The Associated Press

AMHERST, Mass. - Forward Stephen Briggs, who was suspended indefinitely last week, was dismissed from the Massachusetts basketball team because of an unspecified violation of team rules, coach Steve Lappas said Friday.

The school announced Oct. 3 that Briggs had been suspended.

Lappas said Briggs, a freshman from Houston, will withdraw from the university and return home.

"After a careful and complete review of the facts, all parties involved thought it best that Stephen leave the team," Lappas said. "This was a very difficult decision to make, but one that I thought was necessary."

Briggs averaged 18 points and 11 rebounds as a senior at Houston's Westside High School. He selected the Minutemen over Georgia Tech, Wake Forest and Texas.

GARDNER-WEBB: The president of a small Baptist university in Shelby, N.C., resigned Friday after students and alumni protested his tampering with the grade-point average of a basketball player two years ago.

Christopher White, president of Gardner-Webb University since 1986, admitted at a Sept. 10 faculty meeting that he ordered an F on the player's record be left out in calculating his grade-point average.

Professors took a 63-39 vote of no confidence in him. But the board of trustees, at a meeting Sept. 27, announced they would keep White while demoting two deans who criticized him.

Since that meeting, many of the college's 3,500 students have protested almost daily, instructors have taught while dressed in black to symbolize the death of the school's honor code, and alumni have criticized the president.

Three professors resigned in protest - including one for whose grandparents the school was named.

"This is clearly the most wrenching decision I have ever made, but one I must make in the best interests of helping the university move away from the pain and divisiveness of recent weeks," White said in his resignation letter.

"I am sorry that what I did two years ago, out of fairness to a student, has led to such turmoil and controversy," he wrote.

White has said he ordered the change in Carlos Webb's GPA because another school official gave him bad advice on how to improve his grade-point average. The altered GPA allowed Webb, the basketball team's leading scorer in 1999, to remain eligible in 2000-01, the season Gardner-Webb won the National Christian College Athletic Association championship.

The 58-year-old White is an ordained minister for whom Gardner-Webb's graduate school of divinity is named.

Thomas Hardin, chairman of the trustees, said the board did not request White's resignation.

KANSAS: Coach Roy Williams will receive the John R. Wooden "Legends of Coaching" award at a ceremony at the Los Angeles Athletic Club on April 13.

The award recognizes the lifetime achievements of coaches who exemplify the "high standards of coaching success and personal achievement" of Wooden, a Hall-of-Fame coach who led UCLA to 10 national titles.

Williams has a 388-93 record in 14 seasons with the Jayhawks. He has led Kansas to 13 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, including the Final Four berths in 1991, 1993 and 2002.

LOUISVILLE: With better team depth, coach Rick Pitino expects his players to fight for minutes.

"We now have a legitimate team in terms of numbers, in terms of having a low-post presence, and it'll be a lot more fun because we won't be as limited in what we can do," Pitino said.

This year's competition has been fierce.

Three Cardinals have been injured the past month in unsupervised pickup games. Sophomore forward Otis George broke his nose, junior guard Bryant Northern broke his left hand and junior-college transfer guard Prileu Davis had his eye socket shattered by an elbow from senior Reece Gaines.

All five starters return from a team that went a surprising 19-13 and reached the NIT. New faces include freshman guards Taquan Dean and Francisco Garcia, junior-college transfer post man Kendal Dartez and Davis, a high-scoring guard from Arizona.

The biggest addition is former Kentucky center Marvin Stone, who transferred in December.