BRIEFLY : SUN DEVILS' FRIEDER RESIGNS AFTER 323 CAREER WINS.

Bill Frieder, 55, one of the best-liked and most problem-plagued coaches in Arizona State history, resigned Wednesday as Sun Devils basketball coach. His team was 10-20 last season and has been under the cloud of a federal point-fixing investigation.

Almost from the start, some of Frieder's best players turned up on police blotters, left the program or were injured. The latest incident came last week, when two players were accused of stealing a compact-disc player.

Frieder, 132-108 at Arizona State and 323-195 in 19 seasons overall, won acclaim for fast-breaking teams that relied on pressure defense to beat more talented squads during his eight years at Tempe.

AUTO RACING: Emerson Fittipaldi has ``almost 100 percent'' chance to walk again after surgery to repair a spinal fracture stemming from a Sunday plane crash, his doctors said. The 50-year-old racer, a two-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 and a national hero in Brazil, is scheduled for lower-back surgery today.

TENNIS: Steffi Graf intends to return to competition this fall, with one of her first appearances Nov. 25 in Baltimore, five months after knee surgery. The 28-year-old German, who holds the record for most weeks ranked No. 1 but is now ranked No. 13, has not played since losing to Amanda Coetzer in the quarterfinals of the French Open on June 3.

TRACK: Two East Germans who won gold medals in track and field at the 1972 Olympics used performance-enhancing drugs, according to a report in the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung of Munich, which identified the athletes as Renate Meissner, winner of the women's 100- and 200-meter sprints, and pole vault champion Wolfgang Nordwig. It was unclear whether the two had been on drugs at the time of the Munich Olympics.

BOXING: Don King, accused of defrauding an insurance company, had his federal retrial postponed by the U.S. Attorney's office one day before jury selection was scheduled. The government is accusing the flamboyant promoter of cheating Lloyds of London by faking a contract to collect $350,000 in nonexistent training expenses for a canceled bout between Julio Cesar Chavez and Harold Brazier in 1991. The first trial, in 1995, ended in a hung jury. If convicted, King could face up to 45 years in prison and a $2.2 million fine.

ALSO: Jack Adkisson, former SMU and professional football player and patriarch of the famed Texas wrestling family, the Von Erichs, died at his Denton County home two months after he was diagnosed with cancer. He was 68. Adkisson, who went by the name Fritz Von Erich during a 35-year wrestling career, for years produced a syndicated wrestling show, World Class Championship Wrestling, that was seen in 66 U.S. television markets, Japan, Argentina and the Middle East. The Von Erichs once wrestled in front of 40,000 people at Texas Stadium and regularly filled the arenas where they competed.

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Photo: Arizona State basketball coach Bill Frieder has resigned after eight seasons with the Sun Devils.

Associated Press