Kansas

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- After watching his team fade against St. John's and super freshman guard Felipe Lopez last week, Coppin State coach Fang Mitchell talked about how the Eagles have no time to dwell on another near-miss, because the road gets no easier for them.Indeed, Coppin State will spend much of the first seven weeks of its season -- 12 of its first 13 games -- playing on the road, mostly against top-flight competition.Starting today, the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Eagles will spend a grinding week touring the Big Eight Conference.

ST. LOUIS -- The magical ride of Jason Kidd, Todd Bozeman and the rest of California Bears ended last night in the semifinals of the NCAA Midwest Regional, six weeks after it began and three games short of where they wanted it to finish.The freshman point guard and the second-month coach showed their inexperience down the stretch, and neither could stop the steamroller disguised as the second-seeded Kansas Jayhawks from running away with a 93-76 victory."We came here to win and you have to think you can or else you won't succeed," said a tearful Bozeman after his team suffered only its second loss in the 13 games since he replaced Lou Campanelli as the team's head coach.

Back in December, Old Mill's star running back William "Boo" Beverlyvowed that his college choice would take him "as far away from this area as possible."The 5-foot-11, 185-pounder, who was last year'sAnne Arundel County Sun Football Player of the Year, is on his way to Kansas -- and he didn't even have to click his heels.The all-purpose running back has accepted a full athletic scholarship to attend Butler County Community College in Eldorado, Old Mill coach Pete Regala announced yesterday.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Kansas is huge, and playing 40 miles from Lawrence.Jeff Jones doesn't care. His Virginia team, after all, was one of the four that finished tied for first in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the only league in the nation to send four teams to the Sweet 16."Kansas is a good team, but I think too much is being made about how good they are," Jones said yesterday. "I think we have a pretty good team also. Our style of play is similar to Kansas. Over the course of the game, we get stronger.

THE STATE board of education in Kansas jeopardized the future of that state's children by censoring what they learn about the past. This will curtail their education and harm their opportunities as adults.If allowed to stand, the new curriculum would discourage parents of young children from moving to Kansas. The board could not have created a worse impediment to economic development.The board hired a panel of scientists to draw up a state curriculum required of all local schools. Three board members then rewrote the recommendation to banish evolution from the requirement, inhibiting the study of biology and harming that of geology.

Site -- San Jose, Calif. Time, TV -- 7:05 p.m., chs. 13, 9 Records -- Kansas 33-4, UCLA 29-5 Line -- Kansas by 2 How they got here -- Kansas def. No. 16 Niagara, 107-67; No. 8 Kentucky, 88-76; and No. 4 Southern Illinois, 61-58; UCLA def. No. 15 Weber State, 70-42; No. 7 Indiana, 54-49; and No. 3 Pittsburgh, 64-55 The buzz -- Kansas was held to its second-lowest point total of the season Thursday, but still prevailed. UCLA, meanwhile, was involved in its sixth consecutive game in which it didn't score more than 70 points.

NEW ORLEANS -- Hey, Marquette, Kansas went that-a-way. Marquette may have never seen the Jayhawks. If it did, the Jayhawks must have been a blue-and-white blur en route to the NCAA championship game tomorrow night here at the Superdome. In one of the most explosive and dominating offensive performances in recent NCAA Division I history, Kansas ran Marquette ragged, 94-61, in a semifinal game. A Kodak moment came with 8:32 left in the first half with Kansas guard Kirk Hinrich shooting two foul shots.

ROSEMONT, Ill. -- In the Midwest Regional second round last year, Kansas made the mistake of thinking about playing in the NCAA tournament's Sweet 16 the following week. Instead, the Jayhawks lost to Texas-El Paso and went back to Lawrence."It was a difficult time," coach Roy Williams said yesterday. "Tonight, I might live through the night. Last year I wasn't too sure."The No. 2 seed Jayhawks are heading to St. Louis for Thursday's regional semifinal, the result of a 90-76 win yesterday over seventh-seed Brigham Young.

The Kansas Board of Education restored evolution to the state science curriculum yesterday, 18 months after excising all references to the origin of man and the age of Earth at the urging of conservative Christians. The new science standards, adopted by a 7-3 vote, require students to learn that all life on Earth evolved from a few scraps of genetic material over the course of 4 billion years. That theory - which most mainstream scientists view as the cornerstone of biology - was eliminated from the state's list of required study topics in August 1999, when a majority of the board members decided it was too speculative to merit a place in Kansas classrooms.

INDIANAPOLIS -- About 6 p.m. yesterday, a rainbow formed over the Hoosier Dome here. For Duke and Kansas, the two survivors in this year's NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, the symbolism couldn't be more appropriate.Both the Blue Devils and the Jayhawks needed more than a little luck to advance to tonight's championship game (9 o'clock, Channel 11).Duke (31-7) pulled off the biggest upset of the tournament, knocking off defending champion Nevada-Las Vegas, 79-77, and ending the Runnin' Rebels' 45-game winning streak.