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TUCSON — Brent Brennan opened his press conference by congratulating Wes Johnson and the Arizona triathlon team on a third straight national championship — and then he got to the week in front of his own program. The Arizona Wildcats (7-2, 4-2 Big 12) host the No. 2 Utah Utes (9-0, 6-0 Big 12) at Casino Del Sol Stadium on Saturday night, FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff is broadcasting live from the UA Mall that morning, and the kickoff is set for 5:30 p.m. MST. Arizona has not sold the stadium out this year, and Brennan, talking about what this game is the moment for, said:

“We haven’t gotten it done this year, but this is the game for that.”

The numbers say how much room there is to fill: the biggest crowd at Casino Del Sol Stadium this season was 45,477 for Iowa State on Oct. 24, the stadium holds 50,800, and Friday night’s game against TCU drew 40,501.

Utah is the model Brennan measures against — the consistency, the Rose Bowls, a conference title, the move from the Mountain West into the Power Four done right — and he said so plainly, talking about a program whose culture and toughness are worth modeling Arizona after:

“There’s lots of things about that program that are fantastic. There’s been a consistency there — they’ve played in the Rose Bowl, they’ve won the conference. They’ve done a great job since moving from the Mountain West into the Power Four, and so I got a ton of respect for what they do there. Coach Scalley’s doing a great job, they’re very well coached. Three guys that I worked with over the course of my career coached on that staff there — I love those guys, I believe in them. I’m happy for them, and I’m excited for this big-time matchup on Saturday night.”

That respect is exactly why he’s asking Tucson to show up the way it hasn’t yet. A crowd changes a game — Brennan has coached in enough buildings to know it, including nights where a home crowd got into BYU’s game — and he wants the Zona Zoo, the fans, the alumni and the whole city making Casino Del Sol Stadium that kind of problem for Utah. On what a sellout Saturday night would show the country, Brennan said:

“Let’s show everybody how freaking dope the city of Tucson is. Let’s show them what this institution, the University of Arizona, is all about, by going absolutely nuts in that stadium on Saturday night.”

The Wildcats bring their own momentum into it, off Friday night’s 29-28 win over TCU at home — a game that ended on their kicker’s foot. Brennan, talking about the faith the whole program has in Michael, said:

“It was awesome to see him get out there and pipe that kick, and there was never a doubt for any of us.” 

Brennan walked through how the finish was managed: the moment Arizona recovered the onside kick, the Wildcats considered themselves already in field goal range, so the plan was to burn as much clock as they could and make TCU use its timeouts, and give Michael the chance to win it. On what that kick says about his kicker going forward, Brennan said:

“That’s who he is, and that’s what he’s going to continue to be for us.”

The line in front of Michael is part of the story too. TCU attacked one spot, and there were stretches where Brennan’s quarterback was under fire — and still, against the best defense in the conference, Arizona ran for more than 130 yards, threw for 300 and scored 29 points. Brennan, talking about where his offensive line is heading since the Texas Tech game, said:

“Coming from Texas Tech into that game last week versus TCU, I thought our line made great strides — everybody being on the same page a little bit better, finishing a little bit better, being a little bit more technically exact in their work. I’m encouraged by that.”

A team that just won a game on its kicker’s last swing, behind a line trending the right way, now gets the biggest home stage of its season — the program its coach holds up as the model, the national pregame show on campus, and a night kickoff in front of the sellout crowd he’s asking Tucson to deliver.

Kickoff is 5:30 p.m. MST Saturday on FOX; in Phoenix, the game is on KFNX 1100 AM.

The Phoenix Suns (3-6) had a plan for Victor Wembanyama on Monday night, and by the end of Jordan Ott’s postgame session, the Suns’ head coach was explaining all the ways the San Antonio Spurs (9-2) made sure it didn’t matter. Wembanyama scored 40 points with 11 rebounds and eight blocks in 25 minutes in the Spurs’ 122-96 win, and Ott started with the fouls — the Suns put the Spurs in the penalty early, fouling on mid-range shots, three trips he could point to, the last one for sure. On how Wembanyama scores even when the defense does its job, Ott said:

“He just does it from all three levels right now, and then anytime he has a switch on him they just literally throw the ball to the top of the backboard. So when that starts, it’s just so deflating, and it’s really hard to overcome. But he does it to everyone.”

