- Publish date:
A roundup of the sports information of the week
BASKETBALL—NBA: Detroit lost three of four and dropped from second to third place in the Midwest Division. Los Angeles manhandled Cincinnati 125-113, New York 130-115 and Portland 136-114 to expand its lead from five to seven games over San Francisco. Baltimore continued to breeze in the Central Division as Cincinnati fell 10½ games back. Sporadic New York held a 3½-game lead over Philadelphia.
ABA: Indiana's Mel Daniels became the first ABA player to grab 5,000 rebounds when he got 22 in a 119-118 losing effort against Texas. Members of the Kentucky Colonels squad publicly denied former trainer Bill Antonini's assertion that there were morale and black-white problems on the team. One problem last week was undisputably winning. The Colonels dropped both of their games—to Virginia 144-140 and Indiana 126-121. Virginia has a 9½-game lead in the East while Utah holds a two-game edge in the West.
BOWLING—JOHNNY PETRAGLIA of Brooklyn defeated top-seeded Larry Lichstein 202-196 to win the $80,000 Winston-Salem (N.C.) Classic.
GOLF—RUTH JESSEN, after fighting back from injuries and operations, won the richest ladies' golf tournament in history, the $60,000 Sears Women's World Classic (page 59), by scoring a two-stroke victory over Sandra Palmer at Port St. Lucie, Fla.
HOCKEY—Montreal, trying hard to unseat New York from the No. 2 position in the East Division, blanked the Rangers 3-0. The game marked only the second time New York has gone scoreless this season. Canadien Goalie Rogatien Vachon stopped 35 New York shots. The Canadiens later routed West Division leader Chicago 7-1 as Pete Mahovlich connected on two goals within five seconds and rookie Phil Roberto performed a hat trick. The victory ran Montreal's win streak to five. Minnesota's Bill Goldsworthy has made 15 goals in his last 14 games, but his team remained in fourth place. Bobby Hull collected his 545th and 546th regular-season scores to make him second on the alltime career list behind Gordie Howe as Chicago defeated Vancouver 3-1. Howe himself scored his 783rd. Chicago and Boston both maintained their division leads.
HORSE RACING—Charging to the front 15 yards from the wire, favored TRUE NORTH ($7.20) won the $149,000 Widener Handicap at Hialeah. Twogundan was three-quarters of a length back, a head in front of Sunny Tim. The victor covered the 1¼ miles in 2:03[4/5].
Five-year-old New Zealand-bred DARYL'S JOY ($4.20) won his third straight stakes race when he streaked to a half-length victory in the $65,300 San Luis Obispo Handicap at Santa Anita in 2:29[1/5] over the 1½-mile course. In a photo finish for runner-up. Cougar II edged Onandaga by a nose on the rain-softened course.
SPEED SKATING—ANNE HENNING, who two weeks ago equaled the women's 500-meter world record of 43.2, clocked a 42.75 in Inzell, Germany to establish a new mark. Second-place Ruth Schleiermacher of East Germany was timed in 43.15.
SQUASH—COLIN ADAIR of Montreal regained the U.S. singles' championship he held three years ago by defeating John Reese 15-10, 15-8, 11-15, 15-12 in Buffalo.
TENNIS—Dennis Ralston, who had beaten ROD LAVER at the U.S. Open championships last year, wasn't as lucky this time as he lost 3-6, 6-1, 6-4, 6-3 at Madison Square Garden. Later in the week Laver won his 11th straight winner-take-all Champions Classic match by nipping Roy Emerson 6-3, 5-7, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 in New Haven, Conn.
Clark Graebner fought off two match points in the fourth set and went on to beat Cliff Richey and win the U.S. National Indoor Open 2-6, 7-6, 1-6, 7-6, 6-0 at Salisbury, Md.
Françoise Dürr of Paris upset second-ranked Billie Jean King of the U.S. 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 for the second consecutive week, this time at the International Tennis Championship at Lighthouse, Fla.
TRACK & FIELD—At the San Diego Indoor Games, JIM RYUN moved back into the limelight of middle-distance running by clocking a 3:56.4 mile, equaling the world indoor record set by Tom O'Hara in 1964. Four entries finished under four minutes for the first time ever indoors. Australian KERRY O'BRIEN, the world record holder in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, ran a blistering 8:19.2 two-mile to establish a new world record, beating the old indoor standard by eight seconds (page 22). His time was also six-tenths of a second faster than the outdoor best. Austria's MARIA SYKORA won the women's 600-yard run with a world indoor record 1:21.5, breaking the old mark of 1:22.3.
At the U.S. Olympic Invitational at Madison Square Garden, TOM VON RUDEN carved a world indoor mark for the 1,000-meters when he beat Ireland's Frank Murphy by two yards. Von Ruden was timed in 2:20.4 and Murphy 2:20.6 as both runners bettered the old record of 2:20.9. MARTY LIQUORI won his 13th straight Garden race by capturing the 1,500-meter run in 3:44.2. LEON COLEMAN, 1968 Olympian, joined Willie Davenport and Erv Hall for a share of the world's best time for the 55-meter high hurdles with a 7.1.
Cheryl Toussaint, voted the top female performer, won the women's 800-meter run in 2:09.2, edging Nadezhda Kolesnikova, a college student from Moscow.
At Salt Lake City GREG JONES of Texas-El Paso unofficially broke the NCAA 1,000-yard indoor record with a 2:07.5 timing. Records arc official only if set at the NCAA meet.
Debbie Brill of Haney, British Columbia established a new Canadian record in the women's high jump with a 6'1" leap in a meet at Vancouver, but SNEZANA HREPEVNIK of Yugoslavia, who cleared the same height with fewer misses, won the event.
MILEPOSTS—BENCHED: Denver Rocket-turned-Seattle SuperSonic Spencer Haywood; by NBA Commissioner Walter Kennedy after a Federal Court of Appeals in San Francisco dissolved an injunction that had allowed him to play. The next major legal encounter occurs in one month when the Federal District Court in Los Angeles is scheduled to hold a hearing on the validity of Haywood's Denver contract.
ELECTED: BILL WILLIS (Ohio State), CLYDE SCOTT (Navy and Arkansas), DAN McMILLAN JR. (USC and California), ASA RAYMOND MATTHEWS (TCU), GLENN KILLINGER (Penn State), CLARKE HINKLE (Bucknell), BOB STEUBER (Missouri) and NELLO FALASCHI (Santa Clara) to the National Football Foundation's Hall of Fame.
PURCHASED: Suffolk Downs for $8 million by National Raceways, Inc. of Boston. Jim Edwards, who has headed five racetracks, is president of the new corporation.
RENAMED: The Boston Patriots as the Bay State Patriots, concurring with their move to Foxboro, Mass., 20 miles from Boston.
RESIGNED: CHUCK ROHE, who built the University of Tennessee into one of the nation's top track powers, to accept an administrative post in Virginia Tech's athletic department.
SIGNED: JIM STILLWAGON of Ohio State, winner of the Outland and Lombardi trophies as the year's outstanding college lineman, by the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League.
DIED: Dr. Eddie Beeson, 80, who set a world high-jump record of 6 feet 7 5/16 inches in 1914 that stood for 10 years; in Santa Rosa, Calif.
DIED: SAUL SILBERMAN, 75, owner of Tropical Park and a former owner of the Cleveland Browns, of a stroke; in Miami. Silberman was one of racing's most colorful and controversial figures, and was known for his heavy betting.
