Queasy feeling over Pack hoops

If you are a Nevada basketball fan, you are probably feeling a bit queasy these days.

The future of Nick Fazekas is still up in the air, and now Demarshay Johnson, the Pack's athletic 6-9 center, has been ruled academically ineligible for the fall semester.

This puts coach Mark Fox and the Pack in a tough situation. Without Fazekas, the Pack go into a pretty tough nonconference schedule with unproven David Ellis the only proven post player. That means that freshman Javale McGee and Matt Lagrone may have to play earlier and more than Fox may have envisioned during the nonconference schedule.

According to school officials, Johnson can't make up the academic deficiencies just by going to summer school. Eligibility at this level is determined not only by grade point average, but by academic progress. Apparently it's the latter that may have derailed Johnson.

This isn't the first academic problem for Johnson, who was a partial qualifier when he wanted to come to Nevada three years ago. He eventually went to Diablo Valley and played two years there for coach Steve Coccimiglio.

•While we're on the subject of college sports, I have to give kudos to Fresno State for its baseball complex. Beiden Field is spacious and a great site for a WAC championship.

In some respects, it makes Peccole Park look like a bandbox. Beiden seats twice as much as Peccole and has better facilities, including a batting practice area. I know Nevada wants to host upcoming baseball tournaments, but from a media point of view, Nevada officials would have to upgrade the facility a bit to be a suitable site.

• Mike Chisolm, the assistant athletic director at San Jose State, reports that the athletic department has taken over Spartan Stadium. It's one of the big moves that Tom Bowen, new athletic director, has made in his first year on the job.

•Mario Elie, who has two NBA championship rings and is currently an assistant with the Golden State Warriors, will interview with the Sacramento Kings for the vacant head-coaching position.

It would be a sever loss for the Warriors if Elie departs. Mike Montgomery isn't going to be around forever, and I'd love to see him stay with the team.

It would be a good move for the Kings. Elie isn't that far removed as a player, and the Kings need a tough, hard-nose type of guy in that position. He would be a big difference from the laid-back Rick Adelman.

• It was tragic to see Barbaro go down in a heap during the early portion of the Preakness Stakes.

However, I had to laugh when people started writing to Barbaro through a university website in the southeast United States. How idiotic is that? That had to be about the lamest thing I'd heard about in my 30-plus years in the business.

• Anybody who knows me or my background knows what a devout fan I am of KNBR 680, the station that carries every Giants game and is a good talk-show station.

Gary Radnich, the veteran broadcaster for Channel 4 in the Bay Area, brought up the Barry Bonds issue and commented on how people seemed to be drawn into the race issue. If I'm judging his remarks correctly, I thought he was saying that there were other more important things that people could get involved with.

Radnich said that Bonds could have played the race card more than he has since the drug allegations started last year. Maybe he's right, but I don't think Bonds is the first black player to be discriminated against. I will say that the outcry against Bonds is more sever than what Mark McGwire went through when he broke Roger Maris' single-season record, which was later broken by Bonds.

I think in many cases that Bonds is getting payback from his past surliness with the media and fans alike. Bonds has always been a hard guy to approach whereas McGwire dealt with media attention much more favorably.

I remember my only extended conversation with McGwire came during a practice at the East-West Shrine Game many years ago at Stanford Stadium.

McGwire was there to watch his younger brother, Dan, quarterback the West squad. The younger McGwire had a brief career with the Seattle Seahawks.

I found McGwire to be engaging and pretty straightforward. He didn't dodge questions, but he also didn't like to talk about himself.

McGwire may or may not make the Hall of Fame. I think he had Hall of Fame numbers before he broke Maris' record and the talk about the andro started. I will admit that he didn't help himself at the Congressional hearings, either. He looked stiff and uncomfortable.

I feel the same about Bonds. He had Hall of Fame numbers before the 1998 season, but I'm not sure that he will make the Hall of Fame. There are many old-timers that won't vote for Bonds and have already said so.

Only time will tell the fortunes of McGwire and Bonds.