TheLineup

MOTOR SPORTS

40 Bang-Up Finish

Jeff Gordon fought off a hard-charging Dale Earnhardt Jr. to win his third Daytona 500

by Lars Anderson

BASEBALL

46 The Unit Has Landed

Ace lefty Randy Johnson hit the ground running at his first spring training as a Yankee

by Tom Verducci

SPECIAL REPORT

50 Locker Room Menace

A strain of antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus is striking athletes at an alarming rate

by Phil Taylor

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

54 The Rise of Saint Paul

Chris Paul of Wake Forest is a great point guard--and citizen

by Seth Davis

BOOK EXCERPT

58 The Home Team

A Sudanese couple in Indiana sent their five kids to college on basketball scholarships

by L. Jon Wertheim

Departments

4 Leading Off

10 Catching Up With ...

12 Letters

17 Air and Space

Throw, throw, throw your coat: Purdue's Gene Keady will hang it up after 25 years by Steve Rushin

18 Scorecard

• NHL season dies twice in a week

• U.S. women's soccer coach ousted

• Recalling Hunter S. Thompson

30 Faces in the Crowd

32 Players

72 The Life of Reilly

Some very rich men partied in Denver last weekend. OPEC summit? Nah. NBA All-Star Game by Rick Reilly

Inside ...

68 The NBA

• Can Cavs hold onto Ilgauskas?

• Udrih gives Spurs hot pair at point

70 College Basketball

• Foreign players power Pacific

• Pro scout on Wolfpack's Hodge

• Curry has Cowboys in Big 12 hunt

Cover

PHOTOGRAPH BY

FRED VUICH

INSET PHOTO: Clay Patrick McBride

SI Extra

To sign up for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED's free subscriber-only e-mail newsletter, go to sicustomerservice.com/siextra.

SI.com

• Swing into spring training: SI writers weigh in from camps in Florida and Arizona, John Donovan previews each division and Tom Verducci provides Web-exclusive analysis in his weekly Insider, all at SI.com/baseball.

COLOR PHOTO

CHUCK SOLOMON

WARMUP

Yankees hurler Randy Johnson and skipper Joe Torre catch some rays next to a pitching machine (page 46).