Sideline Chatter
Memphis players crying foul after steal

By Dwight Perry
The Seattle Times

Maurice Clarett: A hard man to find these days.

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Here's one steal that might find its way into a box score at NCAA headquarters.

Four University of Memphis basketball players told police that burglars made a $60,000 haul from their campus apartment Saturday night while the Tigers were playing Christian Brothers University, according to a report by Eyewitness News 24, Memphis' ABC-TV affiliate.

Later accounts reduced the value closer to $30,000. (Seems there is some discrepancy as to whether those various fur coats — which one of the players was reportedly keeping for a female friend — were really worth $40,000.)

The original list of missing items included:

• $40,000: mink coats

• $6,000: shoes

• $5,000: trousers / pants

• $4,000: custom-made shirts

• $3,150: throwback jerseys
 
• $2,500: diamond earrings

• $1,450: TVs / DVDs / video games

• $1,300: computers.

"If you look at the list, there's nothing there that struck me as outrageous," Tigers coach John Calipari told the TV station.

Well, maybe one thing: "It's 80 degrees in Memphis, so why would you have a fur coat?"

Insurance adjusters say it's just a good thing the burglars didn't stumble onto these starving students' $10 stash of Top Ramen.

From Z to shining Z

Among those signing letters of intent this week to play basketball at Idaho State was Central Kitsap's Emily Zygmontowicz, whose surname alone is worth 41 points in Scrabble tiles.

Newspapers in Idaho, we assume, won't be announcing the news with any one-column headlines.

Transferring in

Dateline, Columbus, Ohio — Former Buckeyes tailback Maurice Clarett has vanished from sight and reportedly plans to seek political asylum at the apartment of four basketball players in Memphis.

All tapped out

Bruce Binkowski, the Holiday Bowl's executive director, has a few words of warning for any of his brethren bold enough to Cowboy up and give a certain Mountain West Conference team a bowl invite.

"Wyoming has been to our bowl twice," Binkowski was quoted in the Los Angeles Times, "and both times we ran out of beer at the stadium."

Talking the talk

• Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, after the father of Missouri quarterback Brad Smith told the Kansas City Star that Tigers coach Gary Pinkel possesses all the personality of a dill pickle: "Call him Dill Pinkel."

• Larry Stewart of the Los Angeles Times, on Mike Price coaching Texas-El Paso's football team into the Top 25 for the first time in 34 years: "It's a Miner miracle."

Recording Artest

What do you get when you cross a rhyming basketball player with a two-game benching?

Bum Rap.

Dwight Perry: 206-464-8250 or dperry@seattletimes.com