Don’t Need Chalkboard to Explain U.S. Losses

Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times, commenting on the U.S. losing twice in the World Basketball Championship:

“The flash, the trash, the dribble-between-my-legs-20 -times-before-I-clown-your-silly-butt, one-on-one ... it’s-all-about-me-and-my-bling-style of play had to fail.

“Nobody kills the hero; the hero gorges himself at the trough of greed and indulgence and collapses face first in the slop.... the arrogance, the selfishness, the deviance of modern American basketball guaranteed such a downfall.”

Trivia time: When did UCLA make its first appearance in a football bowl game?

Role reversal: Jeff Gordon in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “South Carolina football Coach Lou Holtz does a masterful job dismissing his own team while talking up his foes, to present his program as a perpetual underdog. (He also did the poor mouth routine at Notre Dame.)

“But even he was horrified when the Sagarin ranking system put the Gamecocks at No. 50, one spot behind Division I-AA power Montana. ‘I don’t think we’re as bad as that Seagram system, or whatever it’s called, says we are,’ Holtz said. ‘I don’t know if that system is named for the alcohol or what.’ ”

No qualifications necessary: Michael Ventre of MSNBC.com commenting on Penn State Coach Joe Paterno, 75, saying he would like to continue coaching until he’s 80:

“He didn’t say what he would do after that, but the rumor mill suggests that by then he would be sufficiently out of touch that he could get a job with the NCAA.”

Misinformed: “I’m not afraid to speak the truth or how I feel,” Redskin owner Daniel Snyder told Newsweek. “The media wants an owner who doesn’t say anything.”

Said Norman Chad on America Online: “Oh, sure. Sportswriters are sitting around everyday, hoping the biggest newsmaker in town is mum for months. Is this joker serious? My goodness--if Daniel Snyder sneezes, the Washington Post reports whether he used a handkerchief or a Kleenex.”

Not so soft: Boston College defensive end Antonio Garay after Connecticut, a 35-point underdog, lost by only eight points to BC last week:

“One of the comments before the game was that UConn, they were cupcakes. Well, they showed us ... that the bakery is closed.”

Cooking on the court: Checking out the early rounds of the U.S. Open, Steve Rushin of Sports Illustrated spotted ambidextrous Evgenia Koulikovskaya hitting “only forehands (left-handed from the ad court, right-handed from the deuce court), repeatedly tossing her racket from hand to hand as if it were a potato just pulled from the oven.”

Looking back: On this day in 1985, UCLA defeated Brigham Young, 27-24, in a season-opening game. The Bruins went on to record a 9-2-1 record and defeated Iowa, 45-28, in the Rose Bowl game.

Trivia answer: Jan. 1, 1943, when the Bruins lost to Georgia, 9-0, in the Rose Bowl.

And finally: Dan Le Batard in the Miami Herald: “Randy Moss admits he takes plays off, and the criticism is loud and furious from a predictably outraged sports America.

“ ‘I take plays off too, where I’m not going full tilt, 100%,’ Dolphin linebacker Zach Thomas said with a shrug. ‘We all do.’ ”