells a hitherto untold story of the key players in what has long been a war of improvised bombs.

Twelve new candidates have applied for a vacant Baltimore Circuit Court judgeship after state court officials extended the deadline in an effort to increase the number of applicants.Now 15 candidates are contending for the $89,000-a-year judgeship, which became vacant last month when Judge Joseph I. Pines retired from the 25-member bench.Only two candidates had applied for the job at the close of the original Jan. 29 deadline, and another candidate, a Baltimore District Court judge, came from a pool of previous applicants.

Baseball Brewers: Assigned C Creighton Gubanich, P Chad Fox, IF Mike Coolbaugh and OF Brian Lesher to Triple-A Indianapolis. Optioned P Allen Levrault and P Carlos Chantres to Indianapolis. Cubs: Optioned 1B Julio Zuleta and P Joey Nation to Triple-A Iowa. Assigned P Carlos Zambrano, IF Chris Snopek and C Mike Amrhein to minor-league camp. Dodgers: Reassigned OF Brent Cookson, C Brian Johnson, IF Keith Johnson, OF Chris Prieto and IF Andy Stankiewicz to minor-league camp. Expos: Sent P Ted Rose outright to Triple-A Ottawa.

Ella Enchanted is one cute movie. The star, Anne Hathaway, is cute. Her prince, Hugh Dancy, is cute. The film's conceit, that Ella (Hathaway) is cursed by a spell that makes her do everything she is told, no matter what that is, is cute. The film's world, filled with medieval castles, modern attitudes and lots of '70s pop tunes, is cute. There's so much cute here, in fact, that all but the purest of heart may collapse under its weight, or at least go screaming from the theater in search of something - anything - even the least bit substantial.

All it took yesterday was a simple four-letter word to turn an otherwise pleasant discussion into a shouting match between residents and their state representatives.Right at the end, when it appeared none of the 30 people who packed a small conference room at the Arundel Center North in Glen Burnie had anything else to say, someone mentioned "keno."The ensuing argument, mainly between state Sen. Philip C. Jimeno, D-District 31, and a Pasadena truck driver, Leonard Paskoski, centered on the morality of Maryland reaping gambling benefits.

MOOSIC, Pa. -- Only because he had been asked to, Bruce Ruffin gave thought to life after baseball.After a short pause, highlighted by the squinting of his eyes and the rubbing of his chin, Ruffin looked lost. "I haven't even started thinking about it," he said.How about becoming a pitching coach?"Someday, maybe," Ruffin said, with a smile. "Lord knows, I've had enough instruction. I know what needs to be done out there. Whether or not I can do it, I should be able to teach it."Bruce Ruffin, veteran major leaguer, does his pitching these days for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons, the Philadelphia Phillies' Triple A affiliate in northeastern Pennsylvania.

IT IS HARD to imagine from our viewpoint in the celebrity-worshipping 21st century - when even the losers of the Survivor TV show are treated like demigods - that there was once a man who was offered all that, the books, the movies, the fame, the fortune, and who turned on his heel and went back to work. But such a man was Capt. Henrik Kurt Carlsen. It was 50 years ago this month that this Carlsen became the hero of an unforgettable fortnight of drama that played out in the stormy North Atlantic, diverting the attention and uplifting the spirits of a nation that was fighting a hot war in Korea and the Cold War at home.