This Date In Sports

Tris Speaker and Cy Young are elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

UCLA, led by Bill Walton, sets an NCAA record for consecutive victories with its 61st win, an 82-63 victory over Notre Dame. UCLA breaks the record of 60 set by San Francisco in 1956. Walton scores 16 points, grabs 15 rebounds and blocks 10 shots.

Geoff Houston of the Cleveland Cavaliers hands out 27 assists, two short of the NBA record and scores 24 points in a 110-106 victory over the Golden State Warriors.

The New York Giants survive the closest Super Bowl ever when Scott Norwood’s 47-yard field goal attempt with 8 seconds left in the game goes wide. The Giants win their second Super Bowl in five years, 20-19 over the Buffalo Bills.

American Chad Rowan is awarded the highest rank in sumo wrestling, the ancient Japanese sport, making him the first foreign “yokozuna.” The 6-foot-8, 455pounder from Honolulu, becomes the 64th person to hold the top rank in the sport’s history.

The U.S. Golf Association elects Judy Bell as the first female president in its 101-year history.

Jennifer Capriati upsets three-time winner Martina Hingis 6-4, 6-3 to win the Australian Open and her first Grand Slam tournament title.

Hermann Maier wins a World Cup super giant slalom in Kitzbuehel, Austria, a victory he ranks among his finest triumphs. The win comes 18 months after he almost loses his leg in a motorcycle crash.

Serena Williams wins her third Australian Open sin- gles title, routing Maria Sharapova 6-1, 6-2. Unseeded and ranked 81st, Williams wins her eighth and most improb- able Grand Slam. She is the second unseeded woman to win the Australian title in the Open era.