The Suns tried to close the gap, Ott said, and had stretches of good offensive possessions — but every time they crowded Wembanyama, the Spurs sprayed the ball out to the perimeter for the corner three. The Spurs weren’t hitting them early; then the timely ones came, late in the shot clock. On those possessions, Ott said:

“That’s some of their experience. You play deep into the playoffs, you understand where to find your high-quality looks. They do a great job of using the whole 24-second shot clock —they maximize their possession. They have multiple elite scorers out there on the floor at one time, and they understand that if they feel a crowd, or they feel multiple bodies, they’re able to spray it to someone on the perimeter. They really hurt us on some of those late shot clock shots.”

Offensively, Ott said the Suns liked looks early — eight off-the-dribble threes — but finished with only 26 attempts from deep, and against a defense he called the best in the league at taking away the three-point line, that isn’t enough, because you can’t get into the lane. The Suns make mid-range shots most nights, he said; Monday night they didn’t, and the misses came right in the stretches where the game could have tightened. Defensively, the goal was the paint: keep both bigs protecting the rim, stay home, don’t overextend — because overextend and it looks like a nerf hoop, the ball just goes up to Wembanyama. What the Suns didn’t do, Ott said, was win the possession game: at halftime they were down in it, not offensive rebounding enough and not forcing turnovers — and they didn’t turn the Spurs over enough all night. 

The Suns don’t get long to sit with it — the Los Angeles Clippers are in Phoenix on Tuesday night.

© Old Town News Scottsdale — oldtownnews.us

EDMONTON — Connor McDavid scored the first goal of the night and stretched his season-opening point streak to 19 games — 48 points already, two short of 50 — as the Edmonton Oilers (13-3-3) beat the New York Rangers (10-8-1) 3-1 on Monday night at 

Rogers Place.

The Rangers handed McDavid the goal. At 6:42 of the first period, rookie goaltender Dylan Garand went behind his net to play the puck, hit the side of the net with his clearing attempt instead of rimming it around, and McDavid was standing right there — he took it to the crease and stuffed it in before Garand could get back. It was McDavid’s 11th goal of the season, and the easiest one he’ll score all year. His streak is now 19 games — every Oilers game this season — with 48 points, 11 goals and a league-leading 37 assists, making him just the fourth player in NHL history with a 19-game point streak to open a season, joining Wayne Gretzky, Dany Heatley and Mats Sundin. His 18-game assist streak, the second-longest ever behind only Gretzky’s 23 in 1990-91, ended Monday night.

Leon Draisaitl made it 2-0 at 2:59 of the second period, chipping it in from the high slot off feeds from Vasily Podkolzin and Mattias Ekholm. The Rangers, who had won three straight coming in, got back in it shorthanded: Mika Zibanejad fed Jaroslav Chmelar coming out of the penalty box at 5:05 of the second, and Chmelar put it top corner past Devon Levi — the first shorthanded goal of his career — to make it 2-1.

That was as close as New York got, because its power play never produced. The Rangers went 0 for 5 with the man advantage, including two chances in the third period, and with 1:27 left, after Edmonton’s Ryan Shea took a penalty, the Rangers pulled Garand for a 6-on-4 — and Draisaitl scored into the empty net from his own zone at 18:47, a shorthanded goal and his league-leading 18th of the season.

Levi made 29 saves for the Oilers, who swept the season series with New York after also winning 4-1 on Nov. 1, and have now won two in a row. The Oilers host the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday; the Rangers’ three-game winning streak is over.

© Old Town News Scottsdale — oldtownnews.us

SAN FRANCISCO — Stephen Curry needed only 20 minutes to score 25 points as the Golden State Warriors (8-3) buried the New Orleans Pelicans (4-7) 138-87 on Monday night at Chase Center, a 51-point win that was over long before the starters sat down for good.

Curry went 6 of 10 from the field, 4 of 7 from three and 9 of 9 at the line, and he had company everywhere. Brandin Podziemski matched him with 25 points on five threes, Yaxel Lendeborg scored 23 on 8-of-10 shooting and a perfect 4 of 4 from deep, De’Anthony Melton added 16 off the bench and Charles Bassey had 12 points and 10 rebounds. Draymond Green scored two points and ran the offense for six assists, and Al Horford filled his 15 minutes with five points, six assists, two steals and three blocks.

