USC Is Double the Trouble With Clarks

At least for a little while, Kim and Kristin Clark, the identical twins of USC basketball, aren’t even resembling fraternal twins.

Kristin’s nose is different. In fact, this week she looks more like Jake LaMotta than Kristin Clark.

Last Wednesday, Kim’s first day of basketball practice, having just reported from the soccer team, she had the ball in a scrimmage and was guarded--too closely, it turns out--by her sister.

Bang! Player down.

“She just swung the ball around hard and her right elbow caught me on the nose,” Kristin said.

“There wasn’t much bleeding, but it swelled up right away and it’s still throbbing.”

In all their years of driveway and playground basketball, such a thing had never happened, Kristin said.

“Well, one time Kim’s boyfriend broke my arm when we were playing football,” she said, pointing out that the young man immediately became an ex-boyfriend.

USC Coach Chris Gobrecht said Kristin went down as if hit by one of LaMotta’s left hooks.

“The first thing either one said was when Kim said, ‘Oh, God, I’ll never hear the end of this,’ ” the coach said.

But really, a broken nose? That’s a hangnail for either of these jet-propelled guards from Monte Vista High in Cupertino.

Last season, Kim’s shoulder popped out of place during practice. No problem.

“I just went over to the wall and rammed my shoulder against it,” she said. “It popped right back in.”

She also played with a cracked vertebra last year, a soccer injury.

The Clarks are mirror-image identicals, which occurs in 25% of all identical twin births. In mirror image identicals, one side of a twin’s body is identical to the other side of the sibling’s.

For example, when both went to the dentist a year ago, each had a cavity filled . . . in exactly the same location in the same tooth . . . but on opposite sides of their jaws.

Kristin Clark spent her summer playing in a San Francisco city league with Stanford players Anita Kaplan, Heather Owen, Charmin Smith and Kate Paye.

Kim spent much of her summer playing soccer, a sport in which she’s near All-American status.

In any sport, the twins are defense-oriented. They say they study cornerbacks and safeties when viewing football games, for example, not offensive players. Kristin says her goal is to lead the Pacific 10 in steals.

UCLA would believe it. In the USC-UCLA game at Pauley Pavilion last year, in one 2-minute, 20-second stretch of the second half, she converted four consecutive steals into uncontested layups in a USC victory.

UCLA could have used a Kim Clark-type elbow that night.

A BETTER DEAL FOR ABL?

The ABL may have an opportunity to improve its TV deal next season.

ABC and CBS were reluctant to deal with the ABL for this season, what with negotiations on a new NBA deal underway (the WNBA is owned by the NBA).

“We have a deal currently with Fox Sports Net and Fox has exclusive negotiating rights through Dec. 31,” said ABL chief Gary Cavalli.

“If we don’t extend our deal with them, then we can talk to CBS, ABC and ESPN.”

Cavalli also said his staff is talking about maybe moving next year’s starting date from mid-October to the first week of November to avoid going up against the World Series and shortening the period when its games compete against weekend college and pro football.