abr Page 73 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Meet Steve Alford, UCLA's Future Former Basketball Coach
Few people have perfected the art of professional escape like Steve Alford, the newly former New Mexico coach who is now the future former coach of UCLA. Nine days after getting drummed out of the NCAA tournament by Haaarvaaard and two days before his 10-year, $20 million contract with the Lobos was...

Pac-12 Head Of Officials Investigated For Bribing Officials To Make Example Of Sean Miller
Ed Rush—current Pac-12 head of officials, former NBA referee and director of officiating from 1998-2003—reportedly told referees officiating the Pac-12 tournament he would give them money or pay for a trip to Mexico if they "rang up" Arizona head coach Sean Miller....

UCLA Has Its First New Basketball Coach In 11 Years: The Architect Of New Mexico's Loss To Harvard
Steve Alford, a well-known name in basketball since he was a coach's favorite on the Hoosiers teams of the mid-80s, has signed on to replace Ben Howland at UCLA. As pointed out in Andy Katz's report, Alford's new contract with UCLA means breaking an almost equally new contract with New Mexico, where...

Shabazz Muhammad Is Exactly One Year Older Than We All Thought
Yesterday, as UCLA was gearing up for its first tournament game (an upset loss to Minnesota), the Los Angeles Times published a profile of the father of Pac-12 freshman of the year Shabazz Muhammad. The piece revealed, among other odd things, that he had been lying about his son's age for some time—...

These Two Seconds Of Hockey Generated 44 Penalty Minutes
Wanna watch something exciting and unusual that happened on the ice during an NHL game? Watch this video! But wanna watch some hockey? Well, then don't watch this video....

All The Angry Emails Sent To UCLA By Fans Who Hated The Ugly New Zubaz-Style Uniforms
Three weeks ago, Adidas rolled out special basketball uniforms for Cincinnati, Kansas, Baylor, UCLA, Louisville, and Notre Dame, to be worn in the teams’ conference tournaments. Each uniform featured Zubaz-like camo shorts, camo shoes, and three of the uniforms—UCLA, Louisville and Baylor—came with ...

Still Filling Out Your NCAA Tournament Bracket? Consult Our Handy Expert Metabracket
Presenting your 2013 NCAA Tournament Metabracket. Click the annotations to see which teams Nate Silver, Joe Lunardi, Seth Davis, Barack Obama, Matt Norlander, Jay Bilas, and Luke Winn picked to advance through each round. (Click the "Next" button in the lower right corner to see the Sweet 16 and onw...

Here's Your 2013 NCAA Bracket
Notable notes: Kentucky was locked out. Something called "La Salle" made it in and Gonzaga is a No. 1 seed. Madness! ...

UCLA Freshman Jordan Adams Topped Off His Game-Saving Performance By Breaking His Foot On The Very Last Play
Last night, the UCLA Bruins advanced to the Pac-12 finals after winning a hard-fought game against Arizona, 66-64, in Las Vegas. The fortituous final play, in which Arizona missed a jumper and tip-in opportunity, may also have taken UCLA's season out behind the proverbial woodshed. ...

Greg Maddux Is On Twitter, Maybe, And He's Wonderful
No official word yet on whether this Twitter account really belongs to Greg Maddux, top-10 greatest pitcher ever and lovely-Christmas-sweater-haver. We hope very much that it is real....

Here's A Weird Picture Of Kobe Bryant's Swollen Ankle
This comes to us courtesy of Vanessa Bryant's Instagram account. It's rather artistic, isn't it? Perhaps she was inspired by the sad movie marathon that Kobe embarked on after last night's game....

Star Akron Guard Alex Abreu Busted On Felony Drug Trafficking Charges
The Akron Zips will be without the services of starting point guard Alex Abreu after the All-MAC junior found himself in jail today facing multiple felony charges....

Bigoted Israeli Soccer Fans Walk Out After Muslim Player Scores For Their Team
Beitar Jersualem, one of Israel's most popular soccer teams, added two non-Israeli players to its roster this year. Zaur Sadayev and Dzhabrail Kadiyev are both Chechan Muslims and are two of the five non-Israeli players to have ever suited up for Beitar throughout the team's existence. Unsurprising...

Patrick Kaleta Deserves A Long, Unpaid Vacation For This Hit From Behind
Noted Buffalo dirtball Patrick Kaleta has been somewhat quiet recently—slipping all the way to a career-low 10th on the most-hated players list, but he's angling to get back among the leaders after this brutal cross-check that sent New York's Brad Richards headfirst into the boards....

Here's A Photo Of UCLA Head Coach Ben Howland, In A Tracksuit, Playing Beer Pong With Students Last Night
From the game day campout live-blog at the Daily Bruin (and via Twitter), here's a picture of notoriously sorta grumpy UCLA basketball coach Ben Howland, looking extremely relaxed last night in advance of today's game against #11 ranked Arizona at Pauley Pavilion (9 p.m. EST, ESPN)....

Four Things You Can Learn About The NBA By Skimming Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Research Papers
The Sloan Sports Analytics Conference is under way in Boston and, though we sent no intrepid reporters to Dorkapalooza this year, the conference happily made its research paper finalists publicly available on its website. Let's blearily page through and see if we can't learn a few things. (We're foc...

Falcons Cut Michael Turner, John Abraham, And Dunta Robinson
Atlanta came within 10 yards of the Super Bowl, but in the salary cap era that's no reason not to blow things up. It wasn't unexpected, by today the Falcons announced the releases of RB Michael Turner, DE John Abraham, and CB Dunta Robinson. It's not fun to say goodbye to three faces of a franchise ...

Ilya Bryzgalov's Thoughts On Meteors, Asteroids, And Life Are Simple Yet Profound
During an interview with Flyers goalie Ilya Bryzgalov, the folks at WIP had the good sense to ask him for his thoughts on that big-ass meteor that recently landed in Russia and that even bigger-ass asteroid that whizzed by Earth and threw us all into a brief, existential meltdown. Bryzgalov's respo...

Lindy Ruff Fired As Buffalo Sabres Coach After 16 Years
When Lindy Ruff was hired as Sabres coach in the summer of 1997, Nail Yakupov was three years old, Mario Lemieux was the reigning Art Ross winner, and Teemu Selanne was already a veteran. Now, in the middle of his 15th season, Ruff has been fired....

Adorable Creatures Playing Basketball, Ranked
1. Arthritic sea otter (above)...