96425665As if a nine-loss football season and a 24-loss basketball season weren't difficult enough for Wake Forest fans to endure this school year, now two prominent Demon Deacons are in the news for all the wrong reasons.

A former Wake Forest student will appear on NBC's Today Show on Thursday morning to accuse two ex-Demon Deacon basketball players of raping her the night before the team's first-round NCAA tournament game in 2009. The Winston Salem Journal reported Tuesday that she filed a complaint at the time with the Miami police department alleging that guard Gary Clark sexually assaulted her in a hotel bathroom while teammate Jeff Teague stood watch outside.

Miami police investigated the woman's claims but did not file charges against either Clark or Teague because the players claimed the incident was consensual and the evidence was insufficient to prove otherwise. Clark started 26 games this past season for Wake Forest before graduating this spring, while Teague is in his second year

Fullscreen capture 5172011 125443 PMIf a potential showdown between North Carolina and Ohio State would have been the best possible Big Ten-ACC challenge matchup, the slate ESPN did announce on Tuesday is at the very least a nice consolation prize.

Duke will visit Ohio State on Nov. 29 in a matchup of likely preseason top-five teams. North Carolina will host Big Ten contender Wisconsin the following night. And Florida State-Michigan State, Michigan-Virginia and Miami-Purdue highlight an intriguing list of secondary games.

The middle tier of both the Big Ten and ACC appears to be very muddled entering the new season, so next year's event will represent an early opportunity for some of those teams to distinguish themselves. The ACC leads the overall series history 10-2, but the Big Ten's lone two victories came in the most recent challenges.

The Duke-Ohio State matchup may be the most anticipated of the 12 games because the two national powers haven't shared a court very often. The Blue Devils defeated the Buckeyes 91-76

AP100327140875Even though Maryland may lose all three members of its 2011 class as a result of its recent coaching change, there's reason to believe recruiting may actually improve longterm under newly hired Mark Turgeon.

That's because Turgeon has landed an ideal coach to serve as his lead assistant.

Kansas State assistant Dalonte Hill will join Turgeon's staff at Maryland, sources told the Washington Post on Tuesday. Hill, one of the nation's highest paid assistants at Kansas State, is a Washington D.C. native and the former head coach of D.C. Assault, the AAU program that produced such stars as Michael Beasley, Josh Hairston, and Quinn Cook.

Whereas former Maryland coach Gary Williams had a notoriously tepid relationship with local AAU programs and won despite not landing many of the top D.C.-area prospects, Hill could help Turgeon open those doors.

If Hill could help Frank Martin persuade the likes of Wally Judge, Dominique Sutton, Jamar Samuels and Rodney McGruder to come to remote Kansas

After missing one flight and having a second delayed in New York for more than an hour, UConn guard Kemba Walker earned the right to ask President Obama the one question that had been on his mind for a while.

"I wanted to ask, can you teach me that walk?" Walker said, much to the amusement of his teammates gathered behind him.

"That's a special presidential walk," the president replied. "Maybe in a few years."

The easy banter between Walker and the president was the highlight of Monday's ceremony in the East Room of the White House honoring UConn's improbable 2010-11 championship season. The Huskies finished ninth in a loaded Big East, but reeled off five wins in five days at the conference tournament and then six more in the NCAA tournament behind the brilliance of Walker and the emergence of freshmen Jeremy Lamb, Shabazz Napier and Roscoe Smith.

Even though Obama's bracket finished in the 87th percent nationally in ESPN's contest, the president lamented not having more faith in

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An Arizona player was going to have to transfer sometime this offseason to alleviate the program's scholarship overload, but Wildcats fans probably didn't expect their leading returning scorer to be the one to leave.

Point guard MoMo Jones will transfer to a school closer to his New York home, Arizona announced Monday night. The official reason Jones gave for his departure is he wants to be closer to his grandmother, but the sophomore's starting job was also in jeopardy as a result of the arrival of highly touted incoming freshman Josiah Turner.

"I want it to be known that I love this program, my coaches and teammates," Jones said in a statement released by Arizona.  "I appreciate everyone for supporting me through this tough time."

How much the loss of Jones diminishes Arizona's chances of making a deep NCAA tourney run next year depends on several factors.

On the one hand, Jones was an emotional leader and secondary scoring option behind Derrick Williams for an Arizona team that

AP110122146670(2)The first test of new UNLV coach Dave Rice's disciplinary tactics will come barely a month into his tenure.

Chace Stanback, the Rebels' top returning scorer and rebounder, was arrested for driving under the influence on Friday in Las Vegas. Police had initially stopped the senior-to-be for speeding at 2:10 a.m. just blocks from the Thomas & Mack Center.

It's unclear how Rice will punish Stanback because the UNLV coach told reporters in Las Vegas on Monday morning that he's still gathering information. The arrest is the first known blemish on Stanback's record because an academic suspension for one exhibition game last season, so it's unlikely he'd be forced to sit out more than a handful of games to start the season.

Stanback blossomed into one of UNLV's top players as a junior, averaging 13.0 points and a team-best 5.9 rebounds and helping lead the Rebels to the NCAA tournament. The Rebels return most of their key players besides Tre'Von Willis and Derrick Jasper, so they're expected

57098281Maybe someday locker room culture will be open-minded enough that the story of how a former college basketball player revealed he was gay to his teammates won't be national news.

The support Will Sheridan's teammates gave him suggests that day is getting closer.

Sheridan, Villanova's starting power forward from 2004 to 2007, told ESPN.com's Dana O'Neil that he first revealed to roommate Mike Nardi that he was gay and later to other teammates as he grew more comfortable around them. None of them ostracized him or even behaved differently toward him afterward, nor did any of them feel the need to even inform coach Jay Wright.

"Your personal life is your personal life," Nardi said. "It didn't matter to us because it's family and you don't go putting your family's secrets out in the streets. I mean, why would I tell anyone? It's no one's business except Will's."

"After I found out, I was like, 'Did you know?' And all the guys, they were like, 'Yeah, Coach, we knew,'" Wright said. "They

AP1103300115304If North Carolina incoming freshman P.J. Hairston has big games against Duke throughout his college career, the Blue Devils staffer in charge of mailing monthly letters to recruits may get some dirty looks around the basketball office.

Hairston, a McDonald's All-American small forward from Greensboro, N.C.,  decided to remain close to home in college, so two of the programs to which he immediately gravitated were Duke and North Carolina. He told the Greensboro News-Record one of the reasons the Tar Heels ended up being the more appealing choice was because they had less trouble getting his name correct.

"The thing about Duke was, every time they sent me a letter, they wouldn't spell my name right," Hairston said. "They would have 'T.J. Harrison' or something like that. And I'm like, 'OK. How can I go here? You can't even spell my name right.' It's only two letters and HAIR and STON. I'm trying to figure out how that's so hard."

There's no way of verifying whether Hairston is