The Sports Report: UCLA and USC women both win Sunday
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Howdy, I’m your host, Houston Mitchell. Let’s get right to the news.
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From Andrés Soto: Londynn Jones made a pull-up jumper.
Kiki Rice got a steal.
Janiah Barker scored a tough putback layup.
Rice hit free throws.
And then, Timea Gardiner hit the biggest three of the season for the Bruins with 44 seconds to go.
Top-ranked UCLA has proven to be one of the deepest teams in the nation, and they showed it again Sunday night, overcoming the absence of their leading scorer to defeat No. 22 Michigan State 75-69 in a March Madness-like thriller.
UCLA star center Lauren Betts did not play because of a foot injury. She wore an air cast during pregame warmups and is considered day-to-day, the team announced.
Making up for Betts’ absence required a collective effort, and Barker did her part. One of her best plays came with just over a minute left before halftime when she stole the ball from Michigan State’s Nyla Hampton and scored on an easy layup to put the Bruins ahead 41-28 with just over a minute before halftime.
Barker finished with 18 points, 12 rebounds, three assists and two steals. Gardiner also had 18 points for the Bruins to go along with four rebounds. Rice’s 16 points and seven assists were also crucial.
UCLA projected to get NCAA tournament overall No. 1 seed in first bracket reveal
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USC BASKETBALL
Kiki Iriafen scored 19 points and No. 6 USC rallied to beat Washington 69-64 on Sunday.
JuJu Watkins had 17 points, seven rebounds and six assists for the Trojans (23-2, 13-1 Big Ten), who were coming off a statement victory over top-ranked UCLA and trailed by as many as 12 points against the Huskies. Kennedy Smith added 14 points, going four for eight on three-pointers.
USC shot just 29% from the field in the first three quarters, before going 11 for 16 in the fourth.
Washington’s Sayvia Sellers led all scorers with 24 points. Hannah Stines — who shadowed Watkins all day on defense — added 10 points and 10 rebounds.
From the opening tip, the Huskies (14-12, 5-9) slowed the game down, taking as much time off the shot clock as possible every time down the floor. As a result, the score was tied at 23-23 at halftime after a second quarter that featured just four made field goals.
USC didn’t reach 30 points until nearly eight minutes into the third quarter. The Trojans went on to score 38 in the final 12 minutes.
NBA ALL-STAR GAME
From Dan Woike: This year’s NBA All-Star Game was an end, the final All-Star Game aired on TNT before the league switches television partners. The NBA All-Star Game was a beginning, the league actively changing the format to a four-team mini-tournament aimed to shrink bloated scores and increase competition.
And the NBA All-Star Game was a showcase, a reminder that Stephen Curry and the Bay Area are definitive fabrics in the story of the modern game.
What the NBA All-Star Game wasn’t, again, was a game — at least not one that anyone would’ve recognized in a traditional sense. And maybe it doesn’t need to be one.
LeBron James didn’t play because of foot and ankle soreness, with the aim of being back on the floor Wednesday when the Lakers resume their season. Anthony Edwards suited up for his team but never entered the game, lingering groin soreness keeping him from participating. He, too, said he thought he’d be fine once the regular season resumed.
Neither player was replaced.
The decision for James and Edwards to sit, despite the 17-year-age difference, underscored the cost-benefit analysis players are making while the NBA and fans push for the game to be played with the kind of intensity and energy that makes 48 minutes on any given night an occurrence worth celebrating.
DAYTONA 500
From John Cherwa: If you ask any NASCAR driver what is the most important factor in winning the Daytona 500, the answer usually comes back the same. You need luck.
And, for the second year in a row William Byron had that luck to win back-to-back Daytona 500s.
As is usually the case, the race was decided in the last 10, or maybe 15 laps, of this 200-lap signature start of the NASCAR season.
Denny Hamlin, a three-time winner of the Daytona 500, was in a good spot to win as the race headed for an overtime lap. Cole Custer and Chase Briscoe were battling for position near the lead when they made contact. The incident drew in Hamlin, who spun out as his car headed for the infield.
Byron was ninth entering the final lap and stayed high as cars to his inside were collected into the chaos. He stayed close to the wall with Tyler Reddick in tow and won the race with a good drive, a good car and a lot of luck.
“Obviously [I had] some good fortune but I just trusted my instincts on the last lap there,” Byron said. “I felt like they were getting squirrely on the bottom and I was honestly going to go third lane (high) regardless because I was probably sixth coming down the backstretch.”
It was the 15th win in nine years for Byron, who drives a Chevrolet for Hendricks Motorsports.
DODGERS
From Jack Harris: At the end of an otherwise celebratory offseason, the Dodgers had to take a critical look at one of their biggest organizational flaws this winter.
