BRIEFLY : LINEMAN CHEATS ON BIBLE-COLLEGE COURSE.

A former Texas Tech football player has told the NCAA that an assistant coach and an academic counselor helped him cheat on a Bible college correspondence course, the Houston Chronicle reported Wednesday.

Stephen Gaines, a 6-foot-3, 300-pound defensive lineman who started for Texas Tech in 1992 and 1993, said the assistance helped him get credit for a course from Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God in Lakeland, Fla.

Gaines told the newspaper that Tech assistant football coach Rhudy Maskew and Ronn Reeger, then a member of the university's academic counseling staff for athletes, gave him a copy of a completed exam for the correspondence course in the summer of 1993.

There will be no Byron Evans comeback story. The once-intimidating Philadelphia Eagles middle linebacker, 32, said he has decided to retire for medical reasons.

BASKETBALL

U.S. Olympic team members Rebecca Lobo, Dawn Staley and Lisa Leslie were among the players selected for the inaugural season of the women's American Basketball League.

The new professional league distributed 16 star players, including 11 members of the Olympic squad, among its eight teams.

Lobo, who led Connecticut to the 1995 NCAA title, was selected by the New England team even though she has not committed to the ABL.

Leslie, from USC, was selected by the Richmond, Va., team and was expected to sign. Staley also will play for Richmond.

Ex-Stanford star Sonja Henning, a Century City attorney, was taken by San Jose in the fourth round.

TENNIS

Monica Seles, playing on grass for the first time in four years, beat Meredith McGrath 6-2, 6-4 to reach the quarterfinals of the Wimbledon warmup tournament at Eastbourne, England.

ETC.

Lee Moon, 49, athletic director for Marshall University in Huntington, W. Va., was named athletic director for the University of Wyoming.

Del Ballard Jr., a 12-time PBA champion from Richardson, Texas, who hasn't won on tour since 1993, averaged 243 for his first six games for a 15-pin lead over Don Moser of San Jose in the Kingpin Classic at Witcheta, Kan.