ward Page 33 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Three teams that could be next in line to improve drastically in a short amount of time like the Memphis Grizzlies
In the NBA, teams with stars and veteran leadership usually make waves in the postseason and win championships. It’s rare to see a team of young inexperienced players going deep in the postseason, no matter how talented they are. Of course, there are outliers to everything....

The Kansas City Chiefs’ dynasty window still has a draft
Championship windows are an interesting concept, in theory. However, they assume too much. One one hand, it’s impossible to project how rosters will look from year-to-year. Half the league’s championship prospects are a one-window apartment facing an alley. Teams like the Chiefs, Packers, and Bills ...

Fictional Hooper Bracket: The Elite Eight
Welcome to the Elite Eight of the Fictional Hoopers Tournament. All the fat and sinew (Sandy Lyle and Steve Urkel) have been trimmed, and the characters left are all from powerhouse pictures. No one has been able to knock off either of White Men Can’t Jump’s main characters (celebrated last night at...

Photo Essay: N.C. State and UConn punch tickets to Elite Eight
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — N.C. State, the top seed in the Bridgeport Regional, advanced to its first Elite Eight in 24 years on Saturday, Raina Perez’s steal and fast break layup in the closing seconds put the Wolfpack ahead to stay in their 66-63 triumph over No. 4 Notre Dame which led most of the way. D...

‘King Richard’ is not a movie to be overlooked during the Oscars
Sports movies often get overlooked during Oscar season. The last time a sports film won Best Picture was 2005 when Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby took home the night’s most coveted award. Since then, it’s been crickets. Some sports movies and short films have been given some recognition with l...

How Sweet it is
From 68 teams to the final 16. More than 50 teams with their eyes on a national championship are handing in jerseys instead of preparing for more games. The first six days of NCAA Tournament action left three double-digit seeds, including maybe the biggest Cinderella in Tournament history, which you...

West London is not going to welcome The Ricketts Family
It’s pretty clear that the Ricketts family, who own the Cubs, look upon Fenway Sports Group as something of an idol. They took their GM from Boston and made him the president of the Cubs. You know him as Theo Epstein. They have remade Wrigley Field and the neighborhood around it in the same fashion ...

College hockey is just as mad in March
You and I have probably been spending the last week the same way, staring at our monitors watching St. Peter’s destroy any chance we had at winning our office bracket challenge. We’ve been so enticed by the upsets, bracket busters, and magical run by Michigan (with Juwan Howard returning to the side...

Fictional Hooper Bracket: The Rucker Region - Round 2
The only havoc in the first round of the Rucker Regional was a 5-12 upset, which has become almost commonplace in March Madnesses everywhere. We’ll see how things tighten up heading into the Silver Screen 16 with matchups like Kyrie Irving alter ego Uncle Drew getting his first real test of the tour...

The people who wanted Juwan Howard and Penny Hardaway fired a few months ago… where’d they go?
What started with a press conference and a “postgame scuffle” has turned into predictable praise. Because when you win, people conveniently forget that just a few weeks earlier they wanted you unemployed....

All eyes on the Peacocks
St. Peter’s not only hasn’t won a men’s NCAA tournament game before this year, the Peacocks had never been particularly close. ...

Women can be so defensive
Montana State had a good season. The Bobcats were 14-6 in the Big Sky, finishing second in the league, and won the conference tournament without too much difficulty after regular-season champion Idaho State got knocked out in the quarterfinals....

After initial Madness, it’s March Moderation
After the wild and bracket-busting first day of men’s March Madness, Candace Parker saw the future on the postgame show. The future Hall of Famer said that after so many upsets on Thursday, coaches of higher-seeded teams would be able to point to that and get their squads focused on the challenge of...

Spiders, Wolverines and … Peacocks, oh My!
Ah, March. Some might call it a month, but those of us who celebrate know it’s a state of mind. And after yesterday, March is unequivocally here....

Fictional Hooper Bracket: Rucker Region
This region is a little more unconventional than the Venice Courts. There are old favorites like Tommy Sheppard, but also characters from anime, commercials, and a Ray Allen appearance that you might have forgotten about from the early 2000s....

That’s me, just ugly crying over wrestling
My father used to talk about what it was like for him to watch things like Naked Gun or Monty Python, where it wasn’t just laughing at the jokes, but laughing at yourself for laughing at them, which only made you laugh even more than you already were....

Rudy Gobert going all Draymond
Rudy Gobert is one of the better defenders of his era and, depending on what region of the country you live in, could be one of the all-time greats on the defensive end of the court. He’s a three-time Defensive Player of the Year award winner (tied for second most all-time) and gets treated like a c...

Tennis doesn’t want Naomi Osaka around
Naomi Osaka loves tennis, but tennis doesn’t seem to love her back. ...

Goodbye and good riddance to Will Wade
It took way too long to oust Will Wade from his place atop LSU men’s basketball, but the deserved guillotine finally made its swift chop on Saturday afternoon, a major moment in the 4-year-plus NCAA investigation into wrongdoing surrounding his time in Baton Rouge. Wade was fired with cause, meaning...

Joel Embiid is deserving of the MVP, but the award should go to Nikola Jokić
Nikola Jokić and Joel Embiid showed on Monday night why they are the two front runners for MVP in the NBA. Embiid scored 43 points and tallied 14 rebounds and three blocks while leading the Philadelphia 76ers to an important 121-106 victory over the Chicago Bulls that vaulted them past the Milwaukee...