Sports briefs 1/22/05

Baseball

* Call Southern California's American League team the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

A judge refused Friday to grant a preliminary injunction to Anaheim in its attempt to keep the Angels from adding Los Angeles to their name.

Superior Court Judge Peter Polos told lawyers for the city that the stadium lease requires only that Anaheim be in the team's name.

Basketball

* The Phoenix Suns added a veteran scorer to their young roster on Friday, sending three players to the New Orleans Hornets for Jim Jackson.

The Suns, who bolted to a 31-4 start but had lost five straight going into Friday night's game against San Antonio, sent swing man Casey Jacobsen, 23, and forwards Maciej Lampe, 19, and Jackson Vroman, 23, to the Hornets.

Jackson, 34, will replace Jacobsen as the sixth man in the Suns' rotation, playing both small forward and guard. The Suns will be Jackson's 12th team in 13 seasons.

Jackson has a career average of 15.2 points in 805 NBA games.

Colleges

* A former assistant football coach at Northern Illinois and Illinois State is the latest addition to new coach Ron Zook's staff at Illinois.

Bob Heffner was hired Friday, the school announced. He's the seventh assistant hired by Zook.

Football

* They'll be throwing snowballs instead of footballs this weekend in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but a major winter storm projected to dump as much as a foot of snow on both cities should pass in time for Sunday's two NFL conference championship games.

The storm caused the New England Patriots to fly to Pittsburgh a day ahead of schedule Friday night to avoid expected travel delays Saturday. The Patriots will miss a scheduled walkthrough, but coach Bill Belichick said they also skipped it before last weekend's home game against the Colts.

Philadelphia could get the worst of the snowstorm, which is predicted to start early Saturday morning in western Pennsylvania and gradually spread across the state. The National Weather Service predicts 4 to 8 inches in both cities, but State College, Pa.-based Accuweather is calling for 6 to 12 inches in Pittsburgh and as much or more with blizzard-like conditions in Philadelphia.

To beat the storm, the Falcons will fly from Atlanta to Philadelphia 4 1/2 hours ahead of schedule, leaving at 10 a.m. instead of 2:30 p.m.

Once the snow clears out, a gametime temperature of 18 with a minus-7 wind chill factor is predicted for the late afternoon Falcons-Eagles NFC championship game in frigid Philadelphia. Forecasters are calling for 16-degree temperatures and a wind chill around 10 for the early evening Patriots-Steelers AFC championship game in Pittsbur-r-r-r-gh.

* The Hall of Fame linebacker Mike Singletary was hired to be the 49ers' assistant head coach and linebackers coach Friday, following new coach Mike Nolan from Baltimore. Singletary was the Ravens' inside linebackers coach for the past two seasons while Nolan was their defensive coordinator.

* Chicago Bears wide receiver David Terrell was kept in a lockup briefly after he failed to appear on time for a scheduled traffic court appearance Friday.

After giving Terrell an additional 80 minutes to show up for his 9 a.m. hearing at the Daley Center traffic court on reckless driving and other traffic charges, Cook County Judge Rhoda Davis Sweeney issued an arrest warrant for him and set bail at $2,500

Terrell arrived several hours later and paid the $250 in cash -- the 10 percent required payment to post bail. He was held in a county court detention area for an hour while his bail papers were processed