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Monday morning was still fun time for the Wichita State baseball team. By the afternoon, coach Gene Stephenson wanted the celebration to end and preparation to begin.

"Hopefully we'll get the players back down to reality in the next six to eight hours and begin to focus on playing whoever we're going to play," Stephenson said Monday morning, before the Shockers returned by bus to Wichita.

Monday night's Tallahassee Regional championship game filled in the remaining piece of the puzzle. WSU will play at No. 4 national seed Florida State in a best-of-3 super regional beginning Friday or Saturday in Tallahassee. The Seminoles won their regional with a 16-7 victory over Tulane on Monday night.

The Shockers took Monday off, although coaches began gathering scouting reports on Florida State and Tulane. WSU will practice today in its first organized attempt to put the buzz of Sunday's 11-7 win over Oklahoma

State in the past.

For a team looking to permanently break out of a hitting slump, Alexander Francisco was probably the last pitcher the Wingnuts wanted to see.

Francisco has played the role of stopper for Sioux City this season, entering with a 4-0 record and earning the decision in more than half of the Explorers' seven wins.

Francisco never pitched with the lead Monday, but the three runs Sioux City scored in the top of the 10th inning gave him his fifth victory and allowed the Explorers to beat Wichita 3-1 at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium.

Francisco pitched nine shutout

innings before departing a scoreless tie.

Members of the Clarinda (Iowa) A's summer baseball team escaped injury but lost all of their equipment and some personal items after the team bus caught fire early Monday.

The A's were on their way back to Iowa after a weekend road trip to Junction City and Topeka when one of the bus' inside tires blew out and started a fire on I-29 near Faucett, Mo. A fire extinguisher failed to put out the fire, which quickly spread and destroyed the bus.

All 25 players were able to escape without injury, but the team's equipment, including the uniforms, and about $2,000 to $2,500 worth of personal items -- iPods, luggage, laptops -- were lost in the fire.

"We were really on fire, even on the bus," manager Ryan Eberly told the St. Joseph News-Press.

The players waited for a bus at a local truck stop and arrived in Clarinda at around 5 a.m. A game against the Chillicothe Mudcats on Monday night was postponed.

Seed: No. 4 national

How they got here: Defeated Tulane in Tallahassee Regional

Record: 52-11

Coach: Mike Martin, 29th season, 1,536-517-4

Player to watch: Catcher Buster Posey is Collegiate Baseball's national player of the year.

Wichita State's road to Omaha and the College World Series will not stop at Eck Stadium. Florida State saw to that Monday night.

Florida State beat Tulane 16-7 in the deciding game of the NCAA Tallahassee Regional and will play host to the Shockers beginning Friday in the best-of-3 super regional.

WSU, which won the Stillwater Regional by beating host Oklahoma State in Sunday's championship game, will face FSU at 1 p.m. Friday on ESPN2, Channel 33; at 11 a.m. Saturday on ESPN2; and, if necessary, at noon Sunday on ESPN, Channel 32.

The WSU ticket office will sell 400 tickets for the regional beginning at 8:30 a.m. today. All-session passes are $35.

Baseball

Coaches All-State

Class 6A

First Team

P--Garrett Gould, Maize; Lee Riddenhour, SM West; Colton Murray, Olathe East; Dalton Banwart, Goddard; Joe Kornbrust, Lawrence; C--Hector Acosta-Carrillo, Junction City; 1B--Jake Marasco, Maize; 2B--Jordan Dreiling, Free State; 3B--Camerson Seitzer, BV West; SS--Tyler Grimes, W. North; OF--Nick Cocking, Maize; Brett Ater, Olathe East; Kevin Huckleberry, Olathe NW; C.J. Henrichsen, W. Northwest; UT--Logan Watkins, Goddard; DH--John Wilson, Free State; Coach of the Year--Mike Hill, Free State. Pitcher of the year--Garrett Gould, Maize. Player of the year--Lee Ridenhour, SM West

