Sports Beat

Sitting on a six-point halftime lead in Sunday's NBA All-Star Game, Eastern Conference coach Rick Carlisle decided he would forgo the traditional locker room strategy session and pep talk. "Our players wanted to see Michael McDonald and Beyonc�, and I couldn't blame them," said the Pacers' coach. So instead of going over their X's and O's, the All-Stars watched Beyonc� descend from the rafters to perform her hit Crazy in Love in a thin V-neck top that left little to the imagination. (Also watching intently from the stands was Janet Jackson, wearing a furry brown hat and clutching a small bouquet of red roses.) How did Carlisle's motivational ploy play out? The East lost 136-132.

?Facing the prospect of losing his 15th straight Big Ten game, Minnesota basketball coach Dan Monson turned to Hollywood. After practice on Feb. 10, Monson took the Gophers to a matinee of Miracle. "I was a senior in high school when that Lake Placid event happened," says Monson. "If anything ever epitomized a team, it was them, and I wanted our guys to see that." The next night Minnesota rallied from a nine-point halftime deficit to beat Michigan 81-78.

? Steve Kerr, whose three-point marksmanship led Arizona to the 1988 Final Four, was slated to deliver the commencement address at his alma mater until a bigger name came along: George W. Bush. School president Peter Likins invited Kerr before he found out last week that the President might be available. A final decision is expected in April, but an informal straw poll by the Arizona Daily Star showed that Kerr has plenty of support in the state, which Bush narrowly won in the 2000 election. One Kerr advocate argued, "I prefer Kerr. He was a straight shooter."... Ben Affleck also had some duties usurped by the President. The actor was the grand marshal at Sunday's Daytona 500, but Bush got to give the order for the drivers to start their engines. Affleck did get to challenge Bobby Labonte on Saturday in a race using simulators at the Daytona USA Motor-sports Museum, where he learned a thing or two about trading paint. "I wrecked him early in the race," said Labonte. "We talked afterward, and I explained the 'bump draft' to him."...What would Vijay think? The field for next month's Women's Australian Open will include Mianne Bagger, a 37-year-old who was born a male but underwent a sex change operation in 1995. "Hopefully people will see that I am not a freak and, like the other women in the field, I love playing golf?' she said. The Australian Ladies Tour, like the LPGA, requires competitors to have been born female, but the Open has no such restriction. Bagger can become the first player born a male to compete in a national women's championship. We can just see the movie: The Legend of Bagger's Pants.