Sports briefs 4/15/06

Basketball

• Knicks coach Larry Brown did not coach Friday night against the Milwaukee Bucks because of a stomach ailment, and it wasn't known if he would be back on the bench at all this season.

Brown was hospitalized in Cleveland on Thursday night after becoming ill during the Knicks' 91-87 loss to the Cavaliers. The Knicks released a statement Friday saying the 65-year-old coach was on his way back to New York but assistant Herb Williams would run the team against the Bucks.

The Knicks provided no other details before the game, including whether Brown would coach the rest of the season.

Colleges

• The home of Alabama booster Logan Young was so splattered with blood that police thought they were looking at multiple crime scenes.

Young was dead and police quickly launched a homicide investigation.

But as it turned out, they now say, there was no crime at all, and Young, who drew national attention last year because of a football recruiting scandal, was dead from an accidental fall and a gushing head wound.

Fatally hurt, the 65-year-old millionaire apparently stumbled in a daze through at least a half dozen rooms spreading blood throughout his spacious, two-story house before a final collapse on a bedroom floor.

* A police recording obtained by The Associated Press indicates one of the first police officers to see a woman the night she claims she was raped by members of Duke University's lacrosse team described her as "just passed-out drunk."

The taped conversation, which took place about 1:30 a.m. March 14, occurred about five minutes after a grocery store security guard called 911 to report a woman in the parking lot who would not get out of someone else's car.

The officer gave the dispatcher the police code for an intoxicated person and said the woman was unconscious. When asked whether she needed medical help, the officer said: "She's breathing and appears to be fine. She's not in distress. She's just passed-out drunk."

The black woman, a 27-year-old stripper and student at North Carolina Central University in Durham, told police she was raped and beaten by three white men around midnight at an off-campus party thrown by Duke's lacrosse team. The racially charged allegations have led the university to cancel the team's season and accept the resignation of its coach.

On Friday, police tried to interview Duke University lacrosse players at their dorm rooms about the team party where a woman reported being raped, but the athletes refused to speak with investigators, an attorney for several players said.

* Even with their teams out of the playoff hunt, high-scoring rookies Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin have shown no signs of slowing down.

Crosby had a goal and three assists in Pittsburgh's 5-3 win over the Rangers on Thursday night to move within three points of becoming the youngest player to have a 100-point season in the NHL.

Crosby has 17 points in his last seven games.

Ovechkin scored his 50th goal in Washington's 5-3 loss to Atlanta, becoming the second rookie in NHL history to reach 50 goals and 100 points. Teemu Selanne had 76 goals and 132 points for the Winnipeg Jets in 1992-93.

Tennis

• Defending champion Justine Henin-Hardenne kept her perfect record in the Family Circle Cup, beating seventh-seeded Dinara Safina 6-4, 6-1 Friday to advance to the semifinals.

The top-seeded Henin-Hardenne won her 14th straight match here, and next plays Patty Schnyder or Nathalie Dechy.

-- From wire reports