The team numbers are the whole rout, Golden State first. The Warriors shot 54.9 percent (50 of 91) to the Pelicans’ 36.3 percent (29 of 80), and hit 21 of 44 threes — 47.7 percent — to New Orleans’ 8 of 28. The Warriors moved it for 37 assists to the Pelicans’ 21 and won the glass 50-31, 11-8 on the offensive boards. New Orleans actually shot its free throws well, 21 of 24 to Golden State’s 17 of 19, and the blocks finished close, nine for the Warriors and eight for the Pelicans — but the Pelicans turned it over 13 times to 11, managed two steals all night to the Warriors’ six, and never had an answer at the three-point line.

Derik Queen led New Orleans with 16 points off the bench. Dejounte Murray scored 12, Jeremiah Fears had 11 points and eight assists, and Herbert Jones had 10 — nobody else reached double figures until Queen, and the Pelicans’ starters were outscored by the game itself.

When your best player only has to play 20 minutes in a 51-point win, there isn’t much left to explain — the Warriors shot it, shared it and defended it like a team that knew by halftime the night was theirs.

PHOENIX — The Grand Canyon Antelopes (2-0) beat Oregon (2-1) for the first time ever on Monday night, holding off a furious comeback for an 81-74 win at Global Credit Union Arena — a big win in program history for a Lopes team picked second in the Mountain West preseason poll, against a Big Ten program.

The Lopes ran the first half. Grand Canyon led 21-13 after one quarter and 46-28 at halftime, shooting the ball the way the final numbers say they shot it all night: 46.9 percent from the field, 9 of 13 from three — 69.2 percent — and 26 of 29 at the free-throw line, 89.7 percent, to Oregon’s 13 of 17. Dasha Biriuk led the Lopes with 20 points, T’yana Todd scored 19 and Nyadieng Yiech had 18 points, 10 rebounds and six assists. The Lopes finished with 18 assists to Oregon’s 11, outrebounded the Ducks 35-30, and blocked five shots to two.

But Oregon came back, and it came back through Ehis Etute. The Ducks won the third quarter 21-11 to cut it to 57-49, and in the fourth they rode Etute — who finished with 16 points and 13 rebounds, seven of them on the offensive glass. An offensive rebound means a second chance: the defense forced the miss and still had to defend again, and Etute kept Oregon possessions alive all night, seven extra ones by herself. She also set up Mallory Heyer’s three with 3:22 left that cut it to 67-63, and when Heyer hit another three at 2:38, Oregon was within one, 70-69 — the closest the Ducks got, and they got there because of Etute.

The Lopes answered at the line. Biriuk hit two free throws at 2:14 to push it back to three, and Grand Canyon closed it out from there, 81-74. Ari Long led Oregon with 19 points, Heyer scored 16 and Katie Fiso had 14 points and six rebounds.

This is what Winston Gandy has built in a hurry. When Molly Miller left for Arizona State, Gandy took over, last season was a hard year of close losses, and he refreshed the roster with 11 new players — Todd, the Mountain West preseason Newcomer of the Year; Lanelle Wright, the preseason Freshman of the Year; Chloe Mann, who joined Todd on the preseason all-conference team. Picked second behind UNLV in their new conference, the Lopes are 2-0, and the second win is the first over Oregon in program history.

The Lopes are home again Friday night against Gonzaga.

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns (3-6) spent the afternoon talking about how to make life tough on Victor Wembanyama. By the end of Monday night at Mortgage Matchup Center, he had dismantled the whole plan in 25 minutes, scoring 40 points with 11 rebounds and eight blocked shots as the San Antonio Spurs (9-2) beat the Suns 122-96 for their ninth straight win.

Everything the Suns said at the shootaround — be physical, limit his catches, keep him off the free-throw line, force him into longer twos — he answered anyway. Wembanyama shot 15 of 19 from the field, still got to the line 10 times, and changed the game at the other end with those eight blocks, finishing plus-30 in his 25 minutes.

Devin Booker carried what offense the Suns had, scoring 32 points on 10-of-17 shooting and 9 of 10 at the line in 29 minutes. After him there was almost nothing: Khaman Maluach had 11 off the bench, and the other four starters — Dillon Brooks, Mikal Bridges, Oso Ighodaro and Jalen Green — scored seven, seven, seven and six. 

