The Joe College Report

WAY TO go, UCLA athletic director Peter Dalis. Now that everyone knows you misled Bruins coach Steve Lavin about having talked to Rick Pitino last month, crowds on the road are having a field day at Lavin's expense. Arizona fans serenaded the UCLA coach with the chant "Rick Pi-TI-no!" at the end of last Saturday's Wildcats win.... With six straight victories Memphis (10-8 through Sunday) is surging under first-year coach John Calipari, who admits he over-scheduled at the start of the season, when the Tigers went 2-6. "I did this team a disservice," Calipari says. "My ego got in the way." Calipari? Ego? Imagine that.... Shame on Duke's Jason Williams for taunting Boston College's Kenny Walls late in the Blue Devils' 22-point win. Walls then shoved Williams out of bounds and was ejected.... The bad news: Beleaguered Louisville coach Denny Crum got into a shouting match with a fan near the end of the 6-12 Cardinals' 20-point loss to Cincinnati. The good news: Crum still has a pulse.... Bravo to the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), which recently took on a new cause: fighting slavery in Sudan. After NABC executive director Jim Haney read about Arab militias from Sudan's Muslim north enslaving people in the Christian south, he persuaded the NABC board to donate $100,000 to Christian Solidarity International (CSI), a nonprofit human rights group that negotiates with slave traders to win back victims' freedom. According to CSI, the NABC's largesse will free about 2,900 women and children.