Slive Will Take Over SEC

Mike Slive, the head of Conference USA who used to defend schools against NCAA investigations, is set to become commissioner of the Southeastern Conference.

“The SEC’s lucky to get him, he’s a great leader,” Tom Jurich, athletic director at Louisville, said Monday. “He can help them through tumultuous times. He’s got the background for it. We’re going to miss him.”

The announcement of Slive’s hiring is scheduled for today at a news conference in SEC headquarters at Birmingham, Ala.

Slive, 61, was the choice of the 13-member selection committee to replace the retiring Roy Kramer, the SEC’s commissioner the last 12 years.

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Jean Lenti Ponsetto, an administrator in DePaul’s athletic department the last 20 years, was hired as the university’s athletic director. The 45-year-old Chicago native has been DePaul’s senior associate athletic director for seven years.

Ponsetto replaces Bill Bradshaw, who was hired at Temple last week. She becomes one of only 17 female athletic directors at Division I schools.

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Football

A high school player with a scholarship to Syracuse was shot and killed Saturday in a hail of gunfire.

Omain Gullette, 19, was standing on a southwest Philadelphia street corner with a friend when three gunmen rounded the corner and started shooting. Gullette was shot 13 times in the chest and pronounced dead at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Police said they believe a previous disagreement prompted the killing, but the shooting, in which at least 30 rounds were fired, was still under investigation.

Gullette was a defensive tackle at Glen Mills High in Concordville, where he was a first-team all-state selection. He had been arrested four times before going to Glen Mills, a school where troubled youths are sent by criminal courts. But administrators said he had turned his life around.

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The NFL’s supervisor of officials and director of the scouting program for college referees, Al Hynes, will retire in September. The league said that Hynes will remain active with the league as an instant-replay assistant and a part-time college scout.

Jurisprudence

Oakland Raider lineman Darrell Russell will have to wait until Aug. 2 to learn if he will be tried on charges that he videotaped the alleged rape of a 28-year-old woman by two other men.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers had planned to wrap up the preliminary hearing, but both sides said they needed more time.

Russell, a former No. 2 overall selection in the NFL draft and two-time Pro Bowl selection, is serving a one-year suspension for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy.

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Former Denver Bronco safety Mike Harden was sentenced to six years in a halfway house for defrauding and stealing from women he knew.

Women’s Basketball

Tonya Edwards led six players in double figures with 14 points, and the Charlotte Sting beat the Phoenix Mercury, 90-68, in a WNBA game in front of 6,114 at Charlotte, N.C.... Katie Smith scored a season-high 28 points, including seven in overtime, to lead the Minnesota Lynx past the Detroit Shock, 85-80, in front of 5,482 at Detroit.

Passings

Gary McPike, a 55-year-old from Oakland who lived in Sydney, Australia, died Sunday after falling from his yacht, Joyride. He died of an apparent heart attack after falling into Sydney Harbor during a race, the sailing club in charge of the event said.