Sports briefs 11/10/03

Baseball

A 20-year-old transient suspected in the death last week of Cincinnati Reds outfielder Dernell Stenson was arrested Saturday on Indian land east of Phoenix.

Two other men, half brothers, were already being held in connection with the case, one charged with possession of stolen property and the other held on suspicion of robbery, kidnapping and homicide. Their relationship to the man arrested Saturday, David Griffith, wasn't immediately clear. Detectives on Sunday declined to give a detailed account of what happened or identify a motive in the baseball player's death.

Basketball

Forward-center Cherokee Parks was signed Sunday by the Golden State Warriors.

Parks, an eight-year NBA veteran, appeared in two games with Miami this preseason, averaging 5.5 points and 4.0 rebounds.

College

Eastern Illinois won the OVC soccer tournament and earned the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament with a 2-1 shootout victory over Samford.

Beth Liesen scored three minutes into the game for Eastern Illinois, while Samford's Lindsay Shanks tied the score with a goal in the 87th minute. The teams played two scoreless overtimes before the Panthers won 5-4 on penalty kicks.

Two stores operated by the University of Missouri have stopped selling a poster of fans tearing down the goal posts at Faurot Field after the athletic department said the poster might promote unruly fan behavior. The department also has asked the university's licensing department to try to stop sales of the poster elsewhere.

The poster frames a photograph taken minutes after Missouri's win over Nebraska on Oct. 11, the first time the Tigers had beaten a Nebraska football team since 1978.

Football

Former NFL quarterback Jim McMahon was arrested early Sunday on a DUI charge, according to Santa Rosa County sheriff's officials. McMahon, the flamboyant leader of the Chicago Bears team that won the 1986 Super Bowl, was stopped around 2 a.m. after two separate citizens called and reported that a pickup was recklessly going through traffic and nearly causing accidents, said sheriff's spokesman Jerry Henderson.

McMahon failed a field sobriety test and had a blood-alcohol level more than three times the legal limit in Florida, Henderson said.

Hockey

Mike Keenan was fired as coach of the Florida Panthers after failing to turn the franchise into a Stanley Cup contender. Keenan will be replaced on an interim basis by general manager Rick Dudley.

Keenan, 54, joined the Panthers in December 2001, and last season, his first full year with the team, they finished 24-36-13. Only five of the other 29 NHL teams had fewer points this season than the Panthers, who are off to a 5-8-2 start and won just 45 of the 153 games under Keenan.

-- From wire reports