The team numbers show the size of it, Phoenix first. The Suns shot 39.3 percent (35 of 89) to San Antonio’s 51.1 percent (46 of 90), and went 9 of 26 from three to the Spurs’ 11 of 30. On the glass it was no contest — San Antonio outrebounded Phoenix 55-35, and 15-11 on the offensive boards — and the Spurs moved the ball for 30 assists to the Suns’ 21, with 10 blocks to seven and six steals to three. The two things the Suns won, they won clean: the free-throw line, 17 of 19 (89.5 percent) to the Spurs’ 19 of 25, and the ball — just seven turnovers to San Antonio’s nine. It didn’t come close to mattering.

Dylan Harper scored 17 points on 7-of-10 shooting for the Spurs, De’Aaron Fox had 15 points, nine rebounds and six assists, and Stephon Castle ran the show with seven assists and eight rebounds. Julian Champagnie and Harrison Barnes added 11 apiece.

The Suns don’t get a day to sit with it — the Los Angeles Clippers are in Phoenix on Tuesday night.

ATLANTA — Luka Doncic came back after missing one game with lower back tightness and had 32 points, 10 assists and eight rebounds as the Los Angeles Lakers (10-2) beat the Atlanta Hawks (7-5) 124-114 on Monday night.

The Lakers needed him back, because Austin Reaves — who scored 43 in Detroit on Sunday — sat this one out, along with Quentin Grimes. Doncic also had five steals and two blocks and went 7 for 7 at the free-throw line in 39 minutes, and Walker Kessler gave the Lakers 21 points and 10 rebounds inside.

The bench carried the rest of it. Sandro Mamukelashvili scored 23 points off the bench, going 5 of 8 from three, and Collin Sexton added 18 points and six assists — the Lakers’ reserves outscored Atlanta’s 49-45 on a night the starters’ minutes were heavy.

The team numbers tell how the Lakers won it. The Lakers shot 52.9 percent from the field (45 of 85) to the Hawks’ 45.5 percent (40 of 88). Atlanta made more threes, 17, but needed 44 tries to the Lakers’ 35 for their 15. The rebounds finished even at 40 apiece, and the Hawks actually moved the ball better, 33 assists to 30, and won the offensive glass 12-8. Where the game turned was the ball itself: Atlanta turned it over 19 times to the Lakers’ 15, and the Lakers piled up 16 steals to the Hawks’ 12, living in the passing lanes all night.  At the line the Lakers went 19 of 23 to Atlanta’s 17 of 23. Blocks were even at six.

CJ McCollum led Atlanta with 21 points off the bench. Nickeil Alexander-Walker scored 20, Onyeka Okongwu had 16 points and nine rebounds, Jalen Johnson had 15 and Dyson Daniels finished with 10 points, eight assists, six rebounds and four steals.

For Doncic, the 32 points bring his season total to 393 points in ten games. The run of four straight 40-point games ends here — but on the second night of a back-to-back, without Reaves, his return was the whole story.

The Lakers play at Milwaukee on Wednesday night.

Baseball’s awards week opened Monday night with two runaway winners. Sal Stewart of the Cincinnati Reds was named the National League Rookie of the Year, and Kevin McGonigle of the Detroit Tigers won the American League award, in voting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America announced on MLB Network.

Stewart, the Reds’ 22-year-old first baseman, played all 162 games and hit .263 with 32 home runs and 112 runs batted in. The 112 RBIs set a Reds rookie record and were the third-most in the majors, and Stewart became the 15th rookie in baseball history with a 30-homer, 100-RBI season — and the first Reds rookie ever to do it. He took 20 of the 30 first-place votes and 170 points, ahead of Carson Benge of the New York Mets (107 points) and JJ Wetherholt of the St. Louis Cardinals (99 points).

McGonigle’s win was even more one-sided: 28 of the 30 first-place votes and 204 points. The Tigers infielder made Detroit’s Opening Day roster without having played a game in Triple-A, split his time between shortstop and third base, and hit .278 with 18 home runs, 72 RBIs and 95 walks. His 7.1 wins above replacement — the measure of a player’s total value — led every player in the American League, pitchers included, and MLB.com noted he is the first rookie since Ted Williams in 1939 to reach at least 97 runs, 28 doubles, 18 homers, 72 RBIs and 95 walks in a season. He is the sixth Tiger to win the award and the first since Michael Fulmer in 2016. Parker Messick of the Cleveland Guardians finished second with the other two first-place votes and 122 points, and Payton Tolle of the Boston Red Sox was third with 54 points.