In the weeks leading up to spring training, team officials engaged in what they described as a “deep dive” into their spate of pitching injuries in recent years. They called meetings involving club executives, pitching coaches and medical personnel. Together, they tried to diagnose the causes — and brainstorm potential solutions — to an injury crisis that has impacted the baseball world at large, but ravaged their pitching staff more than any other MLB team over the last several seasons.
“We dove pretty deep,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said last week, as the Dodgers gathered at Camelback Ranch for another season that could be defined by their ability to stay healthy on the mound. “We were able to have some substantive discussions.”
It remains to be seen how fruitful that examination proves to be.
SOCCER
From Kevin Baxter: Bruce Arena has little left to accomplish and absolutely nothing left to prove.
He’s won more games with the men’s national team than any coach in U.S. Soccer history, won more games and more titles than any coach in MLS history and is the only manager to take the U.S. men to a fifth game in the World Cup.
So why, at 73, is he coming back as manager and sporting director of the hapless San José Earthquakes, a team that hasn’t had a winning season since 2013 and is coming off arguably the worst year in league history?
“This is why I do,” he said. “I like to coach.”
Maybe. But that’s not the biggest reason why he’s coming back.
San Diego FC’s counts on Mexican star Chucky Lozano to be a spark in its debut season
GOLF
Ludvig Aberg never felt worse leaving a golf course than three weeks ago at Torrey Pines when he shared the 36-hole lead only to get violently ill from a stomach ailment and stagger to the finish with a 79.
That’s what made Sunday — same course, different tournament — feel so sweet.
Aberg was three shots behind and running out of holes when he hit three shots to near perfection for birdies and capped off his late rally with a seven-foot birdie putt on the par-five 18th for a six-under 66 and a one-shot victory over Maverick McNealy in the Genesis Invitational.
The tournament had to relocate to Torrey from Riviera Country Club because of the wildfires in Los Angeles, and Aberg made good on another chance at one of his favorite courses. It was somewhere toward the end that he turned to caddie Joe Skovron and said, “This Sunday is a lot more fun than the last one we had.”
THIS DATE IN SPORTS
1923 — Cy Denneny of the Ottawa Senators becomes the NHL’s career scoring leader. He scores his 143rd goal to surpass Joe Malone in a 2-0 win over the Montreal Canadiens.
1924 — Johnny Weissmuller sets a world record in the 100-yard freestyle swim with a time of 52.4 seconds.
1926 — Suzanne Lenglen beats Helen Wills 6-3, 8-6 in Cannes, France, in their only tennis match against each other.
1928 — Sweden’s Gillis Grafstrom successfully defends his 1920 and 1924 Olympic figure skating title, with Austrian Willy Bockl finishing in second place as he did four years earlier.
1941 — Joe Louis knocks out Gus Dorazio in the second round in Philadelphia to defend his world heavyweight title.
1955 — Mike Souchak establishes the PGA 72-hole scoring record with a 257 at the Texas Open. Souchak starts with a record-tying 60 at San Antonio’s Brackenridge Park course and ends with a 27-under-par, beating the previous low for a 72-hole event by two shots.
1968 — The Basketball Hall of Fame opens in Springfield, Mass.
1974 — Richard Petty wins his second straight Daytona 500. It’s the fifth Daytona 500 title for Petty, who also won in 1964, 1966, 1971 and 1973.
1992 — Raisa Smetanina wins a gold medal with the Unified Team in the 20-kilometer cross-country relay to set the career Winter Olympics medal record with 10. Smetanina, 39, also becomes the oldest champion and the first to win a medal in five straight Winter Games.
1994 — San Antonio’s David Robinson records the fourth quadruple-double in NBA history with 34 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists and 10 blocks in the Spurs’ 115-96 win over Detroit.
1998 — The U.S. women’s hockey team wins the sport’s first Olympic gold medal. Sandra Whyte scores on an empty-netter with eight seconds left to give the United States a 3-1 victory over Canada.
2010 — Americans Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso finish 1-2 in the downhill at the Vancouver Olympics. It’s the first time since 1984 that the U.S won gold and silver in a women’s Alpine event.
2013 — Danica Patrick wins the Daytona 500 pole, becoming the first woman to secure the top spot for any Sprint Cup race.
2014 — Meryl Davis and Charlie White win the gold medal in ice dance, the first Olympic title in the event for the U.S..
2018 — Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu becomes the first man to successfully defend his Olympic figure skating title since Dick Button in 1952.
2020 — 62nd Daytona 500: Denny Hamlin wins second straight title by 0.014 seconds over Ryan Blaney on the second restart in overtime; his third Daytona victory
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time...
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Go beyond the scoreboard
Get the latest on L.A.'s teams in the daily Sports Report newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
