BRIEFLY.

Byline: - Daily News Staff and Wire Services

Dumais brothers win gold

Justin and Troy Dumais of Ventura won the 3-meter synchro gold medal Thursday at the U.S. National Diving Championships at Huntersville, N.C.

The brothers, who won the bronze medal at last month's world championships and were sixth at the Athens Olympics, finished with 337.710 points.

In other events, Nancilea Underwood and Cassidy Krug won the women's 3-meter synchro, Jevon Tarantino captured the gold in men's 1-meter springboard, and high school junior Kelci Bryant won the women's 1-meter for her first senior national title.

GYMNASTICS: Chellsie Memmel, kept out of last year's Olympics with a foot injury kept, outperformed pre-meet favorite Nastia Liukin, finishing first in the preliminaries at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships at Indianapolis. Memmel scored 38.382 points, putting her almost a point ahead of Liukin.

Liukin, who was hurt by a major slip on the balance beam, is third with 37.515 points. Jana Bieger, third behind Liukin in last year's junior division, is second with 37.615 points.

The finals, worth 50 percent of the score, are Saturday night.

BOXING: Manny Pacquiao and Erik Morales will fight in separate super featherweight bouts Sept. 10 at Staples Center. Should both win, they will meet - probably in December - in a rematch of their fight last March 19 in Las Vegas won by Morales.

Pacquiao (39-3-2, 30 KOs), of Kabawe, Philippines, will take on Hector Velazquez (42-10-2, 31 KOs) of Tijuana in the semi-main event. Morales (48-2, 34 KOs), of Tijuana, will fight Zahir Raheem (26-1, 16 KOs) in the main event.

Both fights are scheduled for 12 rounds, and Top Rank Inc. is the promoter.

``I am not looking past Hector Velazquez,'' Pacquiao said. ``I have to beat him to get to Morales, and he is a very tough fighter.''

-Robert Morales

--Police in Baton Rouge, La., said heavyweight boxer Clifford Etienne held up a check cashing business, fired a shot when a clerk failed to move fast enough and pulled a gun on officers as he tried carjack two different vehicles with children inside.

Etienne, who took up boxing while serving a prison sentence for armed robbery, was arrested Wednesday night as he tried to escape when the car he was driving ran up on a curb. He was being held in lieu of a $70,000 bond, according to the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office.

COLLEGES: A controversial NCAA decision restricting Florida State University's use of an American Indian mascot was based on incomplete information and will be reconsidered, a top NCAA official said.

Walter Harrison, who chairs the committee that approved a policy directed at 18 schools with ``hostile and abusive'' American Indian mascots, said FSU has ``good grounds'' to appeal.

Among the reasons, he said, are that the NCAA Executive Committee thought the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma opposed FSU's use of the Seminole image as a mascot. But that was not the case, the tribe's attorney general said.

BASKETBALL: UCLA women's basketball players Nikki Blue and Noelle Quinn are among the top 30 preseason candidates for the 2005-06 Women's Wooden Award. The list is composed of 30 student athletes who, based on last year's individual performance and team records, are the early frontrunners for college basketball's most coveted trophy.

--Micheal Blackshear, who transferred from Temple to Division II Cheyney earlier this year, was shot to death in Philadelphia. Blackshear, 21, was shot once in the head by an unknown person who escaped in a dark-colored sedan.

FOOTBALL: The Pacific-10 Conference has extended its commitment to play in the Las Vegas Bowl through 2009, officials announced. The agreement will have the fourth- place Pac-10 finisher play in 2006 and 2008, while the Emerald Bowl in San Francisco gets the Pac-10 fifth-place finisher. In 2007 and 2009, the two bowls will reverse the order.

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Photo:

Nastia Liukin performs on the uneven bars during the preliminaries of the U.S. Gymnastics Championships on Thursday.

Darron Cummings/Associated Press