The BBWAA ballots were cast before the postseason began, two writers from each league city voting in each league. Awards week continues Tuesday night on MLB Network, and whatever comes next in it, Monday night set the tone: two everyday players, in the lineup from Opening Day on, and neither race was ever close.

Article provided by Sports Tracker

The Arizona State Sun Devils (5-4) go to UCF on Saturday starting freshmen all over the field. Kenny Dillingham explained at his weekly press conference on Monday that the Sun Devils will essentially start five and a half freshmen, and he said other people might call that an excuse — he calls it the opposite.

“Some people will use that as an excuse,” Dillingham said at his weekly press conference on Monday. “I use that as the opposite of excuse. That’s phenomenal, that we have five freshmen starting for us. That’s phenomenal. But nobody cares — you get it done or you’re not.”

Dillingham explained at the press conference that the rest of college football has gone the other way: every week, he said, the lineups Arizona State faces are full of fourth-year and fifth-year seniors, because the transfer portal has programs chasing veteran, proven players, and teams are older now than they used to be.

Against that, he said his freshmen were never handed anything. “For all those guys to earn the right to play more — we didn’t give it to them,” Dillingham said. “They’ve earned the right to play more.”

He explained that a freshman can’t simply be started in the first game anymore, not with the way rosters are built, and that getting a young player on the field past veterans the staff believes in is harder than it used to be — but when his freshmen got their opportunity, he said, they maximized it.

And he said the young players are the reason the last three weeks have looked different from the three weeks before them, when Arizona State lost its way: players changed, young guys stepped up, and the team started playing like itself again. “A lot of young guys playing,” Dillingham said, “which is unbelievable for the future.”

The Sun Devils play at UCF on Saturday, and the freshmen go with them — starting, earned, and with their coach refusing to call it anything but a good thing.

© Old Town News Scottsdale — oldtownnews.us

Arizona Cardinals (3-6) are running out of receivers. Head coach Mike LaFleur said Monday that Michael Wilson is out for the year with a fracture — an injury Wilson suffered early in Sunday’s 17-3 loss at Seattle and played through anyway.

“He said he just got kicked,” LaFleur said in his Monday address. “He’s such a warrior.”

Wilson was not the only one. LaFleur said Jalen Brooks played through a shattered arm without saying anything, and he pointed to Will Johnson as a third example of the same thing. “You got three examples of dudes that are just warriors,” he said, adding that what he told the team about it stays in house: “I’ll keep what I said to the team there.”

Quarterback Gardner Minshew is having tests run on the elbow and arm that got hit when Dante Fowler Jr. hit him in the second quarter Sunday. Asked whether there is concern Minshew could miss this week, LaFleur would not go further than the tests: “We’ll know more on Wednesday, so I’ll give you guys more information on Wednesday.” On Bam, he said only that he is doing good, with more on Wednesday as well. And on Roy, the first name in the update, there is not much yet: “We’ll know a little bit more as the week goes on.”

If Minshew cannot go, Carson Beck is the next man up, and LaFleur said the offense does not change much between them. “It’s not like it’s the difference between a wing-T offense and a spread offense,” he said. “Foundationally we’re going to do similar stuff. A lot of the stuff that Carson likes, it’s the same stuff that Gardner likes. They like the system, so that’s not a hard one.”

With the trade deadline Tuesday, LaFleur shut that door too: he is focused on the guys in the building, on putting Sunday’s game to bed and getting reset for Wednesday.

His bigger concern is the offense as a whole. The defense has had decent continuity over the last month, he said, and has played more and more like one unit over the last four weeks. “Not the case on offense right now,” he said. “There’s been a lot of moving parts, and I gotta do a better job of stabilizing that to make sure we don’t have performances like we did yesterday.”

Asked how a coach finds offensive success with this many players down, he did not flinch. “That’s what we signed up to do,” LaFleur said. “It’s one of 32 — no one’s going to feel sorry for you. You get these guys ready, whoever we got lined up, whoever’s going to be up on game day, we get them ready to go play football.” And he is looking forward to finding out who takes the chance: “I’m excited to see who’s going to step up. That should give these guys a lot of excitement, to have an opportunity.”

The Cardinals are home Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams.

© Old Town Ne