Sports briefs 5/20/05

College basketball

* Kansas guard J.R. Giddens suffered a wound to his right leg when he was slashed by a knife in a fight outside a bar early Thursday, but it wasn't immediately clear how badly he was hurt. A Lawrence police officer described the wound as "not life-threatening," but declined to speculate on whether it could damage Giddens' playing career. Giddens averaged 10.1 points per game this past season as a sophomore.

Football

* The Carolina Panthers traded Todd Sauerbrun to the Denver Broncos on Thursday. Denver sent Jason Baker and its seventh-round draft choice in 2006 to Carolina in exchange for Sauerbrun, a two-time Pro Bowl selection. The Panthers had been trying to move Sauerbrun, considered by many to be the best punter in the NFL. But Sauerbrun was one of three players recently named in a CBS report as having obtained illegal steroid prescriptions from a South Carolina doctor under federal investigation.

High school basketball

* The Poplar Bluff board of education this week named former Mules assistant coach Travis Brown as the successor toJohn David Pattillo, who led the program to two state championships. Brown was an assistant to Pattillo for four seasons. Brown was 5-18 at Bloomfield this past season after a 17-9 mark in the 2003-04 season.

Track and field

* Former world champion sprinter Michelle Collins accepted a four-year suspension for a doping violation, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said Thursday. Collins, who forfeited her titles in the 200 meters from the 2003 indoor world and U.S. championships, originally was suspended for eight years but appealed. USADA reduced the sanction to four years, and Collins agreed to drop her appeal. An arbitration panel found that Collins, 34, used banned substances provided by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.

-- From staff, wire reports