He Has Zeroed In on Formula for Unproductive Play

Lou Roe of the Golden State Warriors was surprised to learn that he led the NBA in a statistical category in the 1995-1996 season--12 “trillions”--while playing for the Detroit Pistons.

Harvey Pollack supplied that bit of trivia in his recently released NBA Statistical Yearbook.

A player posts a trillion when he gets in a game, usually for just a couple of minutes, and doesn’t record a single stat. Hence, in the box score, he’ll have a number for the amount of minutes played followed by a string of 15 zeros.

Trivia time: What was the largest margin of victory in the Rose Bowl game?

Powerless: Dallas Maverick guard-forward George McCloud on the trade that sent Jason Kidd to the Phoenix Suns:

“Jason was the backbone of this team, this franchise. When they told us, it just sucked the energy out of us. He was our energy.”

Muscle man: NFL draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. rates Virginia Tech quarterback Jim Druckenmiller as the strongest quarterback he has ever graded--and for good reason.

The 6-foot-5, 224-pound Druckenmiller won the team’s iron-man title last year by throwing tires, pushing a station wagon, pulling 200- to 300-pound sleds and throwing empty beer kegs. He bench-presses 350 pounds and squats 500.

Druckenmiller threw three touchdowns against Nebraska in Tuesday’s 41-21 Orange Bowl loss.

Get it? Nickname for the postseason Missouri Valley Conference basketball tournament at the Kiel Center in St. Louis: Arch Madness.

Vicious! The makers of the movie “Jerry Maguire” were shooting for realism. To teach Kelly Preston how to punch Tom Cruise, they brought in retired boxer Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, prompting Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Sun-Times to comment:

“To teach Cruise how to be an agent, we hear they brought in a rat from ‘Ben.’ ”

Novel idea: Phoenix Coyote goalie Darcy Wakaluk on the NHL’s crackdown on excessively wide goalie pads: “They might as well make us play naked out there.”

Looking back: On this day in 1939, USC’s Doyle Nave, a fourth string quarterback, threw a 19-yard touchdown pass to Al Krueger in the final two minutes as the Trojans defeated Duke, 7-3, in the Rose Bowl game.

Duke was previously unbeaten, untied and unscored upon.

Trivia answer: Michigan beat Stanford in 1902 and USC in 1948 by the same score, 49-0.

And finally: Green Packer wide receiver Andre Rison on quarterback Brett Favre: “He is Superman. They can’t touch him. He has no ego except for the team. That’s why we’ll do anything it takes to keep people away from him. It’s why the offensive line protects him like he’s Fort Knox.”