Honor Roll

The Alley

Men--Monty Yates 300, 782. Women--Olivia Sandham 249, 697. Senior men--Dean Chippeaux 224, 621. Senior women--Phyllis Holmes 174, Gloria Bayless 441. Brookhaven men--Mike Moore 213, Gary Stroud 529. Women--Lori Thompson 183, Shirley Little 484. VIP senior men--Dean Chippeaux 224, 621. Women--Phyllis Holmes 174, Gloria Bayless 441. RMCC men--Scott Curtis 235, 640. Women--Kylan Hawkins 180, 492. Battle of the Sexes men--Monty Yates 300, 782. Women--Olivia Sandham 249, 697. Ladies Luck women--Ethel Telford 173, Carol Conrad 488. Petersen Points men--David Tipton 289, Eric Schultz 743.

Northrock

Men--Jim Elson 299, Vaughn Weaver 759. Women--Kristy Thurmond 267, Maggie Smith 672.

Wife swapping and a host of other titillating story lines are all part of the "Swingtown" world coming to TV viewers beginning on Thursday.

The CBS drama centers around three Midwestern couples who wade into the rising waters of sexual freedom that swept the nation during the mid-1970s. The fact that a show with such strong sexual themes landed not on a freewheeling cable channel but on a once-genteel network astounded nearly everyone -- including the show's creative team.

"When we got a call from our agent that CBS wanted to buy our show, we thought it was a joke," said Alan Poul, one of the show's executive producers. "On cable, this show would have been a novel approach to an interesting subject matter and a fun look at the '70s, but it wouldn't have necessarily pushed any boundaries. Whereas on a network, you can say the show is groundbreaking."

The show is set on Chicago's affluent North Shore. Primarily a drama but with comic elements, the series is driven by its triumvirate of couples -- the swinging Deckers, the in-between Millers and the disapproving Thompsons -- and their embrace of, and resistance to, the changing mores of the day.

"Swingtown" isn't going to flash its audience so much as challenge them with adult situations that rarely have been examined on network television.

Look for these new DVD titles in video stores and rental shops beginning today.

Semi-Pro (R) '' ½(1 hr 40 min) In another sports spoof, Will Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, the owner-coach-player of the American Basketball Association's Flint Michigan Tropics, who rallies his teammates to make their NBA dreams come true.

Flawless (PG-13) (1 hr 49 min) _ A clever diamond-heist thriller set in 1960s London, starring Demi Moore as a driven and beautiful executive at the London Diamond Corporation who finds herself frustrated by a glass ceiling. Michael Caine is a nighttime janitor at the business who persuades her to help him execute a plan to steal a hefty sum in diamonds.

TV shows

1st season -- "Mannix"

Country star John Rich is one of the judges on "Nashville Star," which makes its way to NBC on Monday. Is this an "American Idol" clone? Not so, says Rich. "'American Idol' infuriates me as an artist," he said. Rich says he thinks it's fake. "You can tell when somebody's comment was scripted," he said. "You can tell when they told an artist, wear this and sing that and do that.

"That's not the way it's going to work on this show. We've got myself. We've got Jewel, who, in my opinion, is one of the greatest singer-songwriters in my generation, and another guy named Jeff Steele who has written more hits in country radio than anybody in the last 40 years. These are the judges."

He admits the judges will be hard on the contestants. "Of course, you have to be. It's not that 'American Idol' shouldn't be hard on them. They're being fake about it. They're not doing it real. When you can't make a cognizant comment about someone's performance and you're commenting on something that happened the day before, why don't you just walk up on stage and slap them right across the face while you're at it? As an artist, I would just flip them the bird and walk off the stage and go, 'Thank you very much. I'm going back to Topeka and work on it on my own. Appreciate that, Paula.' "

Tatum O'Neal arrested

Oscar-winning actress Tatum O'Neal has been released after her drug arrest in lower Manhattan.