Sports in Brief: Two Nittany Lions plead guilty in fight

Two Penn State football players pleaded guilty yesterday in Bellefonte, Pa., to a misdemeanor charge in connection with an on-campus fight last year, resolving the last of the major legal problems for current team members.

Linebacker

Navorro Bowman

and defensive tackle

Phil Taylor

pleaded guilty to a disorderly-conduct charge in exchange for prosecutors' dropping more serious assault charges.

"You're never pleased to have to plead to anything," said Taylor's defense attorney,

Ron McGlaughlin

.

The players were sentenced to one year of probation and 100 hours of community service by Centre County Judge

Bradley P. Lunsford

.

Taylor, who will be a junior in the fall, and Bowman, who will be a redshirt sophomore, had been kicked off the team while their cases were pending.

Jason Curbison

, who had been an assistant at Rowan, has been named men's basketball coach at Penn State-Abington.

Villanova's

Elvis Lewis

qualified for today's men's 400 meters finals at the NCAA outdoor track and field East Regional at Florida State in Tallahassee.

The Wildcats'

Bobby Curtis

was sixth in the men's 5,000 meters final, ahead of La Salle's

Sean Quigley

, who was eighth.

Connecticut men's basketball coach

Jim Calhoun

will begin six weeks of radiation treatments on June 24 at the UConn Health Center to minimize chances that skin cancer will return a third time.

A Fulton Country (Ga.) medical examiner's report shows a heroin overdose caused the death of Georgia Tech pitcher

Michael Hutts

, who was found dead in his Atlanta apartment on April 11.

The New York Jets have hired Eagles pro personnel director

Scott Cohen

for their newly created position of assistant general manager, according to a person with the Jets.

Sugar Shane Mosley's

former trainer,

Derryl

Hudson

, and

Victor Conte

, the mastermind behind a sports doping ring, claimed in court papers filed yesterday that they watched Mosley inject the endurance-boosting drug EPO in the weeks before a victorious junior middleweight title bout over

Oscar De La Hoya

in September 2003.

Hudson and Conte, a convicted steroids dealer, said they saw Mosley take EPO during a meeting in which Mosley was told the benefits and risks of performance-enhancing drugs and how to use them.

Former Rutgers star

Cappie Pondexter

of the WNBA defending champion Phoenix Mercury is expected to be among the members of the U.S. Olympic women's basketball team to be announced in Washington at halftime today on the WNBA national telecast (Channel 6) of the Mystics' game against the Los Angeles Sparks.

Adrian Serioux's

foul against Los Angeles'

David Beckham

on May 18 drew an additional $1,000 fine from Major League Soccer for the FC Dallas defender.

Serioux was ejected in the 75th minute of the game, causing an automatic $250 fine. The additional penalty was assessed yesterday "in the context of quotes attributed to Serioux in England's Sun newspaper in February 2007 and comments made by the player immediately following the challenge, as well as the nature of the challenge itself," the league said.

Clare Burnum

scored two runs and

Margo Pruis

pitched a complete game to lead the Philadelphia Force pro softball team to a 5-2 win over the visiting Netherlands National Team at ECTB Stadium in Allentown.