Red Raiders

The last time Colgate played Navy in Annapolis, 11 months ago, the Red Raiders suffered a humiliating 42-point defeat.But yesterday at Alumni Hall, it was Navy on the wrong end of a rout after Colgate pounded the Midshipmen, 89-67, and gained sole possession of the Patriot League lead.The game was not as close as the final margin indicated. Colgate coach Jack Bruen pulled all his starters, including All-America candidate Adonal Foyle (24 points, seven blocks, six rebounds), with 2:34 remaining and the Red Raiders leading 82-54.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- The bearhug between Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt and her star center, Dana Johnson, with less than a minute to go in last night's Mideast Regional final spoke volumes.Three years of coming ever so close but not quite getting over the hump had come to a glorious end as the third-ranked Lady Vols earned their way to next weekend's Final Four with an 80-59 thumping of No. 5 Texas Tech.And it was Johnson and fellow senior Nikki McCray who powered the Lady Vols (33-2)

The coaches of three teams in the NCAA women's Mideast Regional in Knoxville, Tenn., this weekend have spent a lot of time expressing the requisite niceties about the region's top seed and host school, Tennessee.And for good reason. After all, the third-ranked Lady Vols (31-2), who meet No. 9 Western Kentucky (28-3) tonight in a regional semifinal, have a lot going for them, including history, a tremendous home-court advantage and a desire -- bordering on obsession -- to return to the Final Four.

Reading Time: Two Minutes.It's interesting how the present-day Big Eight came into existence, now that we're hailing Nebraska as national champ. It was formerly known as the Missouri Valley Conference, but Nebraska athletic director Herb Gish wanted to schedule big teams and make some dough, so he devised a plan to jettison the likes of Drake, Grinnell, Washington of St. Louis and Oklahoma A&M.Gish didn't even invite Kansas to the first meeting, keeping secret...

Navy completed its basketball comeback story yesterday, leading almost all the way to defeat Colgate, 78-76, for the Patriot League tournament championship.A record Alumni Hall crowd of 4,360 and a national television audience watched the Midshipmen earn an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1987, when David Robinson and company were finishing a three-year run of the most successful basketball in academy history.The victory was the seventh straight for Navy (17-12)

A boycott might have been the best thing for Navy's basketball team yesterday against Colgate.Unfortunately, scholarships -- the core issue in the threatened boycott by coaches -- are irrelevant in this case.The Patriot League, of which Navy and Colgate are members, is a nonscholarship league.Colgate's 67-54 win in Annapolis was Navy's third straight defeat and its eighth straight loss in Patriot League competition."In a nutshell, at this point in the season we're pitiful," said coach Don DeVoe, whose Mids fell to 5-7 and 0-2. "In the past week we haven't progressed at all."

When Ed Sweeney, after transforming Division III Dickinson College into a consistent winner (56-22-3), was named head coach at Colgate this year, he inherited a brutal schedule that included three Division I schools -- Rutgers, Army and Navy.Sweeney tried to turn the schedule into a motivational tool, believing the experience of playing better competition for his youthful team, which had a new quarterback and three new defensive linemen, would toughen the Red Raiders."My approach is that we play the toughest schedule in Division I-AA," said Sweeney, who was recommended for the job by former Redskins general manager Bob Beathard and current GM Charley Casserly.

After an exciting come-from-behind, 28-24 victory over the Air Force Academy last week, the confident Mids take on the Colgate Red Raiders (2-3) from Hamilton, N.Y., tomorrow at home with a 1:30 p.m. kickoff.The relief didn't come too soon, what with the nationally ranked Louisville Cardinals and the Notre Dame Irish on the horizon.In the three-game series to date with Colgate that began in 1923, Navy has yet to lose. The 1923 team won, 9-0, recorded a 5-1-3 season, and played a 14-14 tie with the University of Washington in the Rose Bowl.

ATLANTA -- Sheryl Swoopes got to make her mark on women's college basketball for only a brief period, but while it lasted, it was beautiful.Yesterday, Swoopes led No. 5 Texas Tech to a national championship, as it beat third-ranked Ohio State, 84-82, in front of 16,141 at The Omni.Swoopes scored 47 points, a record for an NCAA championship game -- men's or women's -- and put on perhaps the most electrifying performance in the 12-year history of the women's tournament."At a point in the game, I just felt I wanted to take control," said Swoopes, a 6-foot senior forward from Brownfield, Texas.

ATLANTA -- Down in the West Texas town of Lubbock, the folks talk about suffering from "Swoopla."That's not the disease of the week from some television movie, but a malady caused by repeated exposures to Texas Tech forward Sheryl Swoopes.Yesterday, the No. 1 Vanderbilt Commodores caught a severe case of "Swoopla" and were bounced from the NCAA women's Final Four by the fifth-ranked Red Raiders, 60-46.Swoopes, the National Player of the Year, scored 31 points, pulled down 11 rebounds and made life generally unpleasant for the Commodores.