Stringer

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Slippery Rock University graduate C. Vivian Stringer, the first coach to lead three different teams to the Final Four, was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame Friday.

Stringer has won 825 games in 39 seasons. She took Rutgers to the women's national championship game in 2007 and led the Scarlet Knights to the 2000 national semifinals.

She made her first Final Four in 1982 with Cheney State and got back there again in 1993 with Iowa. Stringer thanked her players — "basketball daughters" — and said a coal miner's daughter enshrined in the Hall was "the most unusual, unexpected thing in the world."

Michael Jordan, David Robinson, John Stockton and Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan also were part of Friday's class.

PITTSBURGH — Pitt, which is replacing four key players from the team that played in an NCAA basketball regional final last season, won't need long to find out how competitive it will be in the Big East Conference.The Panthers' 2009-10 basketball schedule includes a three-game road trip to Syracuse, Cincinnati and Connecticut the first week in January, followed by home games against Louisville and Georgetown.The Panthers then return to the road for three of their next four games, facing Seton Hall, South Florida and West Virginia, plus St. John's at home.

BUFFALO TWP — Rain forced postponement of the Modified SuperDIRT Series feature Friday night at Lernerville Speedway.Before the rain came, Matt Sheppard, second to Brett Hearn in the series points race, posted a Modified track record time of 15.88 seconds during time trialsThe remainder of the race card has been rescheduled for Oct. 23.

NEW YORK — Derek Jeter broke the New York Yankees' hits record held by Lou Gehrig for more than seven decades with an opposite-field single in the third inning Friday against Baltimore. It gave Jeter 2,722 hits, one more than Gehrig, whose Hall of Fame career was cut short by illness in 1939.The captain kept right on going, too, with an RBI single in the fourth that put New York up 4-1. He came out of the game after a 67-minute rain delay in the seventh when manager Joe Girardi pulled most of his starters with the Yankees trailing by six in their 10-4 loss.

SAN DIEGO— District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis on Friday dismissed reality TV star Tila Tequila's accusations that San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman choked her and threw her to the ground early Sunday.Merriman was arrested after Tequila signed a citizen's arrest warrant accusing Merriman of battery and false imprisonment.Dumanis decided not to charge Merriman after her office spent three days reviewing reports from the San Diego County Sheriff's Department.

PHOENIX — The fate of the floundering Phoenix Coyotes finally is in the hands of a U.S. bankruptcy judge after Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie and the NHL sweetened their offers to buy the team.Four months of often-bitter, complex courtroom wrangling came to an end Friday with the auction. Judge Redfield T. Baum is expected to rule in the next week or two.Baum again raised the possibility of rejecting both bids. If that happens, attorneys for the NHL said, the league would seek court-ordered control of the franchise and would look to sell the team.Balsillie, who withdrew the Sept. 21 deadline he had set, offered the city of Glendale $50 million free of conditions to drop its objections to the transfer of the franchise. The earlier offer, rejected by the city, could have reduced that $50 million through various factors.His bid of $242.5 million, on the surface, dwarfs the $140 million offer by